Philotic Web

You all should look up the video of Stephen Colbert doing an hour-long interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson. Both of them at their best!

And Steph, Cox is a musician, too!

I wonder what it is with people named Brian being astrophysicists and musicians.

And Steph, Cox is a musician, too!

I know. Totally adds to his sexy.

I love you guys, but every time I visit the site, some of the discussions here really bring me down. I'm beginning to question whether or not it's worth the inevitable epic buzz kill to keep coming back.

I apparently have room in my head for only one jovial, wonderful, big-framed middle-aged gay man. Both of you, I'm so sorry!

Confession: I'm still trying to process that apparently my grandpa is having memory troubles. I feel bad for not visiting this summer, but I hate how every time I go out-of-town I just end up coming back more depressed or emotionally exhausted than I was going out. But I guess his condition is getting even worse, and he couldn't remember either myself or my brother most days.

I guess the main confession is that I'm glad I didn't see my grandpa, because people acting out-of-character is one of my greatest fears. But the other confession is that he's one of my favorite relatives, and it's really easy to mug P-Web for sympathy, especially with beloved grandparents fading.

You totally have my sympathy. Seeing my grandmother when her memory loss was almost complete was one of the hardest things ever. I STILL feel ambivalent about having seen her like that.

I just cut my own hair. I was so, so sick of all that length. And I can't afford to get it cut.

The best I can say is that it isn't the worst haircut in the history of ever.

It is, however, far and away the worst haircut in the history of me.

And I don't regret it. That's how much I was hating the long, scraggly stuff. Took off six inches, maybe. A very uneven six inches. The front is kind of layered.

Yay for free haircuts! Do you have any friends who can help even it out? That's how I got my last haircut (with embroidery scissors at that!) and it's probably how I'll get my next one

Gah! That GE commercial about the NICU babies in incubators in London makes me tear up. Every. Damn. Time.

Totally feel like this should be in confessions:

While doing some grocery shopping tonight, I saw something that made me try to stop in my tracks (I was moving pretty fast), which resulted in my feet slipping out from beneath me I did a full on slide for about a foot.

The thing that mad me stop, a wall of Pony toys : )

I am so glad that I have crocheting as a distraction right now. It's helping to keep me sane.

With the temperature dropping enough in the past two weeks to resemble an AZ version of winter, I've been thinking a lot that it feels like Christmas out. That got me thinking about how, although I miss next to nothing about school from growing up, I do miss the Christmas shows we would do. K-3 would do one one evening and 4-6 on another; the band would play, a musical sort of program would be done...and I really liked them. I liked the practicing, the cheesy songs, and the overall feeling of them.

Sampled lyrics that I just thought to look for tonight and found:
"Lookin' out my window at the ice and snow,
lookin' out my window I don't got no place to go.
Lookin' at my snowman makes me wanna cry.
He's the only man I got since we said goodbye.
Oh I got no man, no man but a snowman.
A corncob pipe, a button nose, and a cold cold heart.
Oh I've got no man, no man but a snowman.
Nobody to love me since we've been apart."

My confession is, I've been singing the two lines I remembered from this, from 4th or 5th grade, for years and am so happy to have even this little bit back.

While I'm admitting in other threads that I suck at my job ( !), I am terrible at weeding books from the collection. A not-small part of me hates getting rid of books and having to admit they weren't well loved enough to keep and although there are some general things I can do to take the feeling out of it (not circulated in x years? average circulation of under y in the course of it's z+ shelf-life?) but even that isn't entirely consistent because some books I just love so much, I can't bear the thought of getting rid of them and I think, if I get rid of the other crap around it, it will be more visible and circulate more then so let's just give it one more year....like the rest of the collection I'm not getting rid of but should. Doh.

I have gotten rid of some but not nearly enough and I feel bad about not being better at this.

I would be terrible at that job. I wish you all the luck and whatever degree of heartlessness you need to accomplish this task.

I don't check Post Secret anymore.

I am so glad that I have crocheting as a distraction right now. It's helping to keep me sane.

I hear this.

Thanks, Shannon!


zero mentioned having Chinese this weekend and now I'm more excited about dinner than seeing him.

(But just barely.)

Sometimes I really feel like I fail at life.

Unsurprisingly, an (almost) good night's sleep seriously improves me productivity and my ability to cope.

Confession: I get enormous vindictive pleasure out of the fact that my ex-boss might be emailing me and I've completely blocked her so I have no way of being bugged by her.

When she hired me, I was fresh out of college, knew I was good at programming but knew little beyond HTML and CSS, and wanted a job. She offered me one, I moved to Portland, two blocks from her office, in an apartment I could afford on the money she offered. I found that she was fun but strict, did not have many real clients, was unwilling to try something that she didn't discover herself, and did not have as much work as she had implied. Within two months I was maybe working two hours per weekday.

When I told her I was going to start looking for a second job, she was disappointed in me for some reason, but was very excited at the prospect of me working somewhere cool, like Trader Joe's. Which was half of the city away. I applied for many part-time jobs, and on a whim applied for a full-time job that I was almost qualified for despite my minimal experience. I took it when it was offered, as it paid much better, was definitely full-time, and had real staff at it. She was, again, disappointed when I told her that I would be quitting, not in two weeks, but that day, even though she didn't have any work lined up for me for maybe the next week or so.

I promised I would help her in my spare time, if she needed any coders to help. Leaving her with my copy of House of Leaves, which I had lent a month or so prior, I figured we were amiable.

Now, almost two years later, I have done maybe two hours of extra random work for her, and have managed to get my copy of House back. A few weeks ago she emailed me with another request, a simple one, to update the header on one of the sites I built for her. Shaking my head at the amateurish code I found, I fixed it in maybe fifteen minutes.

She emailed back. She was disappointed in the work, as it was not perfect on her smartphone. She specifically pointed out that, yes, it had been two years since I had made the site, but she expected me to take responsibility for my work, and she needed it to be perfect.

Realizing that there was no good way for this to go for me, that I had been nice and had worked on this completely free-of-charge, and that she was really just kind of a huge jerk, I blocked her email, unfriended her on Facebook, and am so happy.

And thinking about it gives me the warm fuzzies. I normally find it so hard to be that blunt to people. I almost regret not responding to her with an explanation, but I know that I would have just been inviting her to contact me via some other means, and would also have been curious if she responded.

Good on ya. Free work is unending work.

Being an independent voter in a swing state freaks me out a little. I feel so much more responsibility and pressure this election than I ever have before (as an independent voter in a state so red nobody bothered to campaign there.)

Confession: I just signed up for a month trial Netflix for the sole purpose of watching a couple terrible movies from the 1960s, namely Batman and Fantastic Voyage. Hopefully I will be able to get both of them within the month...

*double post* (How many of those can I have before being dubbed a post whore?)

I have an overdue fee at the library back home. This has never, ever happened to me before and I feel quite ashamed. Although I'm 99% sure I turned that book in and it's the library's error...though that is somewhat difficult to figure out given that I'm 3000 miles away...

The frustrating this about this: I can't check out any more ebooks until it's resolved!

I would call and see if anything can be done to waive the fees, if you have a reason they might also see, even marginally, as being "proof" it was their doing. If you have no history of making these claims, they should waive the fees this time.

Nom hasn't been giving me more than a handful of hours of sleep each night, and she's napping less and less during the day. I am so exhausted and today I just lost it and started sobbing when she wouldn't nap. I feel awful about leaving her in the playpen so much, but I don't have enough energy to play actively with her for long.

*hug*

My opinion is probably biased, but I don't think there is a harder job in the world than being a mom.

And I know my opinion is NOT biased when I say: You're doing great! God knew what he was doing when he sent you Nom. He knew what kind of mom you would be. He knew what mistakes you would make. He knew what successes you would have. He trusts you with one of his precious children, and He needed YOU to have Nom. Take care of yourself, because you can't give from reserves that you don't have. And we are all here to love you and support you.

*hug*

My opinion is probably biased, but I don't think there is a harder job in the world than being a mom.

And I know my opinion is NOT biased when I say: You're doing great! God knew what he was doing when he sent you Nom. He knew what kind of mom you would be. He knew what mistakes you would make. He knew what successes you would have. He trusts you with one of his precious children, and He needed YOU to have Nom. Take care of yourself, because you can't give from reserves that you don't have. And we are all here to love you and support you.

THIS. So much this. *hugs*

*sigh* I shouted at her this afternoon, too. It wasn't her fault the damned fire alarm went off and woke us up early, and she wasn't being bad, even, but she dug her toes in wrong and I shouted and she cried. I feel so awful right now.

Rei is taking her out to knitting circle and I am going to have some quiet, and someone is coming to watch her for a few hours tomorrow afternoon. Thank god, or I would be crying again.

*hugs*

*big, big hugs*

I hope there's sleep tonight, dear. And I am so, so glad you have someone coming in. It's so, so hard when you're tense and on edge and baby doesn't understand.

*Ali hugs* You're doing your best. Please don't feel awful about that. Little people are more resilient than we like to give them credit for.

*double post* (How many of those can I have before being dubbed a post whore?)

I have an overdue fee at the library back home. This has never, ever happened to me before and I feel quite ashamed. Although I'm 99% sure I turned that book in and it's the library's error...though that is somewhat difficult to figure out given that I'm 3000 miles away...

The frustrating this about this: I can't check out any more ebooks until it's resolved!

Yay for small, friendly libraries! I called them today and the lovely librarian went to see if it had been shelved without being checked in. One two-minute phone call and my fines are gone!