The new Bay Bridge will look like this. A definite improvement.

Hey, it worked! I have an interview on Wednesday, for a court advocate position at a DV shelter (I've done this for two other shelters.) I'm not as interested in it as I am in in a couple of other jobs, but the pay is very decent, and JOB. I wouldn't have applied for it if I had not like the other CA jobs I have had.

So YAY! Board-ma at 1045am Wednesday, yo!

We're supposed to get this [link] ...er, sometime.

A very interesting New Yorker article on procrastination: [link]

Viewed this way, procrastination starts to look less like a question of mere ignorance than like a complex mixture of weakness, ambition, and inner conflict. But some of the philosophers in “The Thief of Time” have a more radical explanation for the gap between what we want to do and what we end up doing: the person who makes plans and the person who fails to carry them out are not really the same person: they’re different parts of what the game theorist Thomas Schelling called “the divided self.” Schelling proposes that we think of ourselves not as unified selves but as different beings, jostling, contending, and bargaining for control. Ian McEwan evokes this state in his recent novel “Solar”: “At moments of important decision-making, the mind could be considered as a parliament, a debating chamber. Different factions contended, short- and long-term interests were entrenched in mutual loathing. Not only were motions tabled and opposed, certain proposals were aired in order to mask others. Sessions could be devious as well as stormy.” Similarly, Otto von Bismarck said, “Faust complained about having two souls in his breast, but I harbor a whole crowd of them and they quarrel. It is like being in a republic.” In that sense, the first step to dealing with procrastination isn’t admitting that you have a problem. It’s admitting that your “you”s have a problem.

If identity is a collection of competing selves, what does each of them represent? The easy answer is that one represents your short-term interests (having fun, putting off work, and so on), while another represents your long-term goals. But, if that’s the case, it’s not obvious how you’d ever get anything done: the short-term self, it seems, would always win out. The philosopher Don Ross offers a persuasive solution to the problem. For Ross, the various parts of the self are all present at once, constantly competing and bargaining with one another—one that wants to work, one that wants to watch television, and so on. The key, for Ross, is that although the television-watching self is interested only in watching TV, it’s interested in watching TV not just now but also in the future. This means that it can be bargained with: working now will let you watch more television down the road. Procrastination, in this reading, is the result of a bargaining process gone wrong.

To avoid mechanically separated meat and assorted organs, go with "all beef" or "all turkey" hot dogs.

I try to go with Kosher dogs, since I figure smooshing everything through a sieve wouldn't fit any of the definitions thereof.

re: pets and cooler weather. I've hauled out my thermal blanket the last few nights, and my cat is in heaven. He adores that thing. The fact that his person is a warm lump beneath it is merely a bonus or a minor inconvenience, depending on how restlessly I'm sleeping.

The new Bay Bridge will look like this.

When? The plans started right after Loma Prieta which was in 1989. Crazy.

I suppose the Zmayhems have already bought Matilda a birthday present, but just in case....

Robotic exoskeleton for kids

A very interesting New Yorker article on procrastination: [link]

I promise to read that later.

Love the new curtains, msbelle. Might need to stop by BB&B myself.

MiL is in surgery right now. I hope to hear from DH in a few hours. Fingers crossed please. Poor DH, he admitted to me this morning that he keeps thinking about my dad's final surgery. Yeesh. I hate to think of him carrying that around with him all day.

Good luck to your MiL, Burrell!