[Friday] things wot are good
* It got down into the 60's overnight! Awesome.
* I am still so happy about Amy's news from yesterday.
* I forgot to mention that on Wednesday, Will told me the Name Sign he'd thought up for me -- a book opening, but with the halves of the book looking like the E sign. How perfect is that?
* We watched "In God We Trust" (tWW 6.20) today. I like Vinick a lot.
* Katie read me my Onion horoscope, and it is MADE OF AWESOME.
"You've never really been concerned with the plight of the giant panda, but that was before you found out about panda porn."
* MaryAlice informs me that M&M/Mars backtracked almost immediately on the animal rennet thing. (Apparently DemocraticUnderground was all over this issue. Hi, my flist fails at vegetarianism.) This is especially good as I've been wanting chocolate lots recently. Possibly a response to stress? I don't really know.
* fox1013 made "gay patron saint" Katie Heigl icons.
::ponders which icon I could swap out for the next three months::
* Eric informed me that the e-mail from the union titled "Final Ratification Election results" (which I thusly ignored) also had a macroed spreadsheet for calculating your new salary.
The "structural increase" is 2.6%, then there's a "progression increase," so ultimately I get a 5.64% increase. Whee, money! (This also makes me feel better about all the money I'll be spending on Europe.)
I actually almost included the actual numbers of my current salary and my new salary, 'cause it felt natural, but then I felt awkward, like it would be uncomfortable for readers, flaunting how much I make [which is not huge in the grand scheme of things, but with a flist full of students and temp workers....].
* I think this is the third day this week that I've heard bagpipes at Harvard Square on my way to the T.
* Eric texted me: "Theyre opening a qdoba at harvard sq."
* dinner at Firefly
I actually had gaydar for once and pinged my waiter as he came over. "May I ask where you got your necklace?" conversation confirmed it.
And the fact that I was having dinner by myself meant I got to listen to his repartee with all the other customers.
P.S. He said his name is Randy, which of course I think is unfortunate. But yes, otherwise, fabulous.
I was sad that they didn't have the white sangria I had passed on last time, but I ordered the red sangria.
When my $13 mushroom crepes arrived I initially felt put out that there was so not enough food to merit that price, but they were really yummy, plus I was still full five hours later, so bravo.
On my way out I noticed a rack of free periodicals, including BayWindows, MetroSource, stuff@night, and some others I didn't recognize/pick up.
* Tom Stoppard's Indian Ink
Nicole had in her head that the play started at 7:30, which was fine by me since she tends to run late, though this afternoon I told her it actually started at 8 and she said she and her new roommate Meghan (whom it turned out I'd met before) might be able to have a drink with me before the show (they were having dinner at home, which after I left work I realized I probably could have imposed on). But of course at 7:30 I still did not see them, so I leisurely made my way to BCA and I actually only waited about 5 minutes for them.
The play wasn't bad, though I wasn't especially impressed by the text or the performance thereof. I'll write further at some point when I have a full script to lift lines from. (Since I was going with people and knew it was a work by a major playwright, I figured I could pick up a copy of the play somewhere and didn't have to take notes.)
Afterward, Nicole suggested going somewhere to get a drink. Yeah, so when she said re: the fact that the play would get out near 11pm, "That's kind of a late night," she meant that would make the night starting after the play a late night. Sigh.
We went to 33, which was way more bizarre and bad than she remembered it being -- though she conceded that last time she was there she was with like 50 people, so she could have easily not noticed. We left fairly quickly, and I talked about how as far as I was concerned it really wasn't that different from other dancing/clubbing going out places. I also do not envision myself as the kind of person who would get some sick pleasure from really bad dates for the prospect of telling the story later. Yes, that is the abbreviated version in the interest of keeping this a generally positive post and also getting to bed eventually.
As we walked along Newbury St., a guy sitting on the edge of the sidewalk said, "Ladies, can you spare some money for a down payment on a Value Meal breakfast?"
They got ice cream/frozen yogurt at J.P. Licks before it closed (midnight) and then I headed to the T to turn in to a pumpkin.
***
Oh, and on Thursday, I got a mass e-mail from Sen. Patricia Jehlen (to all the people who had written to her about the amendment), and near the end she writes:Why not "Let the people vote?"
Many people had asked that we not use parliamentary procedure to delay a vote. This did not happen.
Many people believed that the vote was on "letting the people vote." It was not. It was a vote on the merits of the amendment. The question before us was, "Not less than one-fourth of all the members elected to the Senate and House of Representatives, in joint session, hereby, declares it to be expedient to alter the Constitution by the adoption of the following Article of Amendment, to the end that it may become part of the Constitution."
Our constitution allows for amendments proposed by the legislature to move forward with majority support in two successive conventions. But initiative petitions like this one face a lower barrier: they require only a quarter of the legislature to approve. Still, the framers clearly did not intend the legislature to be a rubber stamp. (At the end of this letter, I'm adding the Herald's editorial on this topic.)
In fact, since 1919, the legislature has been presented with nine citizen initiative petitions for constitutional amendments. Of the nine, only three were advanced to the voters by the legislature.
[...]
Yeah, you better believe I'm forwarding that to Joe F.
* I am still so happy about Amy's news from yesterday.
* I forgot to mention that on Wednesday, Will told me the Name Sign he'd thought up for me -- a book opening, but with the halves of the book looking like the E sign. How perfect is that?
* We watched "In God We Trust" (tWW 6.20) today. I like Vinick a lot.
* Katie read me my Onion horoscope, and it is MADE OF AWESOME.
"You've never really been concerned with the plight of the giant panda, but that was before you found out about panda porn."
* MaryAlice informs me that M&M/Mars backtracked almost immediately on the animal rennet thing. (Apparently DemocraticUnderground was all over this issue. Hi, my flist fails at vegetarianism.) This is especially good as I've been wanting chocolate lots recently. Possibly a response to stress? I don't really know.
* fox1013 made "gay patron saint" Katie Heigl icons.
::ponders which icon I could swap out for the next three months::
* Eric informed me that the e-mail from the union titled "Final Ratification Election results" (which I thusly ignored) also had a macroed spreadsheet for calculating your new salary.
The "structural increase" is 2.6%, then there's a "progression increase," so ultimately I get a 5.64% increase. Whee, money! (This also makes me feel better about all the money I'll be spending on Europe.)
I actually almost included the actual numbers of my current salary and my new salary, 'cause it felt natural, but then I felt awkward, like it would be uncomfortable for readers, flaunting how much I make [which is not huge in the grand scheme of things, but with a flist full of students and temp workers....].
* I think this is the third day this week that I've heard bagpipes at Harvard Square on my way to the T.
* Eric texted me: "Theyre opening a qdoba at harvard sq."
* dinner at Firefly
I actually had gaydar for once and pinged my waiter as he came over. "May I ask where you got your necklace?" conversation confirmed it.
And the fact that I was having dinner by myself meant I got to listen to his repartee with all the other customers.
P.S. He said his name is Randy, which of course I think is unfortunate. But yes, otherwise, fabulous.
I was sad that they didn't have the white sangria I had passed on last time, but I ordered the red sangria.
When my $13 mushroom crepes arrived I initially felt put out that there was so not enough food to merit that price, but they were really yummy, plus I was still full five hours later, so bravo.
On my way out I noticed a rack of free periodicals, including BayWindows, MetroSource, stuff@night, and some others I didn't recognize/pick up.
* Tom Stoppard's Indian Ink
Nicole had in her head that the play started at 7:30, which was fine by me since she tends to run late, though this afternoon I told her it actually started at 8 and she said she and her new roommate Meghan (whom it turned out I'd met before) might be able to have a drink with me before the show (they were having dinner at home, which after I left work I realized I probably could have imposed on). But of course at 7:30 I still did not see them, so I leisurely made my way to BCA and I actually only waited about 5 minutes for them.
The play wasn't bad, though I wasn't especially impressed by the text or the performance thereof. I'll write further at some point when I have a full script to lift lines from. (Since I was going with people and knew it was a work by a major playwright, I figured I could pick up a copy of the play somewhere and didn't have to take notes.)
Afterward, Nicole suggested going somewhere to get a drink. Yeah, so when she said re: the fact that the play would get out near 11pm, "That's kind of a late night," she meant that would make the night starting after the play a late night. Sigh.
We went to 33, which was way more bizarre and bad than she remembered it being -- though she conceded that last time she was there she was with like 50 people, so she could have easily not noticed. We left fairly quickly, and I talked about how as far as I was concerned it really wasn't that different from other dancing/clubbing going out places. I also do not envision myself as the kind of person who would get some sick pleasure from really bad dates for the prospect of telling the story later. Yes, that is the abbreviated version in the interest of keeping this a generally positive post and also getting to bed eventually.
As we walked along Newbury St., a guy sitting on the edge of the sidewalk said, "Ladies, can you spare some money for a down payment on a Value Meal breakfast?"
They got ice cream/frozen yogurt at J.P. Licks before it closed (midnight) and then I headed to the T to turn in to a pumpkin.
***
Oh, and on Thursday, I got a mass e-mail from Sen. Patricia Jehlen (to all the people who had written to her about the amendment), and near the end she writes:Why not "Let the people vote?"
Many people had asked that we not use parliamentary procedure to delay a vote. This did not happen.
Many people believed that the vote was on "letting the people vote." It was not. It was a vote on the merits of the amendment. The question before us was, "Not less than one-fourth of all the members elected to the Senate and House of Representatives, in joint session, hereby, declares it to be expedient to alter the Constitution by the adoption of the following Article of Amendment, to the end that it may become part of the Constitution."
Our constitution allows for amendments proposed by the legislature to move forward with majority support in two successive conventions. But initiative petitions like this one face a lower barrier: they require only a quarter of the legislature to approve. Still, the framers clearly did not intend the legislature to be a rubber stamp. (At the end of this letter, I'm adding the Herald's editorial on this topic.)
In fact, since 1919, the legislature has been presented with nine citizen initiative petitions for constitutional amendments. Of the nine, only three were advanced to the voters by the legislature.
[...]
Yeah, you better believe I'm forwarding that to Joe F.