friends

i saw a friend last week, or rather we (five of us from work and one ex-worker) saw a friend and her mother. my friend was one of my work-mates a couple of years ago until she got a job in north dakota in a different branch. she and her mom came out here to go on a cruise to alaska.  they really enjoyed it, and it sounded like a great trip.

i hadn't met her mom before and she seemed like a really nice gal, quiet and maybe a little shy. it was soooo good to see M once again. she looked excellent and was happy and i know she loves her present job. she talked about future possibilities, but for now it seems all is very good.

getting together now and then is good for the spirit!

groovin' right along

well, it's time once again to plug my favorite internet music station. it's GROOVERA.COM and i've loved it forever. it used to be called FrostByte Groove Lounge and then they decided to change their name. sad, but so it goes.

they have three types of chilled music for your enjoyment: Low Mercury (my fav) with laid-back sounds, Jet City Lounge which is more upbeat, and Audio Popsicle which has some vocals.

even though Low Mercury out-distances the others by miles and miles in my opinion, it does occasionally play some pieces I. Can. Not. Stand. for example, i hate cj weaver, cyberia, dj cam, fat jon the ample soul physician, j boogie's dubtronic science, kruder & dorfmeister, lemongrass, manoloco, miguel graca, patchworks, rithma, tripglitch, and visit venus. i mean, yuck! patooey! gawk! ohmygod, get them off this world!

on the other hand, i loooooove a lot of creators on this station: alexander chereshnev, all india radio, b-tribe, carmen rizzo, chilled c-quence, chris coco, conjure one, delerium, digital analog band, digital moodz, electrix, enrico riva, francis rimbert, george chatzis, gROUSe, houie d, ibizarre, indra, isan, jeff woodall, joey fehrenbach, jon hopkins, kaya project, kukan dub lagan, maneesh de moor, michael e, moshang, mo-shic, nalepa, n. bar, nexion-project, riot act, rue du soleil, side liner, suntwins, tones on tail, ulrich schnauss, urban myth club, vargo, ypey, and zero cult.

now, admittedly, this second group can have some stinkers, but by-and-large these people just touch my soul. i completely go into another world when one of their pieces is on.

but to get back to the subject, the next time you're online, plug into the best sounds on the web and for the ultimate experience, click on Low Mercury ..... heaven.

@#$!%^&*#$

"On the Internet, when I send my ones and zeros somewhere, they shouldn't have to wait in line behind the ones and zeros of wealthier people or corporations. That's the way the Net was designed, and it's central to a concept called "net neutrality," which ensures that Internet service providers can't pick favorites."

that's the beginning of an article i thought i better read. i totally agree that the 'net should be equal to all, regardless of the almighty dollar.

but as i read i could feel my stomach getting sick so i had to stop. big business bastards are going to fuck everything up for the little guys and i just couldn't read about it. (my passionate nature will be the end of me.) is that defeatist? probably. but i've lived long enough to know that repub, er, business interests can get almost anything they want and there's no sense in torturing myself as it's happening. oh, if only i were king.

the long and short of it

i've always known that older women either wear their hair cut short, or, if they have to leave it long, they braid it and wind it around on top of their head.

now i find out that hilary is starting a trend which does away with that old wisdom. she is showing that longer hair on older women is okay. the article says your cut should be based on your personality, no matter what age.

i've thought about going back to longer hair a couple of times in the last few years, but everytime i've tried letting it grow out a bit, it looks terrible. it pulls down my aura and is really depressing. so for me, shorter seems to be better. my hair has always been ultra fine and a little wavy; as i age it's getting finer but thinner, and a little wayward. the waves have given way to kinky straightness; it's just really hard to describe. and harder to subdue into a style.

oh, well. the aging process shows us all kinds of new mysteries, and fashion demands change. so be it.

remember the alamo! er ... uh ..

MYS headed south and had his final interviews for his new post. he expects to move down there mid-october or so.

oh man, i totally forgot to ask him if anyone had called him Dr. MYS! how could i have forgotten that??!!

anyhow, he's in love with the area and feels really positive about the place. now we need to focus on sending aimee lots of energy and memory cells so she can pass her final hurdle next week, i think it is. once she's done that, she'll be in a position to join MYS at the end of the year!

yay, aimee!!! go, kid, go!!! you can do it!!!

foggy bloggy

i went to my first blog, for the first time in many months, and could see that some changes had been made. i didn't see nearly as many ads as had been on there before (and having no control over the ads being displayed was one of the reasons i changed away from them). the whole thing had been cleaned up quite a bit.

almost makes me want to go back to it. first love, and all that ....

keeping the balls in the air

this from my washington post feed:

"The Commerce Department says new home sales fell 12.4 percent in July from a month earlier to a seasonally adjusted annual sales pace of 276,000, the slowest on record dating to 1963.

The numbers are the latest sign that the economic recovery is fading."

depending on which side of the fence you're on, that's either good or bad. but you know, since about 1973 or 1975 house prices have soared. and the rule is that whatever goes up, must come down. i'm just glad we aren't desparately needing to sell ours.

jumpstart the economy

since the computers were off, i was forced to read. while looking through the hammacher schlemmer catalog, i noticed you can now buy a two-person submarine. wow! cool! oh ... two million dollars.

ahem. well, if you don't want one of those, you can buy a pedal boat ... three thousand eight hundred.

or, you can get a cotton candy maker ... sixty-nine ninety-five.

816 ... 876? no, 816 ... what?

i'm not all that crazy about gene weingarten, but this was pretty good. and i have, actually, heard guys do that.

all across the country

particulars about our trip:
the radisson at seatac was an excellent place to stay and leave our car while we were gone -- highly recommended, especially since we just walked across the street and into the terminal.
the country inn & suites on east henrietta was a big disappointment -- not recommended.
u.s. airways (to philly) was an excellent experience -- i wonder if it was only because we were in first class. we enjoyed our breakfast and juice/pop. we particularly enjoyed it when the ticket taker turned back a young gal trying to board when they called first class. when she finally did board, she was at the tail-end. slacker.
the philly airport was not at the top of our list of pleasant airports; outside temps in the 90s.
u.s. air/republic (to rochester) was pleasant.
the rochester airport was hesitant to take my nexus card -- didn't see many of those, they said.
the american eagle flight (rochester to o'hare) was dumb -- they lost points.
american air (o'hare to seatac) wasn't a good as u.s. air, but they kept serving us food.
i think it's safe to say i don't ever want to fly anywhere again unless it's in first class.

then and now

oh man, the last three weeks have been something else. we moved into our new building, but there were all kinds of problems with that and i didn't have a functioning computer. but i got through that week.

then we flew to see MYS do his defense of his thesis. wow -- that was soooooo cool!! i had a link so you could look at his talk (slides) but i can't find it now. i'll keep looking. and yes, he now has his Ph.D.! the rest of the week was great -- drove through the countryside, visited places, it was all very excellent!

then we flew back home to two computers which didn't work. :( it took the rest of the week for the comcast tech to come out and tell us it was our modem which the husband tried to bring in earlier when he called and they told him no. despicable monopoly.

and the situation at work hadn't improved. everything still up in a heaval and i didn't get a working computer until late yesterday. good grief. hopefully things will start to smooth out. i find if i don't have any expectations, it works better (mentally).

i'll have to see if any of the pictures i took back east turned out decent. if so, i'll post.

new digs

i'm moving into a new office sometime this week, but i don't know my new phone number yet. if you need it, send me an e-mail and i'll reply when i have it.

a different kind of bad guy

telemarketers -- they take the cake.