Last week Erik spent the day at the vet's for an ultrasound (everything looks good, they said; awaiting formal report). When I picked him up, the person at the desk asked me to sign a photo release. It turns out that this was their day to take photos of staff members for their web site, and since my vet had made a special trip just to be there ( Read more... )

One of the things that's hard about learning English from the outside (and, I presume, hard about other languages) is how much of common usage is idiom and analogy. This thought came to mind during a meeting today with exchanges like the following (in fairly rapid succession):
( silliness ahead )

A geek perspective on the papal conclave (from dglenn).
MIT's time-traveller convention (from arib).
Remember those rebates I'm due from CompUSA and HP? I got a ding ( Read more... )

You know it's a bad snow-driving night when you get off the highway and increase your speed. Yup, very cautious people on the parkway tonight. Somewhat cautious people on the local streets.
Silly cats (very funny!) from ian_gunn.
Overheard in the office: "The solar system consists of the sun, Jupiter, and assorted debris".
I finally watched last week ( Read more... )

Shavuot was good. More about that later.
One of the other people on that cantors'/etc list turns ( Read more... )

Eric Bogle, meet Gary Trudeau and Darby Conley (link via browngirl and several others).
On a lighter note, someone has finally given Jack Chick's "Dark Dungeons" MST3K treatment (link via autographedcat).
A guide to those bizarre glyphs that have replaced actual words on the lanudering instructions on some clothes (link via bhakti). Most bizarre ( Read more... )

It's National Send Your Porn to DGlenn week. Happy to help, dglenn. :-)
According to an article in Ha'Aretz, 18% of Israelis live below the poverty line. The story lacks a key piece of data, though: the number of those who are willfullyunemployed, like some of the right-wing folks ( Read more... )

I'm currently thinking of November 8 for the party.
I'm having fun with the Small Worlds project (that six-degrees-of-separation experiment). Tonight I got a new target, instantly knew whom to send it on to, and decided to try my luck again. And I instantly knew whom to send that one on to, so I tried again. That's when ( Read more... )

The story about the elephant is the funniest thing I've read in days.
I have a new front-runner in the "deceptive marketing" category. Today I examined a bag of Glenny's Soy Crisps, which proudly proclaims "10 grams pure soy protein" and "only 65 calories per serving". However, it is not 10 grams of protein per serving(The bag contains two ( Read more... )

This year's Hugo nominations are out ( Read more... )