I am so sorry msbelle, what awful news. My heart goes out to your friend.

That sounds like a lovely tribute, Connie. I hope it goes well, and yes, morning seems best given my experience of Orem in August.

Kat, my memory of St. George is that coffee is quite available, so even with Pioneer Day you should be able to caffeinate before you go.

Geez dcp, hope it works out and you can go home soon, that sounds like quite a pain!!

I made it to Chicago and am now in a super fancy hotel suite. Work to do tomorrow (am v pissy that I'm having to cancel my vacation day, even if work is paying for the flight but not hotel) and eventually my sister will be here tomorrow. Yay!

dcp, I'm glad you got out of the building safely. Is there anyone you could crash with tonight? You're at the mercy of the gas company now.

Are you downtown, meara?

Yep. Not sure where the heck I'm going tomorrow but it's not until afternoon so I plan to sleep in and figure it out later.

I seem to have really jacked up my back. I have these tingling numbing cold-feeling bits of my butt and legs all day on one side, and the other side I did something weird to my hip and can't seem to fix a weird pain when I move certain ways. I suspect I need a massage and a chiropractor. Also, I am getting old.

I'll be at the Goodman by 11. Let me know if you want to get coffee or lunch or something.

Finally got the all-clear. Whew.

Unspecified problem with the building's water heater. No hot shower for me tomorrow morning. That, plus lack of sleep tonight, is going to make tomorrow unpleasant. Still, better than getting blown up, I suppose.

Yikes, I have cousins in Lafayette. But I'm not actually worried because.

The news I read was that the shooter was 58 years old. What, we're not confined to disaffected young men anymore?

This all sucks.

Still, better than getting blown up, I suppose.

Yes!

The news I read was that the shooter was 58 years old. What, we're not confined to disaffected young men anymore?

Yeah, I was surprised by that as well.

I had a dream that I watched my first episode of Game of Thrones, and five separate characters got killed off, in a variety of ridiculous ways.

I'm sticking with that instead of stressing about the bad things happening in the world.

In what-is-this-I-can't-even FB news of the day, a high school friend started a discussion about gender vs. racial self-identification and what's going on in the mind of someone like Rachel Dolezal. And another high school friend just commented:

It's how you're raised... People look at me and see valley girl- I am not comfortable around white culture- I was raised in a colored world, and that is where I am comfortable, the issues that confront the colored world are my issues- even if the colored ones do not accept me- that had been my experience. There are very few who are not transracial these days. Why don't we stop identifying as one or the other?? It seems to leave many of us out...

She is just one of the nicest people on the planet, a completely ingenuous free-range hippie chick who would totally be a devout freegan if she were still living in a big city with dumpsters instead of out in the middle of nowhere communing with the redwoods, but this post of hers is so blithely, fractally awful I can't even answer. I'm reduced to a Xanderesque, "How?!? What?!? How?!?"

eta: Not posting this to be mean -- I'm just gobsmacked, and not prepared to pick a fight with a deeply well-intentioned idiot of whom I have many fond and cherished memories, but I can't be alone in my gobsmackery. I need someone to bear this burden with me. Lucky all y'all.