Ultimate Bowling

This game, recently invented by my relatives, is just about the most sporting fun you can have inside your house since knee football. It is full contact bowling. Each team has 4 pins. They set up their pins on opposite ends of the court (rug). There is one nerf bowling ball. The team on offense tries to bowl down the other team's pins. The defense tries to block them by tackling them and taking the bowling ball. (Recently, many teams have been using large red and purple pillows to block on defense, creating a linebacker rush type situation.)

The kinds of stuff I do at work

I pretend to have an "office" and "coworkers" because sometimes as I think to myself how I lack these things, my heart swells with panic (as in: Gosh, how is my work different from unemployment??) I have in my life had a more-readily-recognizable-as-a-job job and therefore I know what it's like in an "office" with "coworkers" and especially what you tell your sweetie at the end of the day with regards to "how was work, sugar lips?"

You think of the most exciting thing that happened that day. For me, it used to be stuff like, "I helped Alice fix the copy machine!" Or, "we went to cover a car fire!" (Some of my former jobs could be pretty interesting.)

Today it was: I remembered that a book just came out on the Weimar Republic. When I remembered this, I was at my "office" which is a desk in a library. I rushed to look--did the library already have this new book?? My dissertation is also on the Weimar Republic--!! What if the new book had scooped my dissertation?? Heart-pounding search for the book. Quick, consult in-library map of book stacks!

Yes, I found it--20 minutes of edge-of-seat consultation of book's index on things like "lesbian" (one mention) and "prostitution" (one mention)...Whew, the book doesn't scoop my dissertation.

Then I got sort of peeved. How could the dude write a whole book and not mention the stuff that's in my dissertation? Aren't my dissertation people important? They are! Dammit.

That is the kind of stuff that happens at work. It's no car on fire, let me tell you. I may not tell sugar lips about this one, I don't want to spend my boredom capital with her unnecessarily.

Running in NJ

I moved out of my old NJ apartment down south a bit, still in NJ but amidst a few more trees. This is my new run through the woods a block from the house. Picture taken about a month ago. I feel really lucky to have moved next to this great run! I didn't even know the park was there until we moved in.

Sex freedom!

Sex toys (including vibrators) are illegal to sell in several states, including Alabama and Mississippi. A 2004 circuit court decision upheld Alabama's ban on the sale of "any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs ... ."

Here is a law against queer sex (which I define as any kind of sex that violates dominant social norms) that both 'straights' and 'homos/queers/lgbt/whatever people' can join forces to oppose!

Yay for a sex positive coalition of lots of people! Sex toy shops like Toys in Babeland and Good Vibrations initially sought to market sex toys to women as a feminist act. But they've seen booms in business, and they seem to have made sex toys somewhat respectable even to straight couples. Now will the sex toy industry help build a sex positive political coalition for sex freedom in the U.S.?

(Shout out to HAL for the tip off on these laws.)

Spoooooky

This is our awesome pumpkin.

Nice older men wizards who are GAY

With all this buzz about Dumbledore, let's not forget: Gandalf was also gay.

CBAM emergency: remain calm

I have learned that there was an emergency this evening, when CBAM's cable box went down for about 20 minutes. Do not panic: it is now working again.

Update: The CBAM emergency threat level was raised, then lowered back to its pink/purple level by midnight last night.