DJ, lots of thoughts for your friend's mom.

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.

Looking at it a little closer, it wouldn't work for us because there's no back yard and the sides and front don't appear as if they can be fenced. Which- a fenced back yard is sort of a requirement with the beasties. Pity, because it looked like a really pretty house.

Skilled surgery and quick recovery ~ma for your dad, omnis.

Also sending positive loving thoughts to your friend's mother, Daisy.

Vernor Vinge's aliens in A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep are good examples

I'll have to give these a try. As deep a love as I have for science fiction in movies and television, I have a hard time finding the books satisfying. At least this was the case decades ago and I have avoided them since.

Good grief - I'm pole-axed by the various parental horror stories! You guys!

wrt SF - I have to say that Orson Scott Card, despite being, from the sounds of it, a total twat, does a pretty good job of writing alien aliens, imho, with Speaker For The Dead and Xenocide. And I thought that Babylon 5 made a respectable stab at making some of their aliens really quite other (whilst most of them weren't - which is fair enough, because for the most part the point of writing aliens in SF tends to be about exploring humanity, afaic, not genuinely positing different kinds of sentience. Which is to say - I don't think it's a case of imaginative failure, neccesarily, so much as it is a case of 'alien' simply being a metaphor, and the focus actually being on how people treat people).

Sorry, that's probably redundantly obvious.

Other than Orson Scott Card, I seem to remember David Brin doing some interesting writing about different kinds of sentience, and I remember when I was a kid enjoying Piers Anthony's Viscous Circle, although I'm not sure whether it would stand up to the test of time - he's one of those writers whose stuff gradually started to hit me over the head with its squicky gender issues as I got older, and I haven't revisited it. But I remember the protagonist of Viscous Circle being pretty alien.

Did we see this at any point yesterday?

[link]

Protesters who attended Saturday’s Tea Party rally in Washington found a new reason to be upset: Apparently they are unhappy with the level of service provided by the subway system.

Rep. Kevin Brady called for a government investigation into whether the government-run subway system adequately prepared for this weekend’s rally to protest government spending and government services.

Seriously.

The Texas Republican on Wednesday released a letter he sent to Washington’s Metro system complaining that the taxpayer-funded subway system was unable to properly transport protesters to the rally to protest government spending and expansion.

Good grief - I'm pole-axed by the various parental horror stories! You guys!

Really. My sibs don't ever tell my mother anything to not upset her, then they get annoyed when she doesn't share with them. Your parents, siblings, and children need to know when you are in an accident, having surgery, lose your job, etc. It is your family. Share the exciting good news and the scary bad stuff. It's part of the whole being a part of a family thing.

The last time my sister was in the hospital it was on a day she was driving my parents to the airport. She tried to convince the admitting people that she just had to drive to the airport and she would come right back and admit herself. In the end she had to let mom know when they wouldn't let her go.

My lesbian cousin gave birth this week to a beautiful, baby boy. Which makes her my first gay relative I know of (because they can't hide that she's pregnant, apparently).

I wonder if that's too much to send her a "finally, someone in this family is admitting he/she is gay! Thank you so much for coming out, and congrats!" note is too much, but this is really how I feel.

Also, what's the word in English for the relation between me and my cousin's son? Is there a word for it?

Shir, your cousin's son is your first cousin, once removed. There's no neat and tidy word for it. Your children and that boy will be second cousins.

Congratulations on the new cousin-hood! And I think you should skip the note and pick up the phone and tell her so.

I think it is 2nd cousin. That is what we say anyway. Congrats on the new cousin. I don't know about the note, but I would tell her how you feel in person.

Hi Sparky1! You are no doubt right on the once removed thing. We have bunches of cousins. It gets confusing so they are just cousins.

I have been up for 2 hours but haven't made coffee for myself. I need to get my tired self to the office and down a bunch that someone else has made.

Hi, Laura! I don't have a bunch of cousins (Hi, Sox! There's one!) and my mother only had one, so we always called them what they were - not in a bad way. Besides, I'm a librarian, I like to classify.

My baby is supposed to be sleeping now (my DH told me that's what she does this time of day!) but she's not, and I need to get ready for work. I think she's preparing a diaper for me, instead.

Lots of ~ma to your friend, DJ. It's been nice to see you around here again.