As of 28 November 2007, this LJ is now primarily friends-locked. If you've encountered me elsewhere and think, for some strange reason, that friending me would do positive things for your life, please comment here. If you write reasonably well (by which I mean you've more or less mastered basic stuff such as spelling, grammar, paragraphing, and punctuation - requiring poesy or eloquence would force me to throw stones through the walls of my own glass house) and aren't an asshole, I'll quite likely add you.

Nota bene: if we are already mutual friends as of the locking date, you do not need to comment here unless you can't see any past posts. If we are but you CAN'T, do comment.

Danke schoen.

Go, PP&M. My childhood musical heroes keep on keeping on (see: Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, and so on).

Thanks to brooklinegirl for calling my attention to this.

spuffyduds brought this to my attention, and I now bring it to yours. If you are on the Yuletide-pinchhit list, you'll want to take a look at the following from the ever-valiant elynross:


"Pinch Hits Problem
Apparently Yahoogroups has changed some policy, and the wave of pinch hits sent out has DISABLED MY YAHOO ACCOUNT. I can't post to it to tell the pinch hitters why I'm not responding to claims. Of the 20+ groups I belong to or own, only 3 are displaying, presumably because the rest are on the email address that has been disabled. I... am not a happy camper.

At this point, I need to sleep, and there's very little I can do about this. If you want to claim a pinch hit, you'll need to *forward* or otherwise get the info to my personal email (elynross@gmail.com), and I'll work with that, and try and respond when I get up in a few hours.

Please boost the signal on this, to try and reach other people on the pinch hit list. I'm not sure how the second half of the pinch hits are going to go out, but we'll figure something out."

I keep thinking of posts and then not making them, because I don't have the time to be eloquent and I don't have the creativity to be effectively precise and I feel like it's not worth it otherwise.

Tonight, as I was breaking up cauliflower for one of my favorite veggie dishes, Roast Cauliflower With Olive Oil, Sea Salt, Fresh-Ground Pepper, And Nothing Much Else, it occurred to me that that's silly.

So here. Have a few bullet-pointed plusses (and the odd minus) in lieu of eloquent and/or efficient content.

+ Ian, my next-door neighbors'/landlords' three-year-old son, who is beyond adorable, came running around their back-yard garden towards me tonight when I got out of my car after bell practice. Usually this is because he wants to give me a flower or tell me I'm getting home too late for dinner. Tonight, it was because he wanted to give me a hug. <3...! I have known this child since he was a literal babe in literal arms, and I tend generally to treat him as a valued and curious tiny semi-adult - and he still likes me. Go figure.

+ ...bell practice? Oh, right: I joined the bell choir at the Episcopal church I've been attending off and on for about a year. Never done the bell thing before, except very very occasionally when one or another of the choirs in which I sang needed a handbell accent. But I am - still - a musician, and also a percussionist and pianist, and as it turns out? I can do this. So after six years of silence, I'm making music at last.

+ One of the things I've been most dreading - digging and shoveling and researching and writing in order to read one of the boards I'm on the well-informed riot act about, inter alia, trust - is about three-quarters over.

+ I got a reasonably good start this weekend on all three of the major things I have to do in the next ten days: an IEP meeting with a client that promises to be more contentious than the time will hold; preparation for a five-day intensive training on trial advocacy; and the third issue this year of the one journal I still copyedit.

- The IEP client, whom I liked and respected, turns out to be a xenophobic, judgmental, right-wing, closeted racist who finds offensive the fact that someone decided to translate popcorn ads into Spanish (with English subtitles) during the AMLAs. This will have no effect on my ability to represent them - or, more accurately, their child - but it saddens me nonetheless.

+ Tomato season is not quite over.

+ And squash season has already started.

+ The catboys are still awesome. And silvery grey. And tabby. And softly purring.

+ There is really rather a lot of nifty television out there right now. (Even if most of the women in the shows in question ARE too fucking skinny for words.)

+ In the first episode of Mercy, a nurse gets a cop to take her home for hot sex and an orderly provides an experienced comic-relief Greek chorus for his friends' dramatic maneuverings. Oh - did I mention that (as far as this reasonably experienced watcher can tell) the nurse is African-American/Hispanic, the cop is Italian-American (aka, in some quarters, white), and the orderly is (1) Hispanic and (2) gay?

- Between 2 October and 6 November, I'm going to three professional conferences and two intense family events. I'm pre-emptively exhausted.

- I am also beyond overworked, to the point of spending every night and weekend day plowing through cases and trying like hell to get caught up.

- Needless to say, I'm a bit tired. (And also uncharacteristically silent.)

- The first of the family events - which comes, regrettably, immediately on the heels of the first of the conferences - is the first anniversary of La Mama's death.

+ I get to spend it with the sistergirl, who is prying herself away from the ABIL and coming to stay with me for the weekend.

+ I have an appointment with a sports orthopod this coming Friday to try to figure out

- why my right ankle is still not working properly.

+ Clyde the bionicized knee, however, is working just fine. And has this very sexy scar to boot.

- Still not king. Or even president.

And you? Give me a plus and minus for you, eh?

Tags: update

Dearest La Mama -

( Y'know, this would be WAY easier with a glass of wine. Or three. Preferably from a bottle shared with you. Kendall Jackson chardonnay, anyone? )


To those in my circle who are mothers of any kind: the happiest of mothers' days. To those in my circle who have lost their mothers: you are in my thoughts and my heart. To all the rest of you: be well and be loved.

( 1) Technowoe. )


( 2) Craftiness. )


3), a brief open letter to the weather gods:
Dear Thundering Herds -

Spring rocks - not least because it is my birthday season and that of an awful lot of other nifty people. Please quit fucking with it. Workville does not lie in monsoon latitudes. Nor is it Florida. Some brief period of cool bearable prettiness seems requisite before we plunge right straight into hot wet heat, no?

--irritably, Q


4) I've returned to work this week, working 15-20 hours max from home. My goal is to ramp up to 40 hours/week by the end of May, and to return to my firm's physical plant on 1 June, by which time I should hopefully have been cleared to drive again. I am ... ambivalent about this. Bears thinking about, no?

DC Council votes - unanimously - to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.

I don't like hope. She's a tease, and a mean one. But right now, I'm falling in love with her.

Some days the world just amazes me. Check this out and tonight you might agree.

As a fair number of y'all know, I'm scheduled for surgery very early in the morning this Thursday, 9 April, at which point I will be having my right knee joint totally replaced. Now, because I have led a ridiculously lucky life thus far in some significant ways, I have approximately NO prior experience with serious surgery. (Or even frivolous, happy-go-lucky surgery.) As a result, when it comes to practical tips and tricks on how best to get through the next few days, there is a real lacuna in my knowledge base.

So - as usual - I'm throwing myself on y'all's tender (and not so much) mercies. If you've either had major surgery (and I don't have a fixed definition for that, so opt in at will) or have been through it with someone who has, I am interested in your advice and feedback on what I can control (as opposed to what the hospital pretty much has under its sterile and well-draped thumb) that, properly handled, is most likely to make the process go as smoothly and comfortably as possible. I'm particularly interested in thoughts about what I should bring with me to the hospital and what I should just not bother with. I'm also open to ideas about what kinds of comfort-and-ease plans I might want to make (or have the SG make) for the initial time at home after I get out of the hospital. I'll have help from physical and occupational therapists both before and after I leave, so I don't need exercise suggestions (yet) per se - but if your surgery required OT and you found one of the gadgets provided in that context to be particularly useful or an unusually complete waste of Rube Goldberg's time, that's useful knowledge as well.

Hit me, y'all. And thank you kindly.

This? Is fucking AWESOME.

Swear to God, I am thisclose to abandoning everything else I have to do tonight and going off to write my own Tale of Where.

Write yours. If you do, I will read them. (In case that's a draw at all.) And I'm betting I won't be the only one.