Scary flat:

So we're moving. Our flat is scary. A homeless guy was banging on our door tonight, and we called the police. By the time they came (about 5 minutes after we called), he was gone, but it was scary. They were very nice, and even looked around and told us we could probably find somewhere cheaper that was as good. The landlord came too, and he is going to try to find a place for us. He said he'd give us the deposit back if we needed to move, so we're hoping to find somewhere else by Saturday and we can move then.

Newspapers in the UK:

So several people I know have commented on this. The newspapers here are more tabloidy and less crime-focused than their equivalents in the states. Example: today, the London Times had a front page article on a marathon through Loch Ness and a page 5 story about high heels. The first ten pages of the AJC are basically ads and the Trib is basically crime. Plus there are way more article on Benifer than I expected. They've taken over David Beckham and Posh Spice for top billing it appears, and not just in the tabloids.

Uggh:

Still no wireless. It looks like one of the settings on the laptop is wrong but neither I nor the guy at the wireless place could figure out which one. I'm hoping Dell's UK tech support can help me, because it will cost a pile of money to call US tech support from here.

New email:

I'll still be checking my U of C email, but if you want to get in touch with me more quickly, email me on kathleen.moriarty@orange.net. I can check this from my mobile and get a text message whenever I get an email, so I should be able to get back to you pretty soon, unless it's the middle of the night or something.

Mass at Brompton Oratory:

I already wrote this once, but Blogger crashed, so this will be abit condensed.

I went to Mass at Brompton Oratory this morning. The was built shortly after the end of the persecution of Roman Catholics in England and was bult to be an eightenth century showplace. So it is very baroque, very ornate, very beautiful in a cluttered sort of way.

The Mass was actually a Latin High Mass with the singing and the incense and was very beautiful. The choir was lovely and even the priests (and there were four officiating and at least a half a dozen others serving) had decent voices. The service itself was very conservative, with a communion rail, no lay servers, and the priest turned around away from the congregation.

The priest who gave the sermon said that the church was not diocesan; rather the priests who serve in their order serve there for life, which explains how they were able to have so many priests at one Mass. They also get no diocesan money, but it was pretty crowded and the parishoners looked well-off, so that may not be so bad for them.

The Latin was beautiful, but I like the idea of lay servers and the priest facing the congregation and there's no way that there are enough priests to implement this kind of thing on a large scale anyway. Apparently, though, there's talked the JP2 will release a document containing guidance on the language of the Church and the rumor is that he will advocate a partial return to Latin. Maybe one Mass at most churches, or at least Masses at pilgrimage churches at which members of the congregation might speak upwards of twenty languages would be said in Latin.

I'm interested to see what happens with this.

Still no wireless:

The wireless place is closed today, so the soonest I can get my laptop hooked up is tomorrow. I really need a codec so I can watch this movie.

The wave:

While waiting endlessly for a Tube yesterday, a groupd of men on the other side of the platform managed to get the wave going. It reminded me of those commercials for the NFL where they're doing the wave in the courtroom.

Sartorial miscues:

I've been saving these for a while, but here are a few more egregious clothing mistakes that I've seen in approximately the past month.

• A woman in a shirt so tight that you could see the fat rolls on her sides over her too-tight bra.
  
• A boy in a very unattractive pair of striped boxers. Of course, I know what his boxers looked like because were halfway down his ass. I don't even understand why they were staying up. I do feel really old complaining about the giant pants that the kids are wearing nowadays, but I never understood this trend when I was in high school either.
  
• A woman with a tee-shirt so thin I could actually read the brand name off the back of her bra (it was a Maidenform).
  
• A guy in a cable-knit tan sweater and a pair of really tight leather pants.
  

Technical note:

Sorry, but until I can get into Telnet, permalinks and recent archives won't work. The internet cafes I have tried have been IE only, but I've found a place with free wireless, so I'm going to try to bring my laptop in tomorrow pm.

Joe Schmo:

So I haven't actually watched this show, but I did enjoy this article.

BTW, does anyone know anything about The Next Joe Millionaire? I admit I'm pissed that I'm going to miss it.

Day trip to Bath:

I went to Bath with Terra today. It took about an hour and a half on one train, and I met up with her at Didcot Junction. We had a pretty good time. The Roman baths were really neat, even if you weren't supposed to touch the water (it's untreated and really green, and not in the Chicago-River-died-for-St.-Patrick's-Day way). A lot of the original structure survives, the main path and the walls around it and large parts of the two east and west baths.

After that, we went to Bath Abbey, which had some pretty cool stained glass and looked to be about 13th century Norman. I love looking at the old graves, the man eulogised as a 'strictly honest man,' the Royal Navy captain, and at least one Maher (not likely to be my ancestor, though, not buried in a Protestant church).

Then we went to the Museum of Costume, which had clothes from the 17-20th centuries. I hadn't realised that until about the 19th century, horsehair was used to make petticoats. Talk about uncomfortable.

Then to Victoria Park, with its about 18 million swans, a walk around town and a coffee, and back to London by 6.

Unfortunately, there was a fire alert on the Circle Line, and it was messing up District and Circle line trains, so I had to wait 25 minutes for a Tube at Paddington. So I didn't get back to near the flat until 6:45, and the internet cafe closed at 7. I went home, made some phone calls, and came to this place in Bayswater that's open late. And then the lifts were broken at Queensway (and it's 120+ steps to the street), so I ended up walking from Notting Hill Gate.

Not exactly a banner day for public transport for me...

Sudeep, you probably don't want to read this:

I was at Target last week and they make pads (and pantyliners) to fit thongs. I mean, if there's ever a time to wear a Tampon, I think wearing a thong qualifies.

In London:

So I got in fine, the flight was good, except for the guy who fainted on it, but he seemed like he was OK later. I had two seats to myself. Sweet.

The apartment is fine, it looks like it could be run by K&G, you know the type. Some of the furniture is new and stylin' (pleather sofa AND loveseat... you know you want to see this place), some is old and looks like it might have been in any of your apartments at any given time.

It's close to the Tube, the Safeway, and an internet cafe. Everything I own is still in left luggage at Victoria Station, though. I must get back before mdinight.

But first I have to go to Safeway and acquire some toilet paper.

More computer problems:

I had it worked out perfectly. My father was going to pay for and install a new hard drive in my old laptop. In return, he was going to get to use my new laptop while I was gone, and I was going to take the old one, which isn't worth more than a couple hundred dollars, so it wouldn't be the end of the world if it got stolen.

I went to CompUSA, got a new hard drvie, my father got it installed and turned the computer on to format it. And the LCD is totally smashed. Not like a little bit cracked. It is kind of pretty. But that's $300-400 to replace, and I'm not spending that on a 2+ year old computer that hasn't worked well for the past year. Luckily CompUSA will take the drive back (-15%), so I'm going to go return that.

I like how if I look up my laptop model on the HP website it gives me an option of "do you want to dispose of this product?" Yes, thank you, I do.

What $120,000 will buy you:

According to my mother, what I've learned from my $120,000 education is:

The number of Delta flights daily from Atlanta to Las Vegas (6)

What catcher has hit 40+ homeruns in the fewest atbats (Javy Lopez, 2003)

Who will win the Home Depot tool race, admittedly the dumbest thing I have ever seen (the hammer)

Corporate promos in between innings at the baseball game kind of suck.

I was there Saturday, though, so even though we lost, we got to see Smoltz's first game back. It kind of rocked. They played the Storm Trooper march from Star Wars and everyone cheered. He threw three pitches to one guy (and got him out). Then they brought in Ray King.

Morality of murder (UPDATED):

Interestingly, The Island of the Day Before (of which I have 20 more pages to read) brings up the same point as the third point in this article. If someone could somehow change history and save Jesus from crucifixion, should he? He would be saving one man and sentencing all of humanity to hell. I'll post the quote from Eco when I get home.

Update: The promised quotes.
'But,' Ferrante objected, 'if you prevent the Passion, then there will never be the Redemption, and the world will still be stained by original sin.'
'Aii!' Judas shouted, crying. 'I was thinking only of myself! But what must I do then? If I continue to let myself act as I acted, I remain damned. If I amend my error, I confound the plan of God and will be punished by damnation. Was it then written from the beginning that I was damned to be damned?'
[...]
On that slippery deck, Roberto was fighting so that Christ could be nailed to the Cross, and he invoked Divine aid; Ferrante, to prevent Christ's suffering, invoked the names of all the devils.

Memorisation:

"next to of course god america i love thee
land of the pilgrims and so forth
o say can you see my country tis of
centuries come and go and are no more
what of it we should worry
in every language even deaf and dumb
thy sons acclaim thy glorious name
by gory by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beautiful
than these triumphant happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they never stopped to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute,"
he spoke, and drank rapidly a glass of water
-ee cumings

I had to memorise this poem my senior year of high school for English, then we were supposed to recite it for a poetry reading that never happened. Surprisingly, I still remember it; I was able to type this from memory.

I've always been pretty good at memorising things. At ScavHunt this year, I memorised a Shakespearian sonnet in half an hour (which I completely don't remember, I think it started "Why didst thou tempt me with such a beautous day,/ to make me travel forth without my cloak"). I'm just not sure how helpful that talent is.

Memorisation of poetry is something that sort of went out with the druids. In our written world, is memorisation still necessary?

Maybe. For poetry, I think it can be easier to say it from memory rather than reading it. It makes it easier to ge tthe rhythm right when you don't have to think about saying it. "This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with a whimper." doesn't work when you read it.

On the other hand, memorisation also encourages the sort of rote reading that you hear so often, people droning on about poems that don't understand. Sometimes reading the poem makes the reader think about it a little more.

I guess I should call it a flat, really:

It's official! I have somewhere to live while I'm in London. It's a ground floor flat in Holland Park, about six Tube stops west of where I'll be working. I'm so relieved. We have two bedrooms, one bath, a living room and kitchen. Terra (who rocks) looked at it while she was visiting London and said everything was fine, clean and safe-looking. I have to go figure out how to get a bank draft in pounds from Wachovia so I can pay the landlord when I get there.

I'll send out a general email with my address and such. If anyone is planning to be in London this fall, definitely come visit.

So happy!

The FBI is calling:

I got another call from the guy doing my background investigation today. I was really scared, since I had, you know, gotten an apartment and a ticket over and all that. Luckily, he wasn't calling to tell me I was not cleared. Instead, he had forgotten to tell me about the Privacy Act and how it applied to me. My file can be released to other government agencies looking into my background and will be kept on file by the State Dept. That's a little scary: for Christ's sake this is a three month internship!

But anyway, I still get to go to London in a week.

Elementary education:

This is how public education should be.

General Motors:

One of the interesting things about working in a building owned by GM is that sometimes you come in to work and there's a car in the atrium. Today it was the Rainier (which I think is like the mountain, rather than like more rainy) which apparently is endorsed by Tiger Woods. And if you come to 5730 Genridge on 22/9 from 11:00 - 1:30, you can test drive it and get a free lunch from the Varsity. Mmm, FOs. Even though I won't be working then, I'm sort of tempted to try to get some free lunch.

Iain Pears:

I'm really starting to like Iain Pears. I already wrote about The Dream of Scipio, but I finished reading The Immaculate Deception, a novel about an art theft, sketchy government practices, and a (possibly) invaluable piece of artwork. It's really good.

It's always fun to pick authors off the shelf ocmpletely randomly and end up liking them a lot.

Are you ready for some football?:

So the guy behind me at the grocery store yesterday bought a foam cooler, two bags of ice, and a 24-pack of Coors Light. And nothing else.

The Downwind Cafe:

I went to one of my favorite restaurants in Atlanta last night. The Downwind is a bar and grill located in Peachtree Dekalb Airport, the second busiest airport in Georgia. The airport itself reminds me of a different time, to get to the Downwind you walk through a building holding airport offices. It looks like an old elementary school, except that when you turn a corner, you can see inside a hanger where mechanics are fixing up a couple of Learjets. On ground level, you are separated from the tarmac by a six-foot high chain link fence, and about thirty feet from the fence, there is a playground.

The restaurant consists mainly of in indoor bar and an outdoor deck that overlooks the runways. On a nice night (the weather in Atlanta has been absolutely beautiful all week, 75 for a high and sunny), you sit out on the deck and watch the planes come in. You can look up at the sky at twilight and see a string of bright lights flung out against the sky, little prop planes waiting for their permission to land.

The food is OK, nothing special. It's a mix of Greek food (the owner is Greek) and typical bar and grill fare. All of it tastes pretty good, but the atmosphere is what brings me back. The Downwind is one of the truly unique places I have eaten at.

The Man in Black:

Good-bye, Johnny Cash. Where you are, you'll be able to wear bright colors every day.

Hispanics and worker's comp:

As many of you know, I work in medical claims relating worker's compensation claims. A disproportionate number of the injured workers are Hispanics. This is unsurprising since Hispanics are more likely to work jobs involving menial labor, jobs which are more susceptible to on-the-job injuries.

Many injured workers wish to return to Mexico to live with their families again. I wonder how that goes. They're (sometimes badly) injured, they've given up on the dream of America as the place where they can earn plenty of money, and they don't have any skills to get non-menial jobs in Mexico. One worker wanted to set up his own business in Mexico, doing what he had done in the US, only now he would be the supervisor. But where is the capital coming from? Maybe they should get their disability in one chunk, so they can start over in Mexico.

Of course, these are the lucky workers. The ones who work sketchy jobs with no worker's comp are left with a pile of medical bills and no way of paying them and a debilitating injury and lack of education preventing them from any chance of making enough money to suppor ttheir families.

Not being homeless:

As kind as Will's offers of box-related living have been, I'm really hoping I find an actual apartment (you know, with walls and a roof and indoor plumbing). Things are looking fairly good, though I do hate to tempt fate by saying that.

We found a place in Holland Park that sounds OK. Terra went and looked at it yesterday, and she liked it. I emailed the landlord today, and hopefully we'll be able to take it by the beginning of next week. The sort of annoying part is that one of my roommates has decided she wants it till the 26th. I'm hoping that's negotiable since the latest we can have it would be Christmas, and realistically it will have to be several days before Christmas, I think.

But yeah. Homelessness does NOT make us happy.

September 11, 2001:

It's funny to think what it was like two years ago. I was asleep, actually, until a couple of minutes after nine. My mother didn't wake me up until after the second plane hit, until it was no longer possible that it was all some horrible accident, some naviagational mistake, until we could no longer pretend that everyone liked us.

She said, "you won't be flying anywhere today" since I was supposed to fly up to Chicago for O-Aide training about 5 that afternoon. I didn't understand what she was saying, so I got up and went downstairs and turned on CNN. I didn't turn the TV off for almost 8 hours.

When I couldn't take CNN anymore, I flipped through all the other channels. There were about four newsbroadcasts on, and several channels were showing a screen with a flag and a message. I settled on Spanish news for a while. Then flipped back to Fox News, CNN, I couldn't stay still. I got up and went online; my mother had left for errands. I was online when the first tower fell, but the TV was still on and I heard it from the other room. I didn't believe the plane had hit the Pentagon for a long time, I thought it was just the fear and confusion that turned something like a fuse blowing into a terrorist attack.

Most of all, I remember the fear. So many people I knew were flying that day and I didn't know where anyone was. At the beginning, we didn't know where the planes had been going and what flight they were. I didn't know if one of my friends had been flying, had crashed into a fireball in DC, or New York, or Pennsylvania. I didn't know if one of my friends was at the WTC; I knew a couple of people who had worked there that summer. A friend actually was there, but he was on the 35th floor of the South tower and he made it out. My response to the events would have been totally different if they had happened two weeks later, when everyone was accounted for safe in Chicago or Boston or Athens. Then, I would have been sad first, I wouldn't have felt the mind-numbing fear.

We drove up, on Thursday and Friday, through a forest of flags and hearing things on the radio I never believed I would hear. I was in O'Hare on Saturday, Sept. 15, waiting for prospective students who were flying in. We got there at 7:30 am, and the only people near the baggage claim besides us were two cops. When we left about 10, we had seen one prospective student and I think we scared her with our enthusiasm. It was so empty. I'm used to busy airports and seeing that empty baggage claim made me cry all over again.

Today we remember our dead. Today, and every day, but most visibly today.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona eis requiem.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona eis requiem sempiternam.
Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine,
cum sanctis tuis in aeternam:
quia pius es.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine;
et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Gym:

I've been going to the gym pretty faithfully this summer, 4-5 days a week. It's mainly because I paid so much for the damn membership that I'm going to use it. I hate getting hit on there, though. Well, there was one boy that I didn't hate it so much, but overall it drives me crazy.

If you are 45 years old, with a pot belly, thinning hair, and seriously over-compensating muscles, I don't want to date you. You can stop wasting your time. Move on. Now.

Lifeteen Mass:

I went to Lifeteen Mass last night, and I remembered why I didn't like Lifeteen Masses. I've been trying to quantify this for non-aesthetic reasons for the past day. I have two major complaints that I've been able to come up with that are more substantial than "I find the music wholly uninspired."

Lifeteen Masses tend to encourage the view of religious music as a performance. I realise this problem is hardly restricted to Lifeteen Masses and that many people may not even see it as a problem, but I don't like it. To me, church music should be sung to glorify God, not to sound good. Musicians shouldn't be recording music sung during a Mass to put it on their resume. Now that's not to say that I don't enjoy good music at Mass, or that I don't believe that musical groups should try to practice as hard as they can to sound as good as they can. It's more that I don't think music not a part of the liturgy should be sung. That second song that almost every church plays at the communion is the prime example, though all the verses that are sung in every song, long after the priest has left the church or come in or the collection is finished. I hate the way people feel like they should clap at the end of the Mass. YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO CLAP FOR LITURGICAL MUSIC. And this is not unique to Lifeteen, but it is worse there than at any other Mass I have been to.

Lifeteen Mass dramatically alter the prayers used so that they will fit to pre-chosen music. This is to a certain extent true of all prayers, but the two it is worst for are the Gloria and the Credo. I'm going to bitch about the Credo here, both because it is the prayer I know most about and because it is probably the most important prayer of the Mass. Compare the Nicene Creed with the much-adulterated Lifeteen version (right hand column). Now, clearly these prayers are totally different, but I'm going to highlight two missing phrases in the Lifeteen version. One is: "one in being with the Father," (consubstantiality) the Church Fathers' rejection of Arianism. They were willing to risk the fate of the Church over the one iota of difference between homoousios (lit. same substance, Catholic belief) and homoiousios (lit. similar substance, Arian belief). This may seem like nit-picking (as so much of theology does to me) but this decision had major historical impacts that are in many ways still being felt today. The Fathers risked the destruction of the Church when they condemned this heresy at Nicaea, so clearly this was an important distinction to them. The other missing phrase that I find particularly egregious is "who proceeds from the Father and the Son." This clause, called the Filioque by the Latin Church, was not added to the Creed until much after Nicaea and was used by the Eastern Church as an example of the heresy that the Western Church had fallen into at the time of the schism. At least one attempt to reunite the two Churches was halted by the Greek Church's refusal to accept the Filioque and the Latin Church's refusal to renounce it.

The historical influence is sort of secondary to the main point, that the consequences of keeping these two phrases shows the importance of them to the Church Fathers. So why does the Church just allow Lifeteen to remove them from the liturgy? I remember the giant mess when the phrase "This is the Word of the Lord" was changed to "The Word of the Lord." I mean, removing "this is" is hardly a major difference. But for some reason completely changing a prayer is no big deal.

I do think most of the changes of Vatican II were good. Though I personally prefer the Latin Mass, the changes made in Vatican II have allowed the Church to survive even though she doesn't have the priests she once did. Turning the laity into ministers was necessary and probably the most enduring change of Vatican II. But I regret that the prayer "Laudamus te. Benedicimus te. Adoramus te. Glorificamus te." became "we worship you, we give you praise, we glorify your name," that "In spiritu humilitatis, et in animo contrito suscipiamur a te, Domine: et sic fiat sacrificum nostrum in conspectu tuo hodie, ut placeat tibi, Domine Deus." became "pray, brothers and sisters, that this our sacrifice may be acceptable to God the Father Almighty," that "Introibo ad altare Dei. Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam" is gone from the Mass. But this is just my own aesthetic sense.

For a really really interesting take on some of the negative effects of Vatican II, I recommend Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez. I had to read this for a class I hated (*cough,cough* Hum) and this book was one of the only worthwhile things out of it. All of the essays were good, but I think it was the fourth one that was about the Church pre- and post-Vatican II.

Take this job:

There's this woman at my office who has the weirdest job I know of. She crochets outfits for strippers.

Flying to London:

Sometimes I hate thinking of titles for these entries. Oh, well, the pain I go through for my art...

I booked my flight for London yesterday on Delta (so it's non-stop and I get Frequent Flier Miles-- yayy!). I'm leaving Atlanta on 24/9, getting into Gatwick at 11 am on 25/9. I leave from Gatwick at 1 pm on 19/12.

I also have a real possibility of a place to live. It's a two bedroom in Holland Park, and with three of us there, we can afford it. Terra (who rocks and is in London right now) is going to look at the place on Tuesday or Wednesday and hopefully we can take it soon. I hate worrying about being homeless.

And something you don't think about-- after I leave, I won't be able to give blood. Twelve weeks in the UK disqualifies you. Well, I'll give once more before I go, I hope, but right now I have the sore throat that won't go away so they won't take my blood anyway. I haven't eaten anything other than semi-solid dairy products (and a hot dog, sometimes the pain is worth it) since Wednesday. I'm hungry.

Baseball game:

I went to my first (and realistically only) baseball game of the season tonight. It was really good-- the Braves won, Maddux pitched well, Furcal was 4 for 5, and Sheffield got a home run. And it was $1 hot dog and soda night, so that was cool. It was really nice tonight too, cool and windy.

I know a lot of my friends hate baseball. They think it's boring, moves interminably slow, etc. But baseball is such a summer game. It's the only sport that's played outdoors at night, since it's too hot during the day to play (Cubs not withstanding). It's the sport you sit outside on your porch and listen to on the radio, since you never really feel like you miss anything in baseball if you don't watch it on TV. Baseball is a sport for those non-air-conditioned small towns where there isn't much else to do in the summer so everyone talks about the closest team. St. Louis is a baseball town, and in the Ozarks in the summer all you hear on the radio is the Cardinals. In a hundred small towns in north Florida and south Georgia, everyone talks about the Braves, whether they are good or not.

Though baseball isn't really a sport to get excited about, for me nothing can ever match the feeling of the Braves going to the World Series in 1991. That was so exciting, it was all everyone in Atlanta talked about from July on. Every day, you expected the house of cards to fall down, and when it didn't and didn't and didn't you could barely breathe. Even not winning the Series wasn't much of a let-down. That was such an amazing series and it was so great to even be a part of it.

So, how 'bout them Braves?

Shoulder parrots:

Who will go in with me to get Paul Sally a parrot. We can teach it to speak with this Feathered Phonics CD!

*By the way I am not in fact obsessed with pirates. It just sort of seems that way. I can go days and days without thinking of pirates at all. Honest.

Homeless:

So as of right now I'm planning a box-warming party in London on Sept. 26. You're all invited, and I would appreciate weather-proofing materials like garbage bags and duct tape.

Two weeks notice:

I just gave my notice at my job today. My last day will be Sept. 19, coincidentally the same day as Talk Like a Pirate Day. This has some real possibilities.

I will miss this job. Even though the work is hardly the most interesting thing I've done, the people have been really great. I got a very nice email from one of my bosses when I told her I was quitting.

This is the first job I've worked at where I gave notice like this. In the lab or for the math department my jobs have just sort of ended. It's been the end of the quarter and it's time for me to go. At the movie theater, I just tell whoever's doing the schedule, "hey, don't schedule me after x- date." This job I had to go into my boss' office and tell him I'm leaving. Even though they weren't surprised or anything, and really I work for the temp agency and not for Concentra at all, it was still kind of hard. Then I didn't tell my direct supervisor because I wanted to tell her boss first, and she left for the day and I ended up not getting to tell her at all. She must have heard from someone else. I feel bad about that.

I won't miss some of the idiots who call though. I answered the phone the other day with our long spiel and after I finished the woman on the other end said: "wow, you don't have an accent!" like "aren't you special?" I guess she assumed that since she was calling the Atlanta office she was going to get Scarlett O'Hara or something.

Happiness is a new monitor:

So my monitor at work has been screwed up for a while. The screen has been permanently stuck in the "narrow screen" mode, ie the picture won't display across the whole screen, both sides are cropped. It's annoying, but it's been that way since I started, and I've gotten used to it. It is apparently some sort of problem with the input cable, but other than repeatedly banging on the table, I can't fix it (and repeatedly banging on the table for 40 hours a week is kind of annoying).

Today, however, we got a new problem. The screen would flash very bright white light for about three seconds. I've never seen a monitor do that, but it looked like it was about to blow out to me. I told my boss, and he dug up a monitor for me that's huge and so clear. My headache started going away almost instantaneously. It rocks. The only problem is that I got so used to the narrow screen that I kept checking my margins because I didn't think they could possibly be right.

With my giant new monitor, I can almost forget that my computer has a 150 MB Pentium processor and 40K of RAM. Almost.

Oh, and if anyone knows how to fix my old monitor, please don't tell me.

Slacker:

You know you're the office slacker when other people from your job start asking you how to set up web pages and search for things on the internet. Sigh. Honestly, if I had more work, I'd do it, but since I don't, I read a lot of TWoP.

Polygamy:

Rob Corddry of the Daily Show on Santorum's supposed support of polygamists: "Practically speaking, who would you rather have voting for you, a man and wife or a man and wives?"

Kroger's is hiring:

I applied for a job at the Kroger's (a grocery story chain) about a quarter-mile from my house in June and got a callback this morning. Needless to say, I'm not going in for an interview but my mother was impressed that the manager could pronounce my last name. His name was Mickey, too. Maybe he was Irish.

There will be no grandkids this year:

My mother has apparently decided she wants grandkids or something. Now every time she sees an Irish name attached to a cutish face in the newspaper, she tries to hook me up with him. A guy who teaches at Marist. A tennis player. Whatever. It's a little annoying.