Ahoy there, loyal readers. In addition to my usual excuses for inactivity, I can now add that the Librarian and I went three weeks without Internet in our new home. As I no longer have that excuse, and I love me some Earth Day, I'll finally do a bit of catching up.

I generally have great Earth Days, but today has proved extra great. Droves of Bay ( Read more... )

My apologies to any of you who have missed my active contributions to our conversations and communities; 2009 has gotten off to a mostly great start, but it has kept me too busy and worn-out to write or comment as much as I would like. I have at least skimmed all your posts in this time, and have particularly wanted to comment where some of you ( Read more... )

Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr ( Read more... )

• How could the Librarian have fooled me? We rangers have known that we may not feel joy or gratitude for years. Put on a sensible skirt and I swear, you think you can pull anything ...
• ... and why the hell haven't I gotten my ranger skirt yet?
• In all seriousness, the Librarian had to deal with that onslaught of snow that slammed so many of you when ( Read more... )

... though it didn't cost you much of anything.

I had gotten all excited about my government-issue rain pants when I ordered my winter uniform, but on Thursday's dry run, they seemed like more trouble than help. So, when the rain fell in earnest on Friday, I convinced myself at 8:30am that between the cover of the redwoods, my rain coat and my wool ( Read more... )

 ... you struggle to parallel park your suddenly-non-power-steering-second-hand Hyundai between two second-generation Prii to get anywhere near the mostly-organic market in the town of 400 people.

... your two-year-old knows around which bends the cows live, and what they say.

... your hour-plus commute doesn't suck anymore (and now that training ( Read more... )

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I don't regret my marriage with the Wife, and I don't regret dissolving it. None of that makes it suck any less. If anything, our continued friendship and partnership in raising the Boy make it harder to grasp that we can't make it work as a couple; I know that will work out better in the long run, but I can't help but imagine that I'd have an ( Read more... )

As you may have gathered, I have much going on at the moment, and not all of it great. But I thought I should at least report - for those who hadn't already heard from the thunder-stealing
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Nearly my entire workday kicked unexpected ass - one of the permanent staff asked me upon my arrival in the morning whether I'd like to take on her scheduled earthquake program, and I jumped at the chance. The way the schedule worked, I had the morning to prepare and the afternoon to present. While a tad slapdash and thrown together for my ( Read more... )