sundries

[rm]

If you're not on my Twitter, I need to inform you that last night I saw a woman in Duane Reade doing an elaborate interpretive dance imitation of her cat cleaning itself. She was twisting her neck around and kicking her legs back and sticking out her tongue and all. While in a skirt and high heels. Her boyfriend clearly wanted to die.

Today, the building shut off the water (while I was in need of it) to replace a toilet downstairs, all without telling me. It's fine now.

My academic programming for DragonCon has been submitted. Between that and Writercon stuff (still have to pull the vending thing together) and the recent Modern Library contract and some other submissions I've sent out, I feel really good and together and solid. Yeah, still need to write the Madonna thing.

Am I wearing a cute shirt? Is it in the orange or red spectrum? That means it's laundry time and I'm wearing Patty's clothes.

Every time I think I'm ready to get my plane tickets to WriterCon, I look more closely at the options and frown. AirTran is awful right? What the fuck is SunCoast airlines? Does Delta really offer the only non-stop and is it really $340? Sigh. I can take a flight with a stopover, but it's incredibly bad for me, and I'd really, really prefer not to.

It's super warm out, so I didn't wear a coat or jacket. Now I am freezing in my office.

Thanks to my most recent photo posting, sethg_prime has given me a frightening idea for a Torchwood AU fic: Torchwood as hedge fund. I've already sort of got it figured out too, in terms of Ianto pulling some Kerviel-like stunt instead of the RobotGirl in the basement thing.

The gluten-free chocolate caramel biscuits are back in stock at Whole Foods, after I whined and whined. So I bought four boxes, in preparation for future shortages again.

Various Bachchan's after voting in India's general election; via sannate. Probably less amusing if you don't actually know who they are.

My outrage fatigue of the Bush years has given away to a frustrated incredulity. I feel as if I can no longer say anything rational about politics, because nothing that is happening in politics is rational enough to even address: Obama lying about actively working with the Pentagon on Don't Ask, Don't Tell; Dick Cheney's notion that he's somehow running for president; this cracked out belief that our maximum security prisons are incapable of holding terrorism suspects; deliberate lies from politicians about what habeas corpus actually is (and a citizenry that apparently no longer learns this in third grade -- DO YOU KNOW WHAT HABEAS CORPUS IS?); the ongoing torture/Gitmo clusterfuck or lies, forgiveness, moving forward and selective demonization. I JUST CAN'T TAKE IT. What can we do? I don't even know what we can do.

Lambda Legal says California Supreme Court will announce Prop 8 decision on Tuesday, May 26.

Comments

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

AirTran is awful right?

*nods* Cheap and nasty, apparently. Wikipedia's article on it includes their history of dodgy labor relations and the incident on an AirTran flight on 1/1/09 where nine Muslim passengers dressed in stereotypical fashion were dragged off the plane for an off-the-cuff remark one of them made.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

You need an office sweater -- a sweater that's sole purpose is to be worn in an over air-conditioned office. (And just why are office buildings set at 65 degrees when it's warm outside?)

About the plane ticket, from my experience in the hinterlands, $340 is a cheap ticket for a non-stop. The only non-stops I get are to the hubs that serve my regional airport.

[rm.livejournal.com]

See, we're only paying $210 each to Atlanta. And I can get to SF for about $250. So it's insane to me that Minneapolis costs so much more (although I can get it for $211 on AirTrain flying at terrible times and with a stop, which is not happening).

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

It was $350 for my tickets to DFW. I don't get it.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

$340 is a cheap ticket for a non-stop.

I did do better than that the first time I flew out to Gallifrey, but then again it was a) VA's inaugural sale; b) I gave them plenty of notice (rather than, as happened this year, shelled out rather a chunk of change at the last minute).

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Buh. And at least one of the carriers has DFW as a *hub*, so it's not exactly out of the way.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Exactly. The same thing happened flying to Atlanta last year for Dragon*Con. I forget the amount I paid, but I remember being horrified for paying that much to fly to one of the highest volume airports in the country.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yeah we paid $303 last year. I was very happy to find it for 209 this year on Delta.

[kel-reiley.livejournal.com]

- cat lady, i'd be embarrassed if i were her boyfriend, too (although, he might just like that she's quite the contortionist)

- TW AU - i whole-heartedly encourage this!

- i've found i've had to take a huge step away from politics for now, it's just getting too upsetting and i'm tired of being upset about it (perhaps that makes me a bad citizen, but again, TIRED)

[sethg]

Ah, but because one of the carriers has DFW as a hub, that carrier can charge monopoly prices to anyone who wants to fly into it.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

JERKS!

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

It's the difference between city pricing and backwoods pricing. Just out of curiosity, I'm pricing what it would be for me for that con. The lowest flight out of Roanoke would have me changing in Detroit and Milwaukee for $299. The lowest one-stop is $355. No non-stop flights at all.

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

Minneapolis is a hub for Northwest. I see nonstops for $300 (total including taxes/fees) from JFK and EWR for the Writercon dates on their site right now.

Yeah, I'd stay away from AirTran. I used to take them to DragonCon and I once had to call their 800 number and wait two hours to get them to give me and about 15 other passengers our baggage. Apparently their staff wanted to go home early so they just locked up the luggage immediately upon taking it off the plane and then left the terminal. 1-800-AirTran had to send some special late night person to unlock our luggage, and he had the gall to yell at us for not retrieving it quickly enough!

[rm.livejournal.com]

WOW.

I'm really, really hoping to fly out of LGA, which is 20 minutes from our house, but I'm increasingly thinking that's not going to happen.

[ladyaelfwynn.livejournal.com]

I've been fatigued since the 2000 elections.

Living here, political craziness is everywhere. You have it with your breakfast. You just want to see what the weather is and whether or not you should brave the American Legion bridge or just take Metro and hear about Dick Cheney/Donald Rumsfeld/Pat Buchanan/Newt Gingrich/one of the Bushes saying something idiotic and infuriating. I've had periods when I had to stop listening to the news as I was about to pull as Elvis and shoot my tv/radio. (The arrows would've bounced off, luckily! ;-p)

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia tells me that "Duane Reade is a chain of drug and convenience stores," which is not at all what I was expecting it to be. Embarrassed BF is embarrassed.

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

*nods* LaGuardia is much closer to me, too, but if the tradeoff is a nonstop flight I'll gladly go to JFK or EWR. (It helps that the train to EWR is the same one I used to take to my parents' house in NJ, so I could take it in my sleep. And the subway -> airtrain to JFK isn't bad.)

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

And by jerks I would take it we mean" the first ones up against the wall come the Revoloution."

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

If there's a just and loving god.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

*Revolution
It's been a while.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's very much a New York institution.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Manned by the stupidest workers in the entire city.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

If there isn't, we can MAKE one!

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Our prices are low because our employees aren't worth crap!

[nobodyreally.livejournal.com]

crazy cat lady - at least no plastic 'make me look like a cat' surgery

politics - I was never a believer in change you can believe in so the letdown is less of a big deal. My prediction that this administration would turn out to be politics as usual has been fulfilled and while I am sorry to see it, I am not surprised. Not one bit.

Prop 8 - *crosses fingers* (and is pissed that trying to secure some people's rights require us to cross our fingers and hope they get it right this time...)