PS: My "yikes" was for the earthquake, but I'll give a hearty WTF to that groom and/or bride.

OK, it's time to admit you just wanted to be on TV when even the staff at Kleinfeld's is like, "Why did she come here for a non-white gown???" (Edit: If that was unclear, I am watching Say Yes To The Dress....)

Y'all have more energy than I do.

Maybe at 3:30 AM, but not now. Took a while to get back to sleep, and then my parents called at 7:30 to make sure I was okay (they were away for the weekend down by Santa Cruz and felt it there! I didn't think the shaking would make it that far) so now I am awake but very muzzy. Cursory inspection of the house is not turning up obvious damage, though, so that's good.

That might be fun, flea? Definitely WTF, though, if that's really how they managed the invitations. Which might make for a potentially entertaining reception if there's more WTFery in the offing.

(In other hilarious news, the church is on Guido Street. Catholic, natch.)

That's a pretty church.

"Oh, the bride to be is in charge of the wedding and she just now let the groom choose who he wanted to invite," which seems even more WTF to me than being a late add-on since they realized they had room, am I right?

Miss Manners is side-eyeing that shit. Even if the bride is being a hard-ass about the invitation list (i.e., not letting the groom invite anyone), figure that out *before* the invitations are supposed to go out.

Or save face by telling people that they're a late add-on because you have room. Sheesh.

Quite a bit of WTF, flea. But hey, free drinks? And honestly, you can leave as soon as you want...

And yikes indeed about the earthquake! I"ve stayed in American Canyon many times now. Huh. Hope everything is ok the places I go and the people I know there!

And go Suela TCB! That sounds pretty gross indeed.

Thanks for understanding, ita. And Jesse and Burrell, I appreciate your kind words. I hadn't known him in a long time; our families were very close growing up, but it had been 20 years since I spent any real time with him. My grief really is for his kids. His son is getting married in October; his daughter lives in Namibia working with education. They are amazing people, both in their 30s now, but to me they will always be the two kids I used to babysit. And the son was the one who finally called a friend to go over the the house when he couldn't get in touch with them--the friend found the father, and the son had to drive down and deal with the police inquiry etc. by himself since his sister was out of the country. And now he's facing his wedding without his dad. It's just so sad.

Anyway, enough of that this morning.

Bayistas, I'm so glad you're okay!

Okay, now will someone explain hierarchical linear modeling to me?? That's the thing I have to understand for my job this week. Right now I'm at the "okay they've got these bits of data, they do magic magic magic annnnnnd PROFIT!" stage.

Probably too late, lisah, but I would suggest a book called "Multilevel Analysis for Applied Research: It's Just Regression!"

Very friendly for people who need to understand the concepts without bothering with all of the math.

In the meantime, a regular regression uses an intercept and a slope to show how x can be used to predict y.

y= b0x +b1x +e

The only new thing in hierarchical modeling is that we now use a new regression equation to predict the intercept (b0) and slope (b1). So instead of asking how well x predicts y, we are asking how well we can predict how well x predicts y for a certain group. We want to see if z predicts the strength of association between x and y.

So, for instance, in the work I am doing this afternoon, at the first level I am predicting weekly changes in depression in women by the amount of stress they experienced the previous week. Some women's depression appears to be highly responsive to changes in stress, and other women's depression is not. Then at level 2, I will try to explain differences in the strength of that association between stress and depression. It has been hypothesized, for instance, that women with better support networks or with non-ruminative coping strategies will show less response (predictability) in their depression from variation in stress. We'll see.

In business, a more common example would be learning at level one whether a certain kind of advertising or sale pricing is associated with more purchases, and at level 2 whether you can predict what kinds of customers are going to be more highly influenced by a certain kind of advertising or sale. For instance, I've been told that large retailers have learned that some kinds of ads mostly attract bargain seeking "bottom feeders" who increase sales of the advertised low-margin product but do not help overall revenues because they only buy the thing on sale, while other kinds of ads attract the sort of people who can be up-sold to a more expensive version of the target product or who buy the advertised product but also buy five unrelated things once you get them in the store.

This is where the "magic magic magic annnnnnd PROFIT!" stage comes in.

Yikes. Watch out for those gas line breaks.

Hardware store let me down, no decent sized watering cans. I could head over to HomeDespot, but I'm going to be going by there plenty in the next week,so that can wait.

Oh yeah, Monday begins my hell week of having to drive to another pool since mine will be closed for the annual cleaning. Of course, YMaryland made the idiotic decision to have the 3 largest pools that serve to N & E of the city closed at the same time, leaving one half sized one with virtually no parking and one with fewer lanes open. Yes, I will complain. They usually stagger it so at least one of the big pools is open over here. The west side pools take forever to get to, plus it'll be the first week of school, which means stupider traffic than normal.

Sangria alert: May have caused migraine last week, should have ordered the drinks sweetened with agave.

OK, I have sorted the laundry that absolutely must get done today and gotten the first load into the washer, and washed the first load of dishes. Still to be started much less accomplished: 40 minute run, yardwork, more thorough gas line inspection, food prep for the week. That looks like a lot, but maybe not too much? We'll see.