sara, The current issue of Smithsonian magazine has an article on American expats in Prague and a brief blurb on Hatch, NM. It was written with you in mind!

Oooh, thanks for the tip!

I've wondered what the expat community is like now. I wasn't there at the peak (at least I don't think I was. I had no idea it was the place to go when I chose it. I was drunk on former soviet satellites and Krakow sounded too gray.)

No tutoring tonight. Just as well, I'm a pill.

paperdol, I'm currently in love with Special K cereal. It's pretty tasty--I wasn't expecting it to be.

DH came home late and I had to scrap the eyebrow waxing. I did make my hair appointment, though. He's lucky. If I didn't get my roots done, he'd have been a dead man walking.

Oh, and Liv did a face plant while I was gone. Bad nosebleed. Liv & DH's shirts (which he tried to hide in the washing machine) look like he performed surgery.

My favorite fantasy "calling in sick" is to say, "I'm sorry - I can't come to work today. I've got a bad case of death rattle."

My ex once had a migraine so bad her girlfriend called her in "dead"--but just left a message for the boss. Who actually BELIEVED she was dead, and freaked out. Doh!

I don't know how many of y'all are familiar with Sarah Chayes, formerly of NPR, and author of Punishment of Virtue (depressingly good book.) But she set up a soap making collective in Afghanistan.

The Arghand org's site is [link] She's now got retailers with an online presence, so you don't have to go to an actual store: [link]

I hadn't checked the site in a while, and sent my mom the link unawares. She spent quite a bit at [link] . I expect I'll be getting Afghani-made soaps for xmas....

Anyway, thought I'd share. The soaps are gorgeous.

eta: Poor Olivia! Of course, she's likely less traumatized than her dad.

Oh poor Olivia! Face plants are the worst.

I hate everything right now and the fact that I can't even bitch about it in my LJ is the worst.

Nova Science Now is talking about a sculpture at the CIA's headquarters: a giant copper sheet with encrypted text cut into it. It's been almost ten years and the code hasn't been fully cracked yet. It's called Kryptos, and only the sculptor knows the code. This pleases me.

Kids bleeding suck. Even worse is...they do. Nothing like calling another mom to tell her your charge has beaned her son to explain the bloody tshirt.

Stupid lack of good backup generators! Vent to me, or here , if you need, Kat. I'm up for another hour or so.

My dad's site (not internet, we're talking up in the mountain boonies installation) has double backup generators that they test every month. Of course, the one time there was a genuine power failure (fires)... the diesel tank was mistakenly not refilled. When you have a multimillion dollar, multi-ton piece of equipment that relies on it? SO BAD. They were freaking lucky it was a cloudy night and the multi-ton thing wasn't swinging.

I'm such a sucker, I'm being charmed by Shaq.

OK, this is totally random. But it just hit me what a HUGE leap of faith it was for a dad to entrust with me his daughter, based totally on seeing me read a lot on my balcony. I mean, this will be a year that's she's been coming over for schoolish stuff. He doesn't know me from Eve, just...they can see my apartment from theirs.

That's huge. I don't know what I did to deserve this trust, other than not throwing wild parties.

I'm so lucky.

sara, will you come and live with us and take care of Grace and Noah?

Oh god, I wish. God, I wish. (this is me wishing for the one thing I do think I'm good at BUT) But I'm a terrible bitch and I've got this fucked up thing about conservative financial stability and independence that's a pain in the ass and conflicts with my better instincts. We need to find me a sugardaddy/mommy/thing and I'm there.

eta: I mean, I'm looking up infant cpr classes in the area while I'm not on vacation cause I haven't had one since I was 13. C'mon.