Timelies all!

Our dance group had a performance at the Zoo this evening.(The SCA barony we're associated with had a medieval village set up for the Zoo's Guppy Gala)

Tomorrow will be errands.

Sunday we're planning to go to the Potomac Celtic Festival.

sarameg, you never said why you were mad at ITAR. Have you been exporting munitions again?

ITAR may be making my life difficult in a new and different way. All because I deal with a public satellite with peculiar public access rules. You can't blow anything up with my satellite . Can crash it into Australia, I guess?

Ah, JPL how I've missed you. Two postdocs with expiring visas you say? At 4pm on a Friday? I shall rescue.

ITAR is a thorny hatful rat's nest, sarameg.

I have a pronoun etiquette question. When referring to a transsexual person, describing something that happened before transitioning, which pronoun do you use? Like, if talking about something that Chastity Bono said a few years ago, is that "he said" or "she said"? What about as a little kid -- "her father sang to her" or "his father sang to him"? (I can come up with a logical argument for either, so I want to know which is the way it's usually/supposed to be done.)

I'd go with "When his father sang to her" or "When he was a little girl..."

I think its beautiful, you know? I know a man that I knew as a woman in college, it gets pretty smooth afer a while. It quickly became pretty easy to say "When Julian and I were in college she and I... blah blah blah". I suppose if someone says it the other way its not noteworthy either.

Of course, we're pretty blessed in our happy art fag context. When someone has to make a whole new social circle in order to transition the pronouns might well be more fraught.

I know (or HOPE anyway!) that Chaz is doing this for himself, he shouldn't have to blaze anyone's trail... but since he's going to be the first transitioning person that many people "know," and they'll have the chance to get over their pronoun shock in a relatively un-intimate setting, he's going to spare a lot of people a lot of pain. It's a tremendous gift to give and I find it quite moving.

Grace's care manager is transgender, and her name was Alex, but she has changed it to Sasha (which is WAY MORE of a pain to remember than the transgender stuff, in part because to me, with my Russian student population, I have lots of male Sashas already....). I try to take a lead on pronouns with Sasha from Sasha (or I just use overuse Sasha's name without ever SAYING a pronoun).

But I will say that it causes confusion amongst the whole staff.

I'm irked by family that calls and says, "your family is here in town for a visit! Why don't you come up?" Um. 10 hour drive. Flights pricey to get there Monday. Why did you not mention this before?

Poor birds: [link]

Did you have the WSPA ad on that page? [link]

I wish I could've gone to the concert with Shrift. I didn't get out of work until 8:30.

I went to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me yesterday and they used the Heaven-o story that was linked here earlier this week.

Sasha is a common nick for Alexander. Does that help? Nope, I guess. I don't think of it as a fem name in that context, but outside it I knew quite a few girl Sashas. Anyway, I knew that was a mystery to be resolved and now has been.