AANNNNND, when I was driving home from that, I looked up, and WHOAH! BIG ASS MOUNTAIN! I dont' think I've ever been on the highway on a day when Ranier was visible, but today is sunny and blue sky and there's this GIANT MOUNTAIN LOOOOOOMING over the whole city! It's AWESOME.

Wasn't today gorgeous?

vw - thank you! take your time though!

KT - byron-kitty~ma

yay Hil!

(I don't know what happened, I offlined at 5 and by 8, there were 100+ posts! did someone throw a happy hour?)

Mike never makes a pass at me in my dreams. He just throws snakes at me and talks about crab fishing.

I never mentioned that DH got to meet him at a holiday party. And that I had enough good sense not to reveal exactly to what depths of engineering my knowledge goes. He's nice.

Carry on!

oh. Internet - '85. Prodigy/mac something. Gave my FORTRAN teacher a heart attack when he heard what I'm doing now. Not my best subject.

Your DH met him!!!!! Cool.

Congrats, Hil!! That's way cool.

Hmm. I think I was first on the internet in '91 or '92, but that was just AOL and Prodigy. Some local BBSs by '93 or '94 or so. (And that was mostly because I guy I had a crush on was on the BBS. I couldn't find much interesting there, except stuff to talk to this guy about the next day. And he wasn't interested in me, anyway. He thought I was uncool because I didn't play Magic:the Gathering. I tried to learn, but couldn't find anyone who'd spend more than five minutes explaining it to me, and I didn't understand it with the five-minute explanation.) (This was a magnet school, in the early ninties. We had weird definitions of "cool.")

It isn't that unusual to laugh manicily as food scrapes get pulled down into the disposal, is it?

Not at all unusual, beth. I recommend it.

Much kitty~ma to Byron and hugs to mom.

Sounds like encouraging kitty news, gc. I'll keep sending kitty~ma your way too.

GIANT MOUNTAIN LOOOOOOMING

That is so cool! The only time I was there it was clear one day. Crazy huge mountain. When I flew in there was cloud cover over the whole area except for the huge mountain top over the clouds. I never see mountains so I may have been more than usual impressed, but still I can't imagine not noticing such a wonder.

Hil!!! Congrats! Yay for recognition.

Depends on the food.

Kitty-ma, Kristin and Byron.

Don't even get me started on education. OK, too late. One of the talks I went to today included a comment about how the difference in impact on the world between the strongest possible person and the weakest possible person wasn't that big, but the difference in world impact between the smartest person and the dumbest person was ginormous.

If we don't educate our kids, we don't have a future. Period. The end.

Other random snippet from today: the Korean word "ilchon." Means "internet friend." Apparently Korean culture has this concept of "chon" which is more or less friendship, but is graduated - one-chon is your BFF or someone who saved your life, lots of honor and obligation. Two-chon is a good friend, some obligation, etc. Ilchon has varying degrees of obligation, but explains to others right away that you are closer than acquaintances even if you've never physcially met.

IIRC, "eat a muffin, whitey" originally applied to coffee -- it's not about whitey liking muffins, but about whitey liking muffins so very much that whitey wants to make everything else taste just like a muffin.

It was definitely bagels, because you get that added element of "oh, I'll just have a bagel" that ties into whitey's insistence on assigning moral value to food choices.

Kitty~ma for Byron, and continued ~ma for Jo.

Congrats, Hil and juliana!

Um, there was some other stuff I meant to say but have forgotten.

It isn't that unusual to laugh manicily as food scrapes get pulled down into the disposal, is it?

I believe that is related to the glee me, my whole crew, and at least one of the professors whose offices we cleaned used to get watching trash bags with light loads in them waft downwards as we dropped them over the edge of the top floor of an open stairwell in a venerable old academic building. Lovely fluttering.

The Dean of Students walked into the stairwell on the ground floor just as one bag hit the floor, one day. He looked up and said, "You missed me."

There was no possible reply but, "Aw rats, I'll have to try again."

I lived in fear of losing my job for a couple days after that.