Dearest Diary...

I waited interminably for yesterday's workday to end. I had driven in to work and arrived an hour early, hoping to scurry out of there with plenty of time to pick up Yamaarashi-chan, but work conspired against me. A "45 minute" meeting ran over two hours, and I was quite late picking Yamaarashi-chan up from her home. Still, I managed to get her before the sun went down, so the kids played in the back yard while I leapt up the stairs and completed dinner. Omaha had chopped and collected all of the necessary ingredients for home-made tomato alphabet soup before her own teleconference at 5. I sauted the vegetables and prepared the pasta, then tossed into the vegetable pot the tomatoes and chicken broth. I tried to use the little Braun hand-blender to puree the tomato mix before adding the pasta letters; it worked, but if I was off-angle by the slightest amount it spit tomato soup a fair distance across the kitchen. Still, the soup was delicious and both kids ate it up while hunting for letters and numbers. We played a couple of rounds of Sequence and I helped Yamaarashi-chan through her eye therapy exercises, which she seems to be having no trouble doing. I even got pictures of her (and Kouryou-chan) doing them so they could see what they look like all cross-eyed. I'd love to show them to you, but I'd need Lain working to do it.

This morning the air had that weird grey tinge to it, as if the light were coming through some thin concrete dust, when I got up and went to catch my bus. This time, Cadaver Girl was there. I had a grapefruit for breakfast and some coffee that I brought with me on the bus, and managed to write about 500 words or so. Do that every day for four months and you've got a novel. Do that three more times and you've got a revision that might be headed for a publisher.

Around lunch I picked up my laptop and opened it only to discover that the screen had died. Again. Auuuugh. This time it seems to be the video card. So I bit the bullet and bought an entire video assembly for $90. No taking it apart this time. Just replace the whole thing and hope the "new" one (really a used one pulled out of a Thinkpad that just dropped out of a lease program for other hardware-failure reasons) lasts a decent long time. I'm waiting for the UPS tracking number right now. All I have to do is figure out how to get those two screws with the torn up heads out; they're the ones holding the old monitor in place.

After work, I went home, lugging my dead-again laptop. (It's not really dead; the disk drive works fine and it's running Linux, so I can effectively run X form anywhere... except when I'm not near a network, like on a bus or in a cafe.) I stopped by this a luggage store and window shopped for new e-bags. The one I have works just fine, but it's awkward. And I really should get an impact sleeve for the laptop.

Omaha and I went out to eat at the Keg to celebrate my raise; dinner at the Keg was more than what the raise brought in for that two-week period. Lovely. It barely counts as a cost-of-living adjustement. Kouryou-chan fell asleep in Omaha's lap while we ate; some 24-hour bug has got ahold of her nose again. Poor little girl. I finished the Miles Vorkosigan story Brothers In Arms; now I have to find a used bookstore carrying Mirror Dance.

Sweet Irony, and words for the day

If the name "Randall Terry" rings any bells, it may be that in the summer of 1998 he led an organized assault on abortion clinics in the Greater Seattle area as head of Operation Rescue. His work was relatively unsucessful, and ultimately Terry had to distance himself from Operation Rescue because of a multi-million dollar fine leveled against himself for leading "a criminal conspiracy to interefere with commerce."

Randall Terry has proven to be, as one Christian minister put it, "an excellent fundraiser for... Randall Terry!" Terry and his wife of 19 years adopted four children, and then Terry, who was still in hock to the National Organization for Women, divorced his wife, abandoned his children, and at 41 married his 22-year-old assistant, which whom he'd been having an affair. He collected donations from his supporters, and then bought a $423,000 house-- in Florida, not his state of residency New York, because in the south bankruptcy laws prevent the seziure of a home. He then filed for bankruptcy, voiding the money he owed NOW. He honeymooned in Rome.

Randall Terry has campaigned against abortion, against homosexuality, against art. He told a clinic escort, "When I, or people like me, are running the country, you'd better flee, because we will find you, we will try you, and we will execute you. I mean every word of it. I will make it part of my mission to see to it that you are tried and executed."

Randall Terry today is in pain. Aww. Life is hard. Because today, his son Jamiel came out of the closet. Randall bad mouths Jamiel in a post, saying the boy isn't gay, he's "troubled," doing it for the money, has a petty criminal past, "has a trail of wrecked friendships and family relationships because of deceit, money fraud and crossed boundaries.... My son prostituted my name for his profit."

Hey, like father, like son. All I can say is I hope Jamiel figures out what it means to be an adult sometime soon, and Randall winds up in jail again.

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Kitchen Pass: n. Permission from one's spouse to attend an event or go on an outing. Man, do I know how this one feels.

Meat Tooth: n. A craving or fondness for meat.