I'm sorrry to hear of Theo and Nutty's job problems. Something that Theo said reminded me of a lecture that I went to last week:

But I learned long ago that my career isn't my life (just a part of it) so I can grab down one of the other hats I have hanging around -- writer, craftsperson, fan, daughter, sister, friend and spend more time on that aspect.

There is a sociologist on my campus who studies women's response to stress and life-change. One of her main findings is that the best predictor of women's adaptation to stress (e.g. illness or injury, death of a relative, divorce, economic hardship) is the number of differnt roles (hats, in Theo's terms) that they see themselves in. The more roles, the better the response to stress. And it's not really how many things you actually do in your life. It's how many roles you articulate when you are asked to describe yourself. So if you want to be robust to stress, collect lots of hats.

How is it that there are people in the world who *still* do not know that you don't hit "Reply All" when the original email went to 40+ people to make your own little point or vent your own personal frustration?

You got an email from my mom?

Oh yeah, meant to say sorry to hear that Nutty also got pulled into the Marchocalypse. Job-ma when you need it.

OK, I haven't weighed in on this yet, but March needs to back the hell off of my friends. March, you are so on notice, it's not even funny. You better lay off here at the end, or so help me I WILL turn this year around.

Congratulations to Kat and lori, and Noah and Grace, listen up. You've got a lot of love floating around out here, so cut out the wrasslin' and get to growing! (Excellent names, btw.)

Sorry about the job stupidity, Theo and Nutty. I hope that new and better offers come your way soon.

~ma and {{}} and other punctuation for them that need and deserve it that I've memfaulted on.

Is there a corollary for men, Rick?

I wore fuckall hats during my unemployment, other than jobseeker, napper, migraineuse and martial arts instructor.

But I wouldn't recommend my way of doing it, not at all.

I slept like crap last night. I was totally blaming it on the cats until I bolted wide awake after dreaming someone was breaking in and realized.....my windows were open. It was quite breezy. What kept waking me up was the blinds banging around.

Did I close the windows? Of course not. Because that would make sense.

Sense doesn't play with sleepy sara.

You got an email from my mom?

Or my uncle. But I expect coworkers to know. better.

Is there a corollary for men, Rick?

The talk was about women, but someone asked your question at the end. It's probably not the same for men. Job and marriage are both very important for men, and you can't substitute other kinds of social connections in the same way that you can for women. Or something like that. Men are confusing, she said, and most of the women in the audience agreed with her.

Men are confusing, she said, and most of the women in the audience agreed with her.

One of my favorite hobbies is confusing people.

ION, today I took a bus from the Howard L stop to work in Evanston. There was a big delay because a a big intersection was blocked off because of a bad accident. Turns out the previous bus (one I often take, and would have taken if my train had been five minutes earlier) had a head-on collision with a car.

Well, the bus was much bigger than the car, so probably the bus passengers had minor injuries, if that. But still... there but for the grace of Beelzebub went I... or something....

Glad you're safe, Tom! I've had a lot of those close calls since I moved to Chicago, although mostly I don't know how close it was until I read the news. And realize, oh, hey, if I'd left work on time, I probably would have been crushed by a slab of concrete!