OMG, I'm so dopey -- I just made a blueberry pie, and was smart enough to put foil on a cookie sheet, but then I put the sheet on a different rack from the pie plate. So it was hard to take out and I still got spilled-over blueberry juice on the bottom of the oven. Ah well.

you can't report these things remotely

What, they want to see in person that the license plates aren't actually still on your car?

What if you get pulled over for not having plates? Will they take the report then? Or make you drive all the way to the station? Craziness.

ten day Indian Buddhist meditation course, and he swears it's like Life 2.0, coping mechanisms unlocked.

Unfortunately you'd have to survive the meditation course to find out and I think if you can then you get that level unlocked.

I do not have good coping mechanisms but my work people go on about me being able to get things done. This was on the heels of my planning a two day meeting, creating the agendas, the handouts, the activities, the posters and the infernal presentations only to be told that someone needs half a day on Thursday. ARGH.

I don't plan at the last minute. Why do others?

Ugh ita, what a huge PITA!

I usually have pretty good coping mechanism, but it turns out they are all frayed and worn thin at the edges. I need some time free from the need to cope, but that's not scheduled for any time soon.

On the plus side, coffee cake is cooling and will be there for breakfast tomorrow. Yum!

Get it reported ASAP -- they probably stole your plates to go commit crimes with!

When I lived in Belgium, I had a USian professor who had brought his car with him. Someone there stole his Maryland plates off his car, which was a giant pain in the ass to deal with overseas prior to the widespread adoption of the internet.

Which leads me to ask, I wonder if study abroad is different now that it's easier to stay in contact. No more of those flimsy air mail letters?

I had very basic email in Prague, but had to go to a computer center housed in trailers in the courtyard at the FFUK, stand in line for a vax terminal, sometimes outside in the snow and keyboard was czech which lead to some weirdness. Applied for internships that way. But home still seemed much more remote than now when I travel. I mean, I sent email from Bhutan!

Study abroad is totally different now. I stunned the students I was teaching a couple of weeks ago with my tales of post restante, traveller's checks, and once-a-week-four-minute-pay-phone-calls-that-cost-$20 from 1992-93. They have ubiquitous internet, credit cards and atms, and unlimited-access cell phones. They text their parents from Rome like they're on campus.

flea, I guess I also wonder if all of that access changes their experience. I'd assume so. But I'd love to see how. And there would be no good way to do a study of that.