Gah! BIG review for my project coming up in 15 minutes by a board run by someone who is kind of unpredictable about what he wants to hear. And I'm giving the presentation. 55 slides in 30 minutes. GAH! Please for to me be articulate!

(Feedback on my last presentation for this board was that I went too slowly giving them too much time to ask questions! ha!)

Happy birthday, Cass! Let us go set things on fire and watch pretty boys with guitars and eyeliner!

There's only one song I know of that uses my name, and it's by a bombastic symphonic metal band. I actually really like the song.

Happy birthday Cass! wishing you a birthday cake with extra candles!

No songs use my name as a name.

Person name. That is.

Also, from WAY BACK, WTF is with you Smith-chuckers?

Dude. Toss the one who looks like my idiot brother. Though I suspect this explains A LOT about why women continue to date said idiot brother.

Also, I LIKE the PPL song "Amy." Go ahead, make something of it.

I do, too, but then some of y'all are probably fond of Starship's "Sara."

For Sherry/Shari I think of "Oh Sherrie."

Happy birthday, Cass!

Dude. Toss the one who looks like my idiot brother. Though I suspect this explains A LOT about why women continue to date said idiot brother.

Wait, Tennant or Eccleston?

Woohoo, more crazy hats!

[link]

Happy Birthday, Cass!

There are no odes (or songs) to my name. I don't know whether to be happy or sad about that.

Todd? I sent an email to your profile addy a few days ago--did you get it? Is there another one I should use? Mine's good.

About the best friend thing. As a child, if there was one person I could feel comfortable enough to spend time with, I counted myself lucky. Bereft of the one, I can't imagine what deeper hell school would have been for me.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I see this move toward no best friend, friend everybody as part of the homogenization of the population beginning as soon as educators and bureaucracy get their hands on people as teeeeeny little children. Already we have intense distrust of the introvert child who sits in a corner alone, quietly reading, or building towers of blocks or forts of legos, using his imagination and bolstering his internal life. No, the introvert must be dragged into group activity, not allowed to process stress and information at her own pace in her own way. It's a role she learns, better or worse, quickly or slowly, to play. A public face to present to administrators, teachers, counselors: bland, happy, level.

Gods forbid a dark mood should ever pass over that innocent countenance, a dark feeling need be thought through to understanding, incorporated into his experience as part of a toolset for future use, or trust given that the individual can and will process at his own rate, to far better understanding than simple group rhetoric can provide.

I'm sorry, rambling. I've seen introvert-squashing and forced incorporation into ill-fitting group extroversion and the intense personal misery it causes and does not acknowledge or treat. Introverts are the researchers, the discoverers, the explorers, and the perceptors. Without them we might be a happy, homogenized, well-adjusted civilization of group-thinkers who never have an original idea or innovate a new theory.

We need introverts. We need to provide space for them to develop, and support to help them integrate comfortably, and allow them to socialize with a few trusted individuals. My perspective from inside the situation, anyway.

Erm, not that all introverts are Speshul Flowers, of course. Or that extroverts are not. Just--differences aren't dangerous, merely different.

Much, much ♥♥♥ to you, Bev, Sing it.