I just realized it’s been a long time since I mentioned the fact that West Virginians can go to the WV State police site and view the list of sex offenders living in their area. If you know someone with children, you may want to pass this information along to them.

First Flower Pr0n on the year!

Unlike my father and grandfather, I’ve never been a huge fan of daffodils. (They were my grandfather’s favorite flower.) However I’m starting to see the attraction. The yellow I’m still not as thrilled about, but I think the other two are quite pretty.

I also like the snowrops, however they are much smaller in real life than in the picture.

There’s been a lot of mourning recently. People mourning Terri Schiavo’s death, her life, the death of the pope. But how sorrowful can the death of a stranger make you?

Mourning is accompanied by grief–the kind of loss that drives the breath from your body. Grief lasts more than a day, more than a week. It’s an acknowledgement of something very important in your life that you have lost.

But you can also mourn for something you’ve never had. For something you always wanted but have never been able to obtain. Grief happens when you finally learn that you won’t be able to achieve your desire.

But that kind of grief is hard. If you lose a loved one–that’s something people can understand. It’s tangible. It’s comprehensible. It’s something everyone has experienced. But this other kind of grief–it’s strange.

There are no words or phrases that come to mind.

No words of explanation or comfort, except “I’m sorry.”

Carpe Jugulum (1998) Terry Pratchett

I’m not quite sure what it is, but I found this book disappointing. Don’t get me wrong, there were places where I laughed out loud–it just seemed like those places were farther apart than usual.

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Jingo (1997) Terry Pratchett

What surprised me most about this book was that it was written in 1997.

A new island has risen between Ankh Morpork and Klatch, and war seems to be the only way to determine who really owns the island.

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Oh, but there’s no global warming…

I have to say that as far as weeks go, I think I’d prefer to spend the rest of this one… elsewhere.

It might just be me, but I find it horribly rude to show up more than an hour late for a class. Especailly if you’re going to disrupt everything with your entrance.

And I thought 15 minutes late was bad…

ADDENDUM the First (Wednesday)
The stupid woman who was more than an hour late Tuesday, showed up 15 minutes late for today’s class. And again interrupted the whole class with her tardiness. Apparently she’s prepetually rude.

The Hounds of the Mórrigan (1985) Pat O’Shea

I really like this book.

I can’t remember precisely when I bought it, or precisely when I read it for the first time, but I do remember that it rekindled my love of folktales and folklore.

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Look! Stupidity!

No, really. I hate it. Despise it.

As I was leaving work a woman behind me was exclaiming about how happy she was it was daylight savings time. I wanted to turn around an kick her in the shins.

I lose an hours of sleep, spend all day Sunday worrying that I won’t wake up on time Monday morning, and then Monday morning comes and… it’s Monday. Today was like the death of a thousand papercuts. Lots of tiny nasty little things all piled on one another.

I may have made chocolate-chocolate chip biscotti yesterday, but this feels like a bittersweet brownie with vanilla ice cream and fresh whipped cream kinda day.

Yesterday Michael again got his ponytail cut off to donate to Locks of Love. You can see some before pictures here.

To see the after pictures…
(more…)

Belated Congratulatons to the WVU Women’s Basketball team

Last year when we went to the Air and Space Museum with Kim and Mike, Flat Stanley came along.

Today Kim told me that Flat Stanley also made it to the Academy Awards this year.

Good Grief. Apparently Carl Rove may be behind Capito thinking that she can beat Byrd. I was quite surprised to see this in the Charleston Gazette.

Early Tuesday afternoon, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., sent an appeal over the Internet urging people to contribute to the re-election campaign of Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va.

In less than 24 hours, more than 15,000 contributors gave $634,000 to Byrd’s campaign, according to the National Journal’s daily Internet publication “Hotline.” The average donation was about $42.25.

But as I said before. I hope she runs against him, as it’ll be the easiest way to get her out of Congress.

I love this.