Meanwhile, I need to fall madly in love with a nice Gujarati girl very soon to get them off my fucking back.

That won't get them off your back. Then it will be kids -- how many? How are you raising them? What about school? And they'll harp on your wife. And your qualities as a husband. You could let them pick somone and hand her to you in a sealed box, marry the sealed box, and they would still be on your back.

It's an awful thing, but they are staying on your back. Do the things that make you happy and ignore their gripeing as best you can. (I'm not saying that's an easy thing to do.)

I'm sorry this is so awful.

Someone collected them... Sexy Halloween Costumes That Shouldn't Exist.

That's very funny, WindSparrow!

Great pumpkins, Calli, smonster & amyth!

Ah, P-C, it sucks. I agree that standing firm is the best course. OTOH, I always worry because that's coming from my Western POV.

I sure know how to kill a thread.

This is the 3rd meeting of the Natural Resources & Environmental Commission that I’ve attended. After the last meeting I attended, I was really depressed because the legislation the city wrote up seemed very onerous to me. I couldn’t see myself having the $$$ and energy to get things off the ground. Though I knew the NREC was pro-garden, it seemed to me that the city itself was putting up a lot of roadblocks.

This time I came with a bunch of printouts about how other cities/counties have handled the legal issues involved in having community gardens. I reiterated the issues I had with the legislation. I said I figured there had to be some way to address the city’s and neighbors legitimate concerns about liability and possible problems without making it so hard to get the proper permits that no one can afford to do it. This time I think some of the councilors got my concerns and they seem willing to take a look at the legislation again and make recommendations to the City Council as to how it should be changed.

Was there a stencil for the Jack Skellington one? I'd love a Skellington pumpkin.

I'm not sure. I don't think smonster was working from a stencil, but there may be one out there somewhere.

Good luck with the community garden stuff, Spidra. It sounds like a fantastic project.

Spidra, your efforts on behalf of community gardening for your city are excellent. You should be proud of yourself. And I like to think, when it gets quiet here after board-time midnight, that it just might mean that the insomnia fairy has left a lot of people alone. And if the Western Hemisphere Insomniac contingent are quiet, then the Eastern Hemisphere people have nobody to play with but themselves. Errr, each other.... Errr... You know what I mean.

I'm always around here after 2am-ish board time. I don't always say much 'cause it's mainly just me!

In 'Naomi really will get a good PA team together one day soon' news, I interviewed for the second post yesterday and might recruit a PhD student from the more prestigious uni in the area (mine being the less prestigious one!). She answered an interview question with a Foucault reference. It's hard to say no to that. Also there was only one other candidate. So here's hoping. (First PA continues to be efficient and lovely.)

I am reading about the origin of the synoptic gospels and trying not to fall asleep. I'm sure this has something to do with my research. I'm not sure what.

I think if that happened during an attendant interview I was part of, it would make services a moot point because the shock would kill me. I loved watching KO get all impressed by Sexy Violinist and her...instrument. I don't know why I love seeing his inner fanboy so much, but sometimes it's so much easier to get next to than his Outer Cornell. He was seriously awed by that Strativarius and by the fact that, when she touched it, beautiful sounds came out...in a tiny way, it reminded me of when Cronkite did a rocket story and said "Golly!"(Which he thought sounded stupid, but was honest human emotion, imo.)

I have two students who missed a quiz without giving me advance notice. My general rule is no makeup quizzes unless you've told me about your absence ahead of time and I've OKed it. Each of these two asked me if they could take a makeup. The quiz was on Monday, and I had OKed both of them to miss the previous Friday because they were sick, so I said OK, and we scheduled a time for them to come to my office to take the quiz. Neither one showed up.