My mother remembers her mother receiving a phone call from her elderly great-aunt Inez, probably in the mid-1960s. Any contact other than the ritual weekly, very short check-in phone call was unusual - Inez was from a generation before the telephone was for chatting. My grandmother said, "Is everything all right?" and Inez replied, "Well, Ava [her sister] is fine, but Bert [her brother], he's dead."

Need I note they were Yankees?

Emily, take a look here for ideas: [link]

Emily - if you need a test subject, K-Bug is precalc...you could call her tonight (after 3pm today, actually) if that would be helpful. Zap my e-mail if you need my cell. Seriously.

Today is corset day at ita's desk. Also, she is blonde again.

Corset and petticoat and puff sleeves and collar with ruffles that ties at the neck.

I like clothes.

Other than that--work? Why, again?

I think we need pictures, ita.

I haven't gone to work yet.

Kind of wondering if I really will.

Lee, skip work and help SA and I align our writing voices. Yes.

I needed one more day off, damn it. I don't want to be working.

Need I note they were Yankees?

This explains so much about Nutty's tastes in my head...

I guess I can get people who are nonchalant about pet death—while I loved my first dog and my guinea pig so much their deaths destroyed me, I've always thought of our various cats as more boarders than members of the family and was sad but not broken up when one of them died. And our parakeet was just kind of a noisy poop-generating object we had to feed and water. But I can't imagine saying something about euthanasia-as-convenience to a person who's just mentioned their sick pet.

Lee, skip work and help SA and I align our writing voices. Yes.

I can do this from work, and I just got 5 minutes worth of work I have to be in the office to do.

Guess I'm going, but email me about the voices.

But I can't imagine saying something about euthanasia-as-convenience to a person who's just mentioned their sick pet.

Bingo. I am so not a pet person--my attitude towards pets is indelibly coloured by practicalities of Jamaica. By Jamaican standards we were pretty much hopeless romantics as children, trying to emulate what we saw of British and American lifestyles, but that didn't mean we'd ever dream of having a dog inside the house. But I get that other people are very different about their pets, and it's not about me when they're grieving.

Man, I just commented to a co-worker that the place was quiet, and voila! It is no longer. Damnit.

Lee--probably no pics if I go from work to krav. But we'll see--I haven't trained properly in forever, and I'm not sure why I think today will be different.

Okay, I just lost all respect and any crush I may have had on Rachel Ray. On her "talk show" this morning? She has a "psychic," cold reading people with the whole "I'm getting a sense of someone who's died. Does the letter 'G' mean anything to anybody?" bullshit.

No wonder the human race can't crawl out of the g-ddamned Dark Ages!