Hm. Wearing shorts from last summer. They're a little tight but not too bad. After weeks and weeks of wearing nothing but soft jersey with stretchy waistbands it's a bit odd.

It damages the children, says Dale O'Leary, author of "One Man, One Woman: A Catholics Guide to Defending Marriage." She says that all children have a natural desire for a parent of each gender. [...] O'Leary says she doesn't personally know any same-sex parents or their children.

Yeah, no fucking crap. I could tell that by the lunatic nonsense coming out of your idiot mouth, lady.

I've missed the Great Warning Debate this time around, and frankly: have a newborn. Not going to catch up on it.

Still, I thought I'd best state my warning policy:

In my own spaces, such as on my website or in my journals, I do not attach warnings.

When I archive elsewhere, I do*, and so archives or community journals are safer places for people with triggers to read my work. I also will answer questions; if you-the-reader have particular triggers, feel free to ask me if I think the story will trip them. I will answer you honestly and to the best of my ability. Of course, also feel free to ask for non-triggery stuff, such as personal squicks or just not wanting to read something depressing that day.

---

* There are some archives that didn't require warnings, and some old work of mine is archived at some of those places without warnings. This is especially true of old work originally posted to newsgroups or lists prior to 2000, so if you find some of that stuff, you may wish to use the "ask Laura" method if you need any warnings.

This entry was originally posted at http://laurajv.dreamwidth.org/3983.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Yesterday in the mail we got that awesome cephalopod baby set. It was in an envelope that had "gift bag refunded" written on it, which I take to mean that whoever sent it INTENDED the company to gift wrap it, perhaps with a note telling us who it is from.

If it was you? Please let me know so I can thank you properly!

Does anyone have copies of Robbery Homicide Division, or know where I can get them?* It was apparently never released on DVD, and my mother would love to have it; the only thing she's found is a guy selling bootlegs on a suspiciously scammy site. I figured I'd ask if any of y'all have it.

Comments screened.




* I hope I don't need to say this, but YES, I have Googled around.

Last night I had the late-pregnancy equivalent of sleeping like the dead: nearly 6 hours without waking up.

It was really, really awesome.

The kitchen is not quite done. jlkgyre and his crew have done totally awesome work (but I am sure that safya is ready to kill me to have her husband back)! What's left is mostly trim & finish work, so it's mostly-usable at this point. Yay! Tomorrow I can break out my skillet (oh, how I have missed you, skillet) and my Dutch oven and THERE WILL BE COOKERY. Oh yes.

Out of the ridiculous gallery of photos I have taken of the project, nlanza picked the best comparison shots:

before
after

My mother-in-law, who designed the kitchen, said "it looks like a before and after magazine ad!" I cannot say she is wrong.

So there's a minor recall on my car -- a clip missing from the electrical harness. I call about getting it done, and I'm told no problem, it takes about 20 minutes. The appointment is scheduled for three business days later, and they also want to reflash the car's computer. Fine.

Now, in no traffic, the dealer is about a half-hour from my house. In traffic, it's about 45 minutes. I get there this morning (45 minutes) and they tell me it will be all done in about 40 minutes for both the recall and the reflashing. Fine.

An HOUR AND A HALF LATER, I notice that my car is sitting in the exit. No one has come to get me from the customer lounge. I wait about 10 minutes. No one comes to get me. So I go out to the desk. Oh, says the guy, we didn't have the clip for the harness, so you will have to come back when we get it in.

So. Very. Not. Fine.

The service rep attempted to divert my anger by asking me about what gender the baby was. I cut him off and informed him that I was VERY UNHAPPY. The customer service manager has a very calm, but very cold, voicemail from me -- he was at lunch. I am...irate. Yes. Irate is the word.

By my count, they have wasted _three hours_ of my time -- half in travel, half in NOT FIXING MY CAR -- that I could have used to do, oh, ANYTHING ELSE. Putting raisins up my nose. Something.

What. The. Hell.


ETA: the service manager just called me back. He apologized and said that when the part comes in, he will send a tech to my house to install it, instead of me having to come out to get the work done. And he claims the appointment coordinator has been Spoken To about making sure parts are in for known repairs.

When I see the following headline: "Woman sentenced for letting children have sex", I assume that some woman got in trouble for letting her underage son-or-daughter have sex with some other underage person.

The phrase "letting children have sex" sort of seems like a weird neglect/permission situation coupled with technically-not-legally-able-to-consent preteens. Like one of those situations you see occasionally where two underage persons are charged with raping each other, or when 15 year olds are prosecuted for child pornography because they took naked pictures of themselves.

What the aforementioned story was ACTUALLY ABOUT: a woman being sentenced for providing children to pedophiles.

That is NOT AN APPROPRIATE HEADLINE FOR THAT STORY. You might want to keep that in mind.

nlanza: Hey, did you hear the latest theory on how the Neanderthals died out?
jacquez: Aside from "we killed them in a genocidal race war"?
nlanza: It gets better! Evidence shows we may have butchered them.
jacquez: Nice!
nlanza: And after we ate them, we made jewelry out of their teeth.
jacquez: Go us!

Not comprehensive, and almost certainly not all true for everyone, but I thought I'd write it down anyway. There is lots of stuff I already knew, and lots of stuff that was easy to find information on without having to know what you were looking for. But then there were things that I didn't know, that rarely get mentioned, and that you have to know what you're looking for to find out. HATE. ( cut for the uninterested )

Who thought it would be a good idea to do the 5 mile MS Walk while 7.5 months pregnant?

THIS GIRL.

Finished, though, and got to catch up with all of Amy's family, which was lovely.

You can still donate, if you're so inclined.

I'm "laurajv" over on dreamwidth. As the name might indicate, I'm planning to use that as a primarily fannish venue. Here on lj, it's always been a mixed crowd of folks from university, family, other RL folks, and fannish folks (that I have both met in person, and not).

I don't lock fannish content in general -- except very rarely -- so that journal's going to be pretty much public.

One thing I'm guessing I can't do is easily import laurajv to dreamwidth, so that's going to be manual and will have to wait until after Carnival.

Game 1 @ PIT
Wed, Apr 15 7:00pm EDT
TV: VS., CBC

Game 2 @ PIT
Fri, Apr 17 7:00pm EDT
TV: VS., CBC

Game 3 @ PHI
Sun, Apr 19 3:00pm EDT
TV: NBC, CBC

Game 4 @ PHI
Tue, Apr 21 7:00pm EDT
TV: VS., CBC

Game 5 @ PIT
Thu, Apr 23 7:00pm EDT
TV: VS., CBC

Game 6 @ PHI
Sat, Apr 25 3:00pm EDT
TV: NBC, CBC

Game 7 @ PIT
Mon, Apr 27 12:00pm EDT
TV: VS., CBC

Today we bought this. It feels like an SUV after driving the Mini for the past 7 months, but it's sure fun. Now I need to figure out its obscure and strange controls.

The teabagging thing was bad/hilarious enough, really.

Now you're calling your anti-gay-marriage campaign 2M4M?

Really?

Two things about that.

1. Two Men For Marriage is faster than you with the domain registration.
2. About half the internet sees "2M4M" and thinks of personal ads looking for gay threesomes. Just saying.

About how much time do you usually estimate for yourself to edit and/or copyedit a set number of pages? (Assuming about 250 words/page.)

I'm trying to figure about how much time I should expect the two freelance editing assignments that just came in to take, so I can budget at least that much out of my week to work on them; I've always been salaried so I never paid attention to how much time editing took me.

(I'll screen comments, in case you feel that your time estimation is a trade secret, & only unscreen if you say it's OK.)

Dear Car Salesman,

In this economy, or really, ANY economy, I understand why you would send a thank-you note to a woman who came in to test drive a car.

A word, though, if I may.

If you do not know the woman's title, use "Ms." It is inoffensive and saves you from having guessed incorrectly. As a bonus, it is often the title she actually uses.

Best,
Not a "Miss".

A lot of people don't believe me when I say things like "PETA is not really an animal-rights organization; they are a radical animal liberation organization with a good PR machine", or "PETA believes that animals are better dead than pets, and runs a notorious kill shelter in Virginia".

For the latter statement, Patrick Burns has the numbers. He has links to the data from other Virginia shelters; for comparison, you can look at the Virginia Beach Animal Control & Pound -- AC/Pound facilities tend to have quite high kill rates, but even there you can see that although they took in about 1100 more cats than PETA, they euthanized only 300 more.


eta: Picking Vick Over PETA talks about (among other things) the differences in Michael Vick's approach to dogs and Ingrid Newkirk's.