Steph, for insomnia attacks like that, I try to spend at least some time in bed doing relaxation breathing. Even if it doesn't put me to sleep, at least my body gets some benefit out of it. Hope you did manage to get to sleep, eventually!

am staying home today. yucky. honestly I think I will get in at least a half day of working from home, but right now - I go back to sleep.

Thanks for the info aurelia-- I am glad to hear from a lighting designer! (and it is an academic setting).

I am wondering if part of the reluctance in an academic setting is that most of them I have been in have a "part-time" costume staff, so they don't want them to have to come in on the weekends?

When I was a student in high school doing plays, we always did a tech with important costume pieces (shoes, hats, etc.) and quick changes included. Even the Q to Q included this stuff.

I found out today that my employers' health insurance will cover an abortion for your dependent teenager if she gets pregnant, but won't cover prenatal care and delivery if she decides to have the child. This just seems weird to me - does anybody know about their employer policy, or would you be willing to look? I wonder if it's industry standard or my employer being butt-headed.

I want one.

Plei, I have a request; please, oh please put up the 'angsty' one of Lily where she is facing right and her face is shadowed in a very gothy way. The House of reason needs its dose of Goth-Lily!

I shall put the request in to the photomaster!

(I think it's in the queue of to-do pictures.)

Emily, you and Hil totally need that.

I found out today that my employers' health insurance will cover an abortion for your dependent teenager if she gets pregnant, but won't cover prenatal care and delivery if she decides to have the child. This just seems weird to me - does anybody know about their employer policy, or would you be willing to look? I wonder if it's industry standard or my employer being butt-headed.

flea, it might be tied into your state's insurance regulations or laws. Are teens who give birth automatically emancipated, in your state?

I found out today that my employers' health insurance will cover an abortion for your dependent teenager if she gets pregnant, but won't cover prenatal care and delivery if she decides to have the child. This just seems weird to me - does anybody know about their employer policy, or would you be willing to look? I wonder if it's industry standard or my employer being butt-headed.

They're probably looking at it strictly in terms of cost but man, that's weird, all right.

As butt-headed as NOT paying for birth control at $25/ month and yet paying for a pregnancy/birth every single year if you want to have a kid that often.

msbelle, hope you feel better soon.

Last night I discovered that if I'm torturing Mister Kitty (he had a chin zit thing that popped and I was mopping up the blood and peroxiding, and he was objecting strenuously) Devi will kind of go nuts and attack me. Which is odd because she doesn't really like him. Maybe she just didn't want to be left out of the fight. Who knows. Luckily, little damage. But that was freaky.

They are finally putting railings back up on the vertigo-inducing apartment building. Of course, they are starting at the bottom, which helps me none.

I'm please to see that wee plastic barrets haven't changed that much since my toddlerhood. I had the birds in baby blue! Cute kids, too.