Yes, isn’t it horrible? There just aren’t words.
I’ve spent the evening surfing the Dope and other parts of the web, trying to relax and escape reality.
Should be cleaning or reading a book, but here I am.
Now I’m off to bed.
GT
Yes.
We live in a sad world.
I wonder how many parents of kids away at college campuses called their kids when they heard the news just to give them a phone hug?
I did.
A cousin of mine attends VATech - but we have already confirmed that he is okay*. He lives off campus and did not have classes this morning.
- physically anyway; he knows one of the injured students.
Yeah, I’m kind of hoping my parents in Seoul don’t hear about this (although it’d be difficult not to, I think - the incident is making international news) because it would worry them unnecessarily, and they’re already a bit nervous about me attending school in the sketchier part of Chicago.
In more mundane news, I’ve been hired to do a transcription of some Korean sermons. Like, really hardcore fundie Christian sermons. It’s an easy job but I’m afraid my expression is going to freeze like this: :rolleyes: from listening to these sound files. Such a pile of wank, to borrow Scottish Darling’s expression.
Hello all.
Not much to say about the VTech shooting, I suppose. Just one more in an ever increasing list of incidents in which humanity disappoints me.
I spent most of the day working, and, y’know, watching out for any more trees should they decide to take another shot at me.
db, I thought about that. Probably shouldn’t have gone outside in that Saruman costume, yelling about the end of the age of man. Oops.
I’m tired. I think that’s all for now.
I have a question for you Mamas and Daddies and other people who know about babies. Why are you not supposed to give honey to a child under a year old?
I was making myself a nice cup of tea, and decided to go with honey because we are almost out of sugar and Mr. SCL will need it for his coffee in the morning. As I got the bottle off the shelf I noticed a small warning on it: Note: do not give honey to a child under one (1) year of age.
Why?
Evening everyone. Welcome back to our infrequent posters and welcome to the noobs! Ems, I’m so glad to see you got to leave Wyoming. Did you get transferred to Northern or Southern California?
You probably told us, but I’m just too tired to go upthread and check again.
I’m so tired, I can’t think of any stupid questions. I’ll probably remember when it’s much too late to post them in here.
I was busy at work, but saddened and horrified to see all the stuff about VA Tech. I feel so badly for the parents, students and staff of VA Tech.
I know I came here to actually write something interesting, but it just plain ol’ flew out of my head. I’m too tired, I think.
Night all.
I saw that too a while ago so I looked it up. Because honey is raw, there’s a chance that a baby could get botulism from honey. But adults have an immunity to it at that low level. So they say that honey is safe for adults but not babies. That’s what I remember off the top of my head without googling again anyway.
Well, one of my bf’s loved it and loved the puns. I never could get to lilke PA myself, but hey, that’s cool, he didn’t steal my Vorkosigans and I didn’t steal his Xanths 
I work at a bookstore hence the theme of the questions.
“Where’s non-fiction?”
“Is Anna Karenina a beach read?”
“Who’s the author of the Catechism of the Catholic Church?”
Indignant customer while in the J-K-L section of fiction: “Why don’t you have anything by Jodi Picoult?”
After telling a customer the book he wanted was out of print “So, can you order it for me?”
Variations of “There was a book here a few months ago with a red cover, where can I find it?”
… Joooodeeeer, so BOIL IT! That’s the reason? MAAAAN. We’d asked SiL where had this New Rule come from and she wouldn’t or couldn’t tell. One of the Many Ways In Which Her Inlaws surprised her when she first got married was by eating stuff from cans… she’d grown up believing that eating anything from a can, ever, only once, was bound to cause botulism. Like Mom said “well, if that was true it would be in the weapons section of the supermarket, not in food.”
The Nephew is now 17mo, Mom gave him his first honey-bribed meal last week (put just a drop of honey in a meal he usually refuses to eat) and he would have eaten the plastic dish. Apparently it’s another thing he got from our side. I didn’t steal the honey pot before I turned 1yo because I didn’t know it existed; one of my earliest memories is of watching Mom buy a pot (crockery, she still has it, with a white plastic lid which didn’t try to fit) from a gypsy woman selling them door-to-door… and of climbing the kitchen shelves at times when my parents didn’t happen to be home, to grab spoonfuls of it. I’d put the spoon on a shelf, climb up a bit, move up the spoon, climb up another bit, until me and the spoon reached the honey pot together. I was small enough to sit on a shelf, schrunched up, long enough to take a spoonful and eat it.
All you have to do to kill botulism is buy your honey in hermetic containers (you know, just the regular screw-on top instead of one of those easy-pour ones), put the unopened container in a pot, add water, set to boil, keep it boiling for 15 minutes making sure that the level of the water never goes below 2/3 of the honey-pot’s height. It’s OK if the honey-pot overturns and rolls. Pasteurization, pre-Pasteur style. Homemade jams have been pasteurized that way since Mason jars and screwtops were invented; actually, those are usually set to boil with the pots open, packed so tight they can’t wiggle, and closed after the water has been boiling for a few minutes (that way if the pot was closed right, you get the “pop” when you open it and you can use the “no pop, throw away” rule). Actually, most of the honey currently sold in Spain says Pasteurized, so you wouldn’t even need to do this at home. Isn’t honey in Parts Elsewhere pasteurized?
MBG, what I mostly do all day is sit on my bum letting it grow fat. I’m too efficient for my own good, apparently. Today I really have something to do:
May 12 I have to be in Spain: the grandparentals’ 70th wedding anniversary, aunt-and-second-husband’s 20th, Middlebro’s 33rd birthday. It wouldn’t get me kicked out of the family if I wasn’t… heck, if it would, I would seriously consider skipping… much worse, it would get me several-hour-long phone calls with Mom describing what everybody was wearing and what everybody said and who is related to whom in which fashion, as if I didn’t know them or something. And of course Grandma would act hurt whenever she felt like it, but that’s OK, I don’t see her much, I’m not obligated to call her (Mom’s duty, not mine, mwahahaha), and she wouldn’t call if the sky fell.
I knew I had another thing coming up, but until last Saturday I didn’t know which weekend exactly. Last Saturday the Official Email finally came, informing all parts interested that it would be on the 19th. So I wanted to take that whole week off, it’s not like I’m really needed.
Yesterday Boss wasn’t in, so I couldn’t ask for time off. And the training schedule came in: I’m to spend the two weeks around May 12 being trained either in stuff for which I wrote the tests, stuff for which I ran the tests, stuff for which I wrote the course or a combination of the above. Two of the courses I have on the week I wanted off are with other people, so I’m not going to try and reschedule, but for the rest I’m the only “student”. One of the teachers laughed his ass off (not literally) when I told him “you’re going to spend 6 hours training me on XYZ.”
So this week’s job: get my fastabulous training on the phenomenal courses I wrote rescheduled. Or the training sheets pre-signed 
If I just flee and they sue me in Switzerland, can I be extradited from Spain? It would be a civilian suit, so extradition doesn’t apply, does it? That’s for criminal cases.
I would, but I’ll be visiting Yakushima next Monday, and then the following Monday is the flight back to the US.
And anyhoo, all I’ve got to talk about is sitting about on my hiney contemplating starting packing. 
Some of the puns I like, but I would be fine without them.
I do still read all the Xanth books, but they’ve plunged into formula hell since after Question Quest. And his insistence on using Ida’s moons as a way to fulfil his desire to create new worlds is getting rather annoying. He does a lot better when he fills out more history of his worlds than when he creates new ones.
We still don’t know the history of the Night Stallion (it’s been dropped since Ogre Ogre.) And he pretty well never had the whole Goblinate of the Golden Horde line of story go anywhere. It’s been more of a “It’s important because everyone knows it’s important”-type thing.
So by the time you’re available to start an OP, you won’t be ahead of me any more. But we still want pics you know
Hi to all those people we dragged out of the shadows!
I hate meetings. Did I ever tell you that? I’ve just got one sorted out this morning that’s been doing my head in. I’m going to hide under a rock until it’s all gone away.
I just found out that I’m off (public holidays) on May 16, 17 and 18. Us Catholic Spaniards went and got rid of the feast of the Ascension as soon as we went all democratic, but them not-so-Catholic Swiss make it three days. The Germans only have off the Thursday and Friday; apparently the Swiss apply interest.
The guy in charge of training just found out I’m the only student for half the classes, his reaction was similar to mine.
I am SO going to be off that week!
I’m sure the training was only intended for you to assess the effectiveness of your materials and of the trainers, Nava.
And again, I ask, where’s swampy?
Off to work, hoping to avoid meetings so that I can GET SOME WORK DONE!!!
Here’s hoping for a peaceful Tuesday for all.
GT
I am SO GLAD that the VunderKind decided to stay in Indyanner to go to college; I tried to talk him into coming to VA and going to Old Dominion or VTech before we moved to Mayberry…
I is so svelte! I crawled through the smallest hole in my life since I lost the weight, in fire gear no less, to check on the situation under a house we were called to last night. It was quite disgusting, too, 'cuz there was 3 inches (8 cm, for you furriners) of standing water underneath from the weekend monsoons. I had about 20 feet to crawl to check things out, and there was no way to do it without getting soaked. Yuuuu-uuuuck.
Nava, and anyone else who thinks its okay to feed honey to an infant: Why would you want to risk harming an infant by giving them boiled honey that might get rid of the bacteria. Isn’t safer to just hold off until they’re older? I sure wouldn’t wan to risk a baby’s life on a “this will work in theory”
I feel awful this morning, and I really really really cannot get sick now, or they’ll cancel the operation. I am goiing to stay home from work. I have to go out later to mail off my taxes and some other errands, but I am going back to bed for awhile