Baseball oddity: both Chicago teams and both Los Angeles teams are in first place and likely to go to the playoffs. If the Yankees hadn't fallen off for the first time in fifteen years, both NYC teams would also be in the mix.

Nineteen years after the Bay Bridge series, the A's and Giants are both playing out the skein with losing seasons.

, environmental factors loom large (like, say, wind turbine fields killing scores of birds),

This always drives me nuts. The affects of wind on birds is trivial compared to coal and oil spills. The difference is that good wind sites tend to be playgrounds for the rich and upper middle classes. Better that poor kids in Boston suffer coal induced asthma than wind turbines be placed miles offshore where billionaires have to look at them.

This always drives me nuts.

True, but I used to work for a wind turbine company and all you have to do is hold up pictures of a few raptors that got killed in the blades and you've got a potent photo-op.

Japanese is seriously hard! Our family joke is that the SO speaks better Japanese than I do. Because I didn't learn it growing up; we both studied it together when we were working for a Japanese company. And I quit before he did. So hard!

And it wouldn't really help me communicate with my family, because they all spoke pidgin instead.

I think it's interesting that the same program started out by teaching me how to order beer and sake in Japanese... and coffee and tea in Arabic.

Right, right, home!

Wesson Scalper Palin

I go around lopping off the tops of cooking oil bottles? Or selling them at outrageous prices.

Am cleaning. Send help.

Yay, sarameg! Glad for the kitty and that you get to go see your bro's defense.

Shaver Razorback Palin

um ... does this mean I move to Arkansas?

all you have to do is hold up pictures of a few raptors that got killed in the blades and you've got a potent photo-op.

Exactly. It's hard to take a moral high ground w/r/t renewable energy if you're causing avian destruction as a part of your operation. Oil spills are a (supposedly rare) accident, and accidents happen.

This is the kind of opposition our/my clients face, and it takes time to find a workable solution.

Timelies all!

Yay sarameg for the kitty and your brother's defense.

Our company had a luncheon today and Brad Ziegler was the guest of honor. He was very nice and surprisingly funny and disarming. He told some great stories, my favorite of which was that he was totally caught off guard and almost had a heart attack when Griffey Junior came up to him on the field, introduced himself and congratulated Brad on his (then) scoreless streak. All he could respond was, "ugh..uh...Mister...Girffey..I...mean....Junior...I mean...uh...thanks........."

He came upstairs to see our offices later and totally started talking Warriors basketball with me when he saw the Warriors poster over my desk. Awwwww.