I saw GotG with my brother over the weekend, which is not the point of this post. Rather, it is to state that he brought with him a belated 5th birthday pressie for Ryan, from his uncles and cousin (they all share a house at the moment). They gave him a DVD box set: Neil Degrasse Tyson's Cosmos.

This may be the best pressie he's ever been given. Certainly it's the one that I most enjoy sharing with him. We are now in the middle of episode 2, which deals with evolution. So far we've paused to have discussions on such topics as how DNA works, how he was made, the (often fraught) relation between science and religion, how people become Christians, and why I don't believe in God (but he and Mummy do).

Ryan is taking to this show like oxygen. Uncle win.

Sounds like a great gift billy!!

I pretty much forgot my Dad's birthday, which is tomorrow. I need to send him a gift and a card. I forgot to send Mom a card too.

Work was slightly weird today but I interviewed for the position in computers, it was pretty informal. There's a supervisor who is leaving (another bites the dust, actually he's been planning to move down to GA and has been waiting for the end of summer) and someone in computers applied for that jo. So, the computers positions won't be filled until they know if they are trying to fill 1 or 2 spots. If it's 2 spots I'll definitly be moving over. If it's one they have to pick. It could go either way if it's one spot, the other guy is really really new, but he's strong in areas I'm not. But I've been here longer and have a track record.

The only other news is the Fair is going on and Will is taking Friday off so we can go the fair and look at stuff and eat fair food. I doubt we will go on any rides. I just looking at exhbits and animals and eating weird things.

I want to grow young and be Ryan. For serious.

and may never even wake up from the general anaesthesia much less walk or need a fancy BRIGHT RED rain coat (it's a pretty awesome petite rain coat, I hope it fits!)

My Dad fell and was in ICU and I paused in PDX to buy a shiny silver raincoat before my flight. I smile when I see the coat. The surrounding stuff was awful but it is a fabulous coat.

It's the brain. And maybe the emotional unavailability.

I maybe have some issues with my choices in men.

Sadly think I'm subscribed to your newsletter. Because I don't want to miss an issue.

Frak. Frak. Frak. The subject I'm studying this semester revolves around a competitive online business simulation. Our team's first set of decisions were due in this afternoon. The system closed about ten minutes early, and we've been shut out. We're so screwed.

Our actual performance in the simulation is only 5% of the mark, but our write-up is another 45%, and I don't know where we go from here.

I also had a difficult day. We found out that one of our managers made "ching chang chong" comments to an asian employee. They are work friends and it was in the context of good-natured teasing, but that really doesn't matter. He had been spoken to about appropriate speech before, so our only choice is to terminate him. The manager is smart, hispanic and gay, so one would hope he had a sense about what is appropriate for a manager to say to an employee---but no.

Man, that's a fraught situation. Awful for all concerned.

I am feeling considerable relief. Apparently our decisions were uploaded after all. While we didn't upload them ourselves, we've been saving our work, and apparently when the deadline closed, the system grabbed our latest results automatically. So we're still in it.

I'm glad things worked out for you and your team, BT.

Scrappy, sadly intersectionalism (I think that's the word I want) doesn't always happen. Hence the problems with white, cis ardent feminists not always recognizing the valid concerns of women of color or transphobia in feminism. I'm sorry.

Well, apparently I made it through the initial screening at Humbolt and on to the committee that will decide who gets called in for interviews. I so appreciate an HR system that lets people know these things.

Oh, geez, Scrappy, that is rough. But yeah, if he'd already been talked to about appropriate language...eesh.

Ugh. Not at all the same thing, but it reminds me of when I had a deeply religious person added to my team - I really had to clean up my language stat, and I pretty much stopped talking politics. Because I was her manager, and I didn't want to do anything that might make her uncomfortable. We already knew each other, but "Jesus H Christ" from a coworker is, you know, different from the same thing from your manager if it's a sensitive thing for you. This shit is not complicated.

(ETA - since I knew her, I had a sense of what her sensibilities, to coin a phrase, might be. Not to suggest that those boundaries would be the same for all).

Ugh Scrappy, I don't envy that part of your job.

Good luck on the job front, Calli! We are rooting for you!