The first time I've ever said this: Al Franken is one hott bitca! [link]

(Note: link discusses lawmaking dealing with sexual assault.)

t Waves back at everybody How wonderful to post with y'all again!

I skipped 400 posts. What did I miss?

I got the internet back! After years and years a few weeks of having none. Now this new place can finally begin to feel like home (um, once I finish unpacking, that is).

Also, I missed wishing megan walker a happy birthday, which I should correct now: Happy birthday, megan! With lots of wishes for a great day and a wonderful year!

I went clubbing once with my boss.

Baby seals?

I love the pink house. I want to buy it!

Anyone have a spare $2.3 million?

Nilly!!! Hi there, Mrs. Married Doctor-Type Person!!

Mrs. Married Doctor-Type Person!!

See, this is one strange thing about all that happened in the last few months. Instead of just being me, suddenly in the classes I'm starting to teach next week, I'm written as Dr. Nilly OldLastName-NewLastName. Who is that person, and will she be also grading instead of me?

(I have to leave my old last name, for academic purposes, and only add to it the new last name, because all of my publication and academic work up until now were done under my old name. Which, in fact, gives me - um, us, I mean *us*, I should get used to thinking in "us" when it comes to stuff like this - some time to figure what I'm going to do with my last name everywhere else.)

I was going to ask if you were changing your name! I notice coworkers keeping their old name at work and using both socially.

ImuchmoredepressingN, airline pilots make as much as bookstore employees (as I noted when a B&N coworker cashed in his check--it was as much as the pilot here makes).

The plane landed and I stepped into the cockpit. "Read this," the first officer said. He handed me a letter from the airline to him. It was headlined "LETTER OF CONCERN." It seems this poor fellow had taken three sick days in the past year. The letter was a warning not to take another one -- or else...

He then showed me his pay stub. He took home $405 this week. My life was completely and totally in his hands for the past hour and he's paid less than the kid who delivers my pizza.

I told the guys that I have a whole section in my new movie about how pilots are treated (using pilots as only one example of how people's wages have been slashed and the middle class decimated). In the movie I interview a pilot for a major airline who made $17,000 last year. For four months he was eligible -- and received -- food stamps. Another pilot in the film has a second job as a dog walker.

"I have a second job!," the two pilots said in unison. One is a substitute teacher. The other works in a coffee shop. You know, maybe it's just me, but the two occupations whose workers shouldn't be humpin' a second job are brain surgeons and airline pilots. Call me crazy.

I told them about how Capt. "Sully" Sullenberger (the pilot who safely landed the jet in the Hudson River) had testified in Congress that no pilot he knows wants any of their children to become a pilot. Pilots, he said, are completely demoralized. He spoke of how his pay has been cut 40% and his own pension eliminated. Most of the TV news didn't cover his remarks and the congressmen quickly forgot them. They just wanted him to play the role of "HERO," but he was on a more important mission.

Sullenberger is going to be on the Daily Show tonight--I hope Jon asks him about this.

Nilly do you have enough bookshelves in your new home? Do you need us to come help you unpack and decorate?! We can (or maybe we can't, but we can wish).

the airline stuff is terrible.

t /dad was a commercial pilot