So they are installing new cabling on my floor, so I have 2 ladders and 2 guys in my office, sawing holes in the wall and someone running a vacuum in the office they just finished with. Peaceful and conducive to work it is not.

NILLY!! DRESS!!! WEDDING!!!!

msbelle read my mind!

Not happy to be back at work.

msbelle read my mind, again!

I hope that commute time isn't going to be a regular thing, ChiKat.

I have been enjoying my 10-15 minute commute-by-car that I started since going back to work. Unfortunately, it does look more and more like we will have to think about buying a second car to make life go smoothly with the juggling of two full time jobs, nanny share and dog. Having never made a car payment in my life, I don't really want to start now, so I'm half hoping my parents offer to sell us the car they're currently loaning us.

I have some construction issues on my commute as well but luckily the alternate routes are pretty decent. Today's only trick was the railway crossing that cried wolf, well I guess it cried train, but no wolves or trains were to be seen.

Hey, people remember that president guy we elected last year?

My favorite part is the "Get Smart" bit....

Sasha And Malia Obama Head Back To School After Fun-Filled Summer

In Paris, they toured the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame and the Louvre and Pompidou Center museums. They ate lunch at the Elysee presidential palace with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, Carla. They shopped at Bonpoint, a high-end children's store.

London brought visits to Big Ben, the British Parliament's famous clock tower, as well as to Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, a Harry Potter movie set and Buckingham Palace, where they got a tour and a greeting from Queen Elizabeth II. They also took in "The Lion King" musical.

The family set out on another trip right after Malia turned 11 on July 4 that took them to Moscow, Rome and Ghana – all in one week.

At the Kremlin, Sasha stuffed her hands into her pockets as she walked its hallways. President Barack Obama said they began calling her Agent 99, after a character in the 1960s TV spy comedy "Get Smart."

"I thought she was going to pull out her shoe phone," the president joked.

A highlight of the visit to Rome was the Obama family's meeting with the pope. The sisters also took in such ancient Roman archaeological wonders as the Colosseum and the Pantheon, a domed monument in the city center. The also had fun learning how to make blackberry and banana gelato at Giolitti, the Italian capital's most famous ice cream parlor, and left the shop with several pounds of the ice cold confection.

Do Tilda Swinton posts go here? Or in Bitches?

Tilda Time

From the not-always-worksafe Fabulon. (But these are worksafe.)

One comment from the creator of Fabulon:

The last time we did a Swinton post (this is the 20th!), some anonymous bitch expressed surprise that such a goddess would be featured here. To which we gently say "Fuck off, whore!"

Why isn't there a chocolate cake in my fridge? This would have done my day SO MUCH BETTER.

I made a chocolate cake this weekend and there are a couple of slices left despite the kids best efforts. I'd send one, but gmail doesn't accept attachments in cake format.

"We're getting ready to shoot somethin'."

Uh, ok?

I find stuff like this fascinating: HOW WE DECIDE: mind-blowing neuroscience of decision-making

...

The answer to this is meta-cognition: think about what you're thinking. Think about what you're feeling. Think about your circumstances and what happened the last time you were here.

But don't think too much. There are classes of problems -- ones in which there are more variables than the conscious mind can juggle -- where thinking overwhelms your brain's ability to synthesize all these variables into a good conclusion. Timothy Wilson, a U Virginia psychologist, asked two groups of female college students to choose and keep their favorite art print from a selection containing a Monet, a van Gogh, and some inspirational kitten posters. A control group was asked to rate each poster from 1 to 9 and keep their top one. The experimental group was asked to fill in questionnaires about what they liked about each poster.

The controls overwhelmingly picked the fine art. Follow-up questions established that they were still happy with their decisions weeks later.

But the experimental group -- the group that had to explain what they liked about each poster -- chose the kittens. And when they were followed up, they were disappointed with their decision.

Wilson explains that the failure arises because the good things about fine art are difficult to describe: they are intangible aesthetic elements. We like them, but most of us can't explain why. On the other hand, the virtues of a kitten-picture are easy to enumerate. When asked to explain, rationally, which one is best, kittens win every time. But it is this very superficiality that causes us to quickly tire of the kittens and wish for a Monet.

Of course, it's not just kittens. Ap Dijksterhuis at the Dutch Radbout University has shown that the same failure plagues house-buyers. When given the choice of a modest house in the city near work and amenities and a huge McMansion in the suburbs, introspection favors the McMansion. It has easy-to-enumerate virtues: we can have big dinners there, the family can come to stay, and so on. But we only have a few big dinner parties and houseguests a year, and the rest of the year we're stuck with long commutes and no night-life.

I like kittens....

Awesome office artwork: [link]

Especially appropriate if Cthulhu is your boss....