You all suck.

You all suck.

If I'm lucky, through a straw

My thoughts on parent-teacher conferences: I suppose without your help I probably would have been an even worse student

Mom's response: let's be honest here; you were always the captain of your own ship; nothing anyone did made a difference if you'd made up your mind!

RE: Thread titles I'm going to bring up the last one I suggested: From now on, we're gonna have a little less ritual... and a little more fun around here.

I'm hoping to sleep early tonight. Fighting off some cold-type crap. I've been able to stave off so far, but the ick is pretty strong this time.

Sigh. A bike shop in Iceland put up a sign saying "Jews not welcome," to show "solidarity" with Hamas. [link] Seriously? Iceland?

(I like this response. "Of the few Jews that are here, how many have bikes? How many are visiting his shop?" he asked. "It's just a publicity stunt. And anyway, there's 10 inches of snow on the ground."" )

ew that's so icky. I hope someone thinks of a very clever way to teach him a lesson.

In other news- the bbq place next door just fired up the smoker. It smells so damn goooood.

Laga, that smell is everywhere down here. Thankfully not next to home or work. Stomach grumbles would be unbearable.

This kind of stuff has been happening all over the place lately. I've seen a lot of articles about various incidents, and it seems to be on the rise, but it's kind of hard to tell what the scope actually is, since everything gets reported and identified differently.

Mostly random musings: I have a shirt from the Alternative Spring Break program I did in Israel a few years ago. (It says "Israel 2007 Alternative Spring Break" on the front and "I t heart Trees" on the back.) It's one of my favorite shirts -- it's comfortable, it fits well, and it's a really good color on me. Plus, it's a reminder of the work that I did there. We cleared brush in forests near the Lebanon border (during the fighting, forests had been hit and caught fire, and we were clearing undergrowth so that fire would spread as quickly), we planted some trees (I planted a pistachio tree!), and we painted murals on the walls of the bomb shelters at schools and day care centers, so that they'd maybe be a little less scary when the kids had to go down there. (We did a rainbow and flowers on one wall, numbers and letters (Hebrew and English) on another wall, Winnie the Pooh on another, and then some famous places in Israel on the last one, though those ended up kind of scary-looking, because the only colors we had left were black and purple, and everything sort of looked burned-out. I really hope they painted over that last wall.) All in all, I'm proud of the work I did there.

Anyway. I wore the shirt a few days after the Gaza bombing started, without really thinking about it, just pulling on the first clean shirt I saw. And one of my classmates, whose father is Palestinian, looked at the shirt and then at me with a kind of pointed look. He didn't say anything, but I felt kind of uncomfortable about the implicit messages my shirt might be giving. I haven't worn it since then.

So now, I'm kind of wondering whether I should start wearing it again. I didn't want to wear a shirt that said "Israel" on the front while Cast Lead was going on, because I knew that that would be the association in people's minds, and I didn't want to give the impression that I was in favor of it. But the only message the shirt actually says is "I Love Trees." There's nothing on the shirt that I object to or disagree with, I'm just worried about the implications that other people might take from it.

Am I overthinking a shirt? (I also have an Israeli Army shirt that I only wear as pajamas -- I'm not comfortable wearing it in public, but it's made of this incredibly soft material, so it makes good pajamas.)

I think perception is as important as intent. You know the shirt is not intended to be offensive but if you think it's likely to be perceived that way maybe it should become "inside clothes".