In completely shallow news, I'm concerned I look too funereal today. I meant to wear a greenish jacket with my black skirt but the button popped on it this morning and my only other option was a black jacket. Stupid boobs.

Clearly the people who are furloughed but have nannies and the people who have to work but have kids in government daycare need a matchmaking service.

It sounds like the shutdown is coming down to banning federal funds to planned parenthood and preventing EPA regulation of greenhouse gases.

I worry about my cousin being furloughed. 3 kids, a new apartment and no income is bad.

Yeah- I asked Tom if his company had any temp jobs, but no, not right now...

I can't even process that, Gudanov. It will make my head explode!

We just got an email about the shutdown. What do we do different? Nothing! Except we won't be able to get in touch with our customers which will make some things complicated (other things easier, but only temporarily).

I'm reeling at the bread news. I refuse to believe it.

Why isn't bread baked on Wednesday?

There's nothing like coming from the hospital for a meeting only to find out that you forgot something vital for the meeting. So you fix it up quickly, and now the servers for the whole gov't are down, so you cannot print them.

Tsunami warnings cancelled: [link]

Thank fuck for that, anyway.

Some of what they say about government efficiency is true, it turns out.

Well, yeah. But part of the reason for that (I have learned) is in order to keep us from doing anything bad or wrong. So there's a lot of protocols in place for decision-making. And a lot of controls in place for spending money: what kind of money you can use for what, and what kind of obligations the government can take on, are both tightly constrained.

It sounds like the shutdown is coming down to banning federal funds to planned parenthood and preventing EPA regulation of greenhouse gases.

Because god forbid poor women get reproductive health care, or poor people living on the coastlines get protected from sea-level rise that the US is one of the parties primarily responsible for.

Relief that Japan "only" got an earthquake instead of another tsunami on top of it.

At least one member of the House (who represents the innermost suburbs of Northern VA) says reimbursement of furloughed federal employees is not likely. Hubs was on the phone with a co-worker for close to an hour last night about the possible furlough. He still doesn't know whether or not he'll be furloughed.

But part of the reason for that (I have learned) is in order to keep us from doing anything bad or wrong.

This. It can easily take close to forever to get anything done around here (for certain values of "anything"). I've had 15-20 reviewers on some projects. Even with a deadline, that many people can have a lot of things to say!