Oh, DJ, your girl is in my thoughts.

Speaking of moving though, Plei, Jilli, SH... what can y'all tell me about the neighborhood this house is in? Plei, I know it's not too far from where you live, yes?

Not the one they claim it is on the listing, in my head. I mean, I suppose you could KIND of call that Green Lake, but it's more Greenwood/Phinney. It is south and west of Jilli by a mile or two, north and west of me by a mile or two. Given my druthers, I'd rather be West of Greenwood, but I'm not sure there's any basis in logic to that belief.

It's horrible. Her dad died when we were just out of high school. FB chatting with another of them now trying to figure out who is still in Shreveport or might be or might be able to get there (likely to be me).

Oh, dear, good thoughts for your friend, Daisy.

A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep

Yes, those are well done. I re-read both a few years ago when I was forcing my DH to read them and never felt like I was slogging through stuff I already read, also.

My M-i-L is apparently living with a guy who she has only referred to as her friend (no name) to me and Henry. H's sister told us. I don't think she's called H back since he found out, either.

Just saw my parents this evening, went and saw Hair at the Willows, really enjoyable production, they managed to give it a little bit of a plot just through clever staging. It's weird seeing it done as a period piece - reminds me of Cabaret, now, which it never used to.

Then we came home and discovered a bat flying around in circles in the garage.

That's really awful to hear, DJ. I hope you can be a balm to her.

Me, I'm in the middle of an IM chat on OK Cupid with a guy that wants to fight me. He's 10 years my junior! They're all so young out there. I'm so old.

What's that thing about age and experience triumphing over youth and whatever youth has? I probably knew when I was younger.

Garage appears to be bat free. I'd best get to sleep.

Not as bad as I'd feared. She's not in a coma or anything, but her hip is collapsed and much of her left side is destroyed.

My friend's sister is talking nursing homes. Gah!

Still, she's alive, and I'm going to be thankful for that.

That's guardedly good news. Will they be able to reconstruct the damaged parts?

My parents are crazy, but I don't think they'd forget to tell me they had surgery. Especially my mum, for whom any small trauma is expressed in movie-of-the-week terms. She much prefers to play the guilt card. "I'm not putting any pressure on you to come and see me, no no. I'll be fine here all alone"... Yeah, with your adoring committed partner and your social life that's better than mine. Heh.

It's not necessarily a shortcoming that any given SF alien species serves as a metaphor for some aspect of humanity, either. It's a reasonable approach.

Oh, sure. I love sci-fi-as-metaphor (or fantasy-as-metaphor, in the case of what we all loved about Buffy). I was just taking Shir's concern about 'other' to its hypothetical conclusion. Should there be more sci-fi that represents complete 'other'ness. From films, I was thinking about Contact and maybe Close Encounters.... I just woke up, so my brain isn't coming up with much more that represents the whole 'alien beyond our understanding' thing, but I'm sure there's more.

Hil, I hope you and yours have a good Rosh Hashanah. The Girl and I are doing a nice dinner on Friday night.

omnis, I hope your dad is recovering OK from his surgery.

Thoughts for your friend and her mom, Daisy Jane.

Barb - it CAN be easy. If somebody here *cough* would have work on that teleporter. IJS.

(please, no hairpats or anything, just venting)

How about replacing said hairpats with teh awesomemingly disturbing furniture porn?

And sweetie, I'm so sorry you had such a long, bad day. A lot of ~mas to your father, too.

Do I really want to do this?

YES. Been there, done that, still partly walking-on-clouds.

My sis will be home for Rosh Hashana. That's great. And it's starting to feel like the holidays - I don't know, it just didn't feel like it until now.

As for crazy parents stories - there's a lot of that, but I won't forget the time when one evening my sis fell hard on her tail bone, needed morphine and stayed in her bed for the following week. I only got a call in the morning, telling me they all were up all of the night and going to bed, so don't call them in the next few hours. WTF? My sister was going throught some incredible, blinded pain and I heard nothing about it in real time? Seriously? And there was the time when my mom went on surgery to get some tissue of her breast removed - it wasn't cancerous, that I know - but I was about 8 at the time, my sister's 5, so we didn't know what it really was and I guess it wouldn't have helped if we were aware. I think we were only told that so we won't jump in her lap as we used to do.

Shir - insent. Social model. Hurrah! And happy holidays.