why so cold in your place? No heat?

no, that is the with heat temp. It is old steam radiators, so when they are on, it gets upto 65 or so, but by the end of there off cycle, it is back down to 60. I have them turned fairly low to avoid the extreme hot that they can produce.

Is your cat now sleeping like mine are, less than an hour after being noisy for no good reason.

yep, he's all curled up in "his" chair, snoozing. I guess he met all his needs (food, water, bathroom, bugging us) so now is the time to get some zzzzz.

My cats are now silently digesting the breakfast they insisted on.

I may be in need of caffeine. 'Disgesting' is not a word. Really.

Woke up to the sound of rain. I thought we got all the rain there ever will be yesterday....

It's like there's some feline conspiracy out there.

It's raining here too. I just looked outside and there were 4 bluejays at my feeder - they were soaking wet. Poor little guys.

Sarah Vowell on torture, the Constitution, and Jack Bauer:

If the civics robot is feeling particularly nostalgic for that time in America when the word "rendition" was usually followed by the words, "of 'Louie, Louie,' " it continues to nitpick about what some of those ideals entail: Congressional oversight, due process and treating prisoners of war according to ye olde golden rule. Not only because we would hope our captive soldiers would be treated with reciprocal human decency, or because the information gleaned from torture usually turns out to be a Saddam's-in-league-with-Al-Qaeda sham, but mostly, Americans reject torture because we are not satanic monster scum.

Except, of course, the moment we pick up our TV remote controls. That's when even my inner civics robot cracks open a ginger ale, stares at Kiefer Sutherland on the beloved "24" and cheers: "Yeah, Jack Bauer! Break into that interrogation room and shoot that suspect in the leg!" There is a jarring disconnect between what I want my real-life intelligence officers to be doing versus what I want my fake TV intelligence officers to be doing. On my two favorite shows, "Alias" and "24," the protagonists Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) and the aforementioned Jack Bauer bend and break the laws of the land in the name of national security with such speed and frequency, even Donald Rumsfeld himself might be outraged enough to utter a "my goodness gracious" tsk, tsk.

Skipping way too much, in order to poke my head (after 6 hours of rehearsal TAing for the students' exam), to post something that is not meMeME: according to the Buffista Calendar, today is Micole's birthday. I hadn't seen any posts from her in a little forever (and I miss them, because they used to always be interesting and thoughts-provoking), but I hope she gets the well-wishes somehow.

no idea if it is raining here. I haven't made it to a window yet. I decided if going back to sleep was good enough for the cats it was good enough for me and went back to bed. The cats were not too pleased with that idea.

I'm not sure how you separate the dancer from the dance on this.

The dancer is never the dance. Well, not because of the dance. I have a lot of opinions. They are not me. Some of them are naive, some of them are cynical--some of them are realistic, some of them are optimistic. It's perfectly possible for that to be true.

I draw a huge distinction between "your stance is naive" and "you are naive." I don't know how else one would describe an opinion without describing the holder--but it has to be possible, doesn't it? As long as it's perfectly reasonable for someone to hold a particular angle that doesn't define them entirely, which I honestly believe.