I certainly get the impression that Mrs. Danilles has been called "special" before...

Happy Birthday Sheryl...!

Happy Birthday, Sheryl!!!

Happy Birthday Sheryl!

Mini-meara as I catch up on Natter:

Pretty much no farm heritage at all.

I think this is true of 95% of New England.

I don’t know about that. Vermont is pretty serious about its dairy farms. My father grew up on a big farm in Amherst, MA. Cows and crops. It’s still a working farm today (run by a first cousin, once removed).

For those of you who have worked both here and abroad, what were some of the hiring practices that you experienced in the US that were nowhere to be seen in another country?

The biggest one that sticks out in my mind is having to write a cover letter longhand, which I had to do it for my university post in Paris. As I've mentioned before, this is often required in France. Big corporations supposedly do handwriting analysis on them.

Signs of distress are piling up in the California housing market, where prices are falling at three times the national rate of decline.

Well, with the recent median price in SF being about $750,000, they have a long way to fall.

I don't think I could read the entirety of that Craigslist ad. Offensively badly written. I wouldn't want her in my dog's brain. Poor thing.

Isn't the $65 for members of MOMA? Granted, I have no idea as I just glanced at the price and tiptoed away.

$58 for members, if memory serves. Which it might not, because my head is trying to punish me for some past wrong. I've set up strict guidelines about ER visits, so it's going to be a long ~24 hours until my visit. Or, maybe it will go away before then. Could totally happen.

Boy without a clue tried to friend me on Facebook. This is a guy I met on the newsgroups (soc.culture.african.american IIRC) with whom I seemed to share a crazed sense of...something. And very verbose but platonic emails. While I was living in New Orleans he came through town and so we went for a lovely dinner in the French Quarter. During the dinner we regaled each other with tales of our lives, and he shared with me the time he shot his sister's cat with a rifle because it had been messing up his cashmere sweaters.

I was remarkably polite to him for the rest of the night, but he seemed put out that I didn't, well, put out. Hello? Sociopath. I cut off all contact immediately. Snip snip. I mean, if he didn't see anything wrong with what he'd done, there was no way I was going to suddenly convince him.

This was a hugely long time ago--like ten years, I guess? He found me on the web about five years ago--searched on my email address and found a link to the LAistas mailing list and tried to join. Dear lord. Now he's trying to friend me on Facebook.

I swear, I must smell funny. Some odd odour that puts off normal men, and has nutjobs repeatedly searching the web for my electronic spoor.

Well, with the recent median price in SF being about $750,000, they have a long way to fall.

The SF market is weird and anomalous and unlikely to drop anytime in the near future, but, of course, SF being SF it's completely bizarre and varies wildly almost from block to block--in my neighborhood, most of the 2-3 BR condos sold in the last 6 months have gone for 1.3-1.5 million each. Go just 8-10 blocks west, out of Cole Valley and into the Sunset, and the price for the same identical places drops by at least 5-600K.

Which is still a price that the just-won-the-lottery me my pipe dreams sometimes have pipe dreams about occasionally noodles about in her own thrice-removed-from-reality pipe dreams.

If handwriting analysis played any role in US hiring practices, I would be unemployed until forever. Thankfully, it doesn't, and I start next Friday!

Hello? Sociopath.

Um, yes. I very much agree! But he seems to be a very clueless sociopath. Hopefully, this means if he ever does anything felonious, he will get arrested sooner rather than later.

...if you were looking for an upside to the situation.

That's awesome JZ! It's almost like winning the lottery. Almost.

Thankfully, it doesn't, and I start next Friday!

Go you!

Hopefully, this means if he ever does anything felonious, he will get arrested sooner rather than later.

I doubt it. He is also...well, I guess he's an American Psycho sort of sociopath to some extent. Buff, goodlooking, intelligent, well-spoken without the slightest hint of butwedontDOthatness to him. Totally not the sort that you'd think is a kitty killer.

Hopefully the unabashedness will get his Silicon Valley marketing manager ass in trouble one of these days.

I'm glad you got some breathing room, ita. Broken coffee pot?

Congrats, JZ!

I don't think I could have been civil to ita's whacko. Deliberate injury to animals is something I'm just not rational about. I can barely forgive an author for detailing casual animal abuse he observed to illustrate a point (and it wasn't unnecessary, I just wish he'd kept it to himself and picked something else!) much less someone who actually committed it.