I dream of my WIP turning into a fabulously popular series, possibly adapted for film, allowing us to go live in Sequim (it's the anti-Forks of the Olympic Peninsula--only 15 inches of rain per year). Unless I decided that was too rural and bought a house in Ballard or on Queen Anne Hill and a cottage on Whidbey Island for a getaway. And we'd travel to Europe a lot. Like, I'd be over there at least a month or two a year researching.

When I want to go really over the top, I dream of somehow achieving JK Rowling levels of success, in which case on top of everything else I'd buy the Mariners and provide them with intelligent management to fix the team.

I'd buy the Mariners and provide them with intelligent management to fix the team.

Which would involve scheduling more games against the Mets, I presume.

Now I want Susan to achieve JK Rowling levels of success.

Doesn't that give you license to MAKE you're co-workers do what they are supposed to?

Yeah--dude, somehow misunderstood me. I'm not used to one's duties being optional, so I guess the confusion was on me. Pfft.

Gee, I mainly dream of spending a week at the beach all by myself, with books and popsicles and lots of napping. I gotta learn to dream bigger.

Maybe I could get a lot of money, buy the Red Sox, and give them to my sister.

Fascinating

Pashe Keqi recalled the day nearly 60 years ago when she decided to become a man. She chopped off her long black curls, traded in her dress for her father’s baggy trousers, armed herself with a hunting rifle and vowed to forsake marriage, children and sex.

For centuries, in the closed-off and conservative society of rural northern Albania, swapping genders was considered a practical solution for a family with a shortage of men. Her father was killed in a blood feud, and there was no male heir. By custom, Ms. Keqi, now 78, took a vow of lifetime virginity. She lived as a man, the new patriarch, with all the swagger and trappings of male authority — including the obligation to avenge her father’s death.

She says she would not do it today, now that sexual equality and modernity have come even to Albania, with Internet dating and MTV invading after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Girls here do not want to be boys anymore. With only Ms. Keqi and some 40 others remaining, the sworn virgin is dying off.

“Back then, it was better to be a man because before a woman and an animal were considered the same thing,” said Ms. Keqi, who has a bellowing baritone voice, sits with her legs open wide like a man and relishes downing shots of raki. “Now, Albanian women have equal rights with men, and are even more powerful. I think today it would be fun to be a woman.”

The blood feuds in Albania are serious shit, man. And they still go on - notice that she took pains to have her father's murderer killed 5 years ago, when he got out of jail, aged 80. It's like a little piece of the 19th century.

Which would involve scheduling more games against the Mets, I presume.

Yeah, that's working surprisingly well for us, though mostly I hope King Felix gets over his ankle injury from Monday quickly.

Someone just sent out an email asking for an spreadsheet to be extended so she can continue working in it. Bear in mind this involves copying nothing but a numbering sequence and formatting--I've met complex to extend spreadsheets and this isn't it. I can't imagine not being embarassed to send out a high importance email about it to six different people. And she's never once asked how to do it herself.

I guess when I think of myself as having no ambition I should put myself in context.

My Work Nemesis has, once again, sent me an email explicitly requesting that I do her job for her. The kicker is, I have to do it.