So it seems there was an 8.0 magnitude earthquake in the Pacific Ocean, and a tsunami may strike Fiji and New Zealand within hours.

Nature freaks me out.

Kathy, I am so unspeakably jealous of your laundry right across from the elevator I can barely lift my fingers to type. But yay with the all-moved-in-ness and the peaceable kitty!

This is, like, the funniest thing I have ever read:

An Open Letter to My Cat, Abbie at McSweeney's

OMG, that was beautiful. And now I don't know how I ever got by in life without the pleasure of their open letters. You hardly even need to read the letters themselves; just wandering down the list of titles is a glorious feast.

Hi Gud. Yes Butanol is a good way to convert biomass to fuel - though this improved process is still experimental; been demonstrated in pilot plants but not commercially.

However efficiency remains the key. There is only so much biomass that can sustainably be converted to energy. Variable wind is competitive with fossil fuels but when you add storage to make it fully dispatchable, it becomes expensive. Solar thermal with heat stoage is about three times the cost per kWh of conventional electricity sources. The glamor king Photovoltaic electricity is that price without storage - with storage more like six times.

Even nuclear electricity (which there are other reasons to be against) is more expensive than coal and (for the moment) natural gas.

So if we are going to switch to carbon neutral sources we are going to be dealing with expensive (in the case of solar and wind and possibly nuclear) an and limited (in the case of biomass) sources. So what we will need to do is increase efficiency to squeeze more results out of a unit of energy.

Kathy, I am so unspeakably jealous of your laundry right across from the elevator I can barely lift my fingers to type.

Hee! This is the best laundry-room situation I've had since my first apartment back in 1993, which was a "garden" apartment (meaning, in the basement), so the laundry room was just down the hall. The second apartment had its laundry in another building entirely, the third had none at all (but a laundrymat was a few blocks down the road), and the last place was down the alley, so I'm enjoying this thoroughly.

But the best thing about the new apartment is that it's only five miles from work (as opposed to 30, before I moved). Gas should have to be refilled every month or so (my new Civic gets 30 mpg/city), and my insurance just dropped $20/month!

I would be so very happy to have a laundry room with a working washing machine.

Kathy, I am so unspeakably jealous of your laundry right across from the elevator I can barely lift my fingers to type.

After four years in a Philly apartment with the laundry room around the other side of the building, I have vowed never again to live in an apartment which does not have its own laundry inside the apartment.

Go, go Mister Kitty!

Martha Stewart is making a Monkey Cake!

That's a pretty swell monkey cake but I still love the monkey cake my friend made for the lulu eightball book party:

[link]

I can't get motivated to work on my stupid document. If I'd worked on it better this morning I would have been able to go out to lunch with friends. Now I'm all sulky about missing lunch and I've only my poor work ethic to blame.

As long as it's convenient (current apartment: across the street. Last apartment: first floor of same building), I like going to the laundromat. You can do everything at once! Laundry every three weeks take me a hour start to finish.

Now I want cake.

All i want is a new haircut/style. I dont know how this applies.

Maybe time for an 80s revival?

Probably not you, though.

I see you as more of a forties glamourdoll.

Even a big Bobbie Gentry 60s mane.