Y'know, I try to not post here when I'm steamed, but this time I'm steamed and I'm posting. What is here is a transcript of emails between the moderator for the Huntsville (Alabama) Freecycle group and my husband Jeff, posted with his permission.  This is bad, judgmental moderatorship, and the religious overtones included in it make me even angrier, especially considering that we've donated a ton of items through Freecycle. The moderator just doesn't know it because Jeff and I use different domain names for our email addresses, and have different surnames.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, let me quote from freecycle.org on what Freecycle is:

Anthony Bourdain rails against the current crop of TV chefs and names names:

We KNOW she can't cook. She shrewdly tells us so. So...what is she selling us? Really? She's selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She's a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that "Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!" Wallowing in your own crapulence on your Cheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, "Hell…I could do that. I ain't gonna…but I could--if I wanted! Now where's my damn jug a Diet Pepsi?"

Via Jody, of course.

Weird. It's not spring yet, but the chickens have all gathered outside and are screaming their fool heads off while staring at the skies. Everyone in Huntsville seems to have gotten the memo that the sky is falling. However, I feel obligated to point out some obvious things amidst the frantic clucking.

The Huntsville city schools closed at 12:30 today, provoking a mad scramble among my co-workers who are parents, in order to make arrangements for all snowflakes to arrive safely home (or to the loving eyes of caregivers elsewhere). The only problem with this scenario?

(Photo links to the full photoset)

I survived the TMBG concert at Exit/In last night, and let me tell you, it was an experience.

But first...

"The bright lights of Broadway are still shining, but the question remains, for how long?

There doesn't appear to be any movement in the deadlock between the stagehands' union and the League of American Theaters and Producers, despite a meeting yesterday aimed at clearing the air.

However, right now there is no indication of a when or if a lockout will take place. Both sides say they have already given their final offers."

Tally as of 10:30 a.m.:

Text message sent to friends this afternoon:

All of HSV is at Wal-Mart. You'd think nobody here had ever heard of a tornado before! Hint: toilet paper WILL NOT SAVE YOU.

A few minutes later, a reply from Suzan:

No, but it will cover your ass!

Longtime readers will remember the February 2004 entry "extracurricular eating," which until today stood alone as the oddest event we've ever dealt with while attempting to 'parent' our very large, very STUPID six-year-old cats.

Have I mentioned lately that they're STUPID?

Colorado is, after all, a landlocked state. Perhaps I should have considered this before attempting the quest I did on that warm winter day, but then again, sometimes you don't get to pick your quests. Your quests pick you.

I'd realized the shaggy state of my exercise swimsuit while I was in Colorado, and thought that since it was the off-season, I might be able to find a reasonably-priced swimsuit while I was on vacation. This, of course, led to the uttering of the World's Worst Sentence, which I knew better than to say but said anyway:

"How hard can this be?"

I dug around in the apartment until I found a phone book. "Swimwear." Yep, that was easy. Oh, look! A shop that specialized in swimwear, said they had plus sizes (which according to some manufacturers I still wore), and which carried mix-and-match separates? Perfect.

Amazing. About a week before Christmas, suddenly the suburban population of Huntsville wakes up and says, collectively, "Holy shit, Christmas is next weekend?