Category: Uncategorized

On Google today:  “In honor of our 10th birthday, we’ve brought back our oldest available index. Take a look back at Google in January 2001.” [They have since taken that index down.]

Someone on Echo googled Sarah Palin and Barack Obama and reported back her results.  I had to see for myself.

“Your search – “sarah palin” – did not match any documents.”

“Results 1 – 10 of about 768 for barack obama.”  Pages and pages and pages about all his activities, including his efforts to improve life in various communities in Chicago, work Palin belittled, while she was busy doing … what was she doing in 2001 and before??

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to explain to friends, “I have a cat on me,” and therefore cannot get up to answer the phone, or grab a book to read them something, etc.

Recently I pulled out the heating pad and now it’s Finney’s new favorite sleeping spot.  It’s not on and warm or anything, he just loves to sleep on it and I don’t have the heart to put it away.

He also loves the keyboard of my older laptop.  It must be warmer or something. I’m worried he will snap off a key, but once again, I don’t have the heart to close it up once he’s settled himself there.  I mean, look at him.  I’m giving you two shots just so you appreciate the full impossibility of cat movage.

Grown men and women are defenseless against the sleeping cat.

Like I have it hard (I don’t).  But I haven’t felt well the past week, although today I started to feel better so I went to the gym after meeting a detective friend for breakfast.  Our place is decorated for Halloween, Ukrainian food joint style.  It says “Trick or Borscht” if you’re having trouble reading it.  Of course I thought, “This is one of the places we used to go for food after hearing music at CBGB’s.”  Which led to remembering that The Leisure Unit’s (Aly’s band) used to play there.  But there was another place we went to just as much, another Ukrainian food place, which has been closed for many years now.  I can’t remember the name.  What was the name??  It was only a few blocks away.  (This is Veselka.)  Oh God.  And so it begins.

UPDATE:  Melinda just saved me from going out of my mind.  It was the Kiev.  Thank you, Melinda.

I’m freaked out because I found out yesterday that one of my oldest friends had a heart attack and died over the weekend.  It’s breaking my heart to type that.  There’s so much I want to say, and at the same time I don’t feel like saying any of it.  Here is Aly in the early 80’s, when we were all young and just starting out in life and I was sure he’d be a rock star.  He should have been.  But you know life.

I missed most of the debate due to my choir rehearsal, but I just saw that once again McCain used Obama’s funding request for a projector for the Adler Planetarium as example of wasteful spending.

The people at Cosmic Variance responded to that best.  First they posted the text from Obama’s FY08 funding request:

Adler Planetarium, to support replacement of its projector and related equipment, $3,000,000:

One of its most popular attractions and teaching tools at the Adler Planetarium is the Sky Theater. The projection equipment in this theater is 40 years old, and is no longer supported with parts or service by the manufacturer. It has begun to fail, leaving the theater dark and groups of school students and other interested museum-goers without this very valuable and exciting learning experience.

From the Cosmic Variance post:

“Sorry, but replacing 40 year old equipment at one of the leading science education facilities in this country (the Adler Planetarium is located in downtown Chicago and is the oldest planetarium in the Western Hemisphere in existence today) is one of the best investments in the future that I can think of. I’ve always equated planetariums with science education – an area where the US seems to be lacking. In fact, the state-funded university where I was an undergraduate had one and its projection equipment was less than 40 years old. In fact, when I was in the 4th grade, my class took a field trip to the McDonnell Planetarium in Forest Park. It was one of the coolest things I did in grade school (well, that and the trip to see the Egyptian mummies) and I remember it to this day.”

(The picture is from the New York Times.)