• 12:07 AM PT: The west coast slackers have finally hit 2008. Happy new year to any of you who are still sober.
• 12:41 AM PT: I see you, @crazybutable - hugs to you and your girls.
• 1:55 AM PT: Quiet chat with @adamrg, now snuggled up under greatest blanket gift EVAR. Warm toes and hands? Happy Amy.
• 8:57 AM PT: Boiling water for tea. Soon, reading as the house wakes up.

Just after midnight, Pacific time. We've played our games of Munchkin, I've infected Debbie with a fascination for the card game Set, and our night is done. I'm not packed, but all the Gessamans are in varying stages of bedding down for a long winter's nap.

It's time to go home.

• 12:38 AM PT: [cat.net] homecoming. - http://domesticat.net/node/1437
• 10:15 AM PT: Best. Repacking. Job. EVER. I'm afraid to breathe on my bag lest it explodes.
• 11:49 AM PT: Last meal in Seattle. Subway by the airport.
• 12:46 PM PT: Last coffee in Seattle.
• 12:52 PM PT: As I walk the airport I think: hoodie, hiking boots, coffee. I think I have my answer.
• 12:54 PM PT: At gate, hoping I'll sleep on the cross country flight.

I've said little publicly about an event that happened at the Huntsville main library last month, but now that a local TV station has provided a video article about the armed kidnapping and robbery of a librarian, I feel a little safer in acknowledging that the incident happened.

(Link will probably spawn a popup, requires Flash, and has audio. However, I don't think it has cooties.)

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?

This sort of thing always ends badly.

One can take the idea of a biography literally, and recount events in order, or one can be grumpy and claim to hate writing biographies, when in fact the existence of a personal blog by definition belies that statement. We are always the worst and best tellers of our own stories. Best, because we have insight that no one else has; worst, because we are too close to our own stories to be truly objective. If we're lucky, we mix both sides enough to get something approaching the real story.

[photo, June 2008]

My name is Amy. I am in my early thirties. My profession will become somewhat obvious if you read over some of my entries. I have what has the trappings of a thoroughly normal life. I am married, and have a mortgage and two cats.

I suited up early this morning, intending to be out the door well before 7. I know that my daytime minutes start at seven a.m., and that any call that starts prior to 7:00 gets entirely counted under night and weekend minutes.

Jody lives in Atlanta, and works the overnight shift. I don't call him as often as I should, but the timing of our lives means that he is finishing up his day as I am readying to start mine. I take a perverse delight in making sure my calls to him start just a couple of minutes before 7, with earpiece tucked securely in my left ear as I drive.

I finally have private entries working, and properly!

If you log in to domesticat.net, you'll discover a new-to-you entry. It's got details on how to update the link your RSS feedreader uses so that you'll see all the entries you're entitled to see.

(ObNote for anyone who finds this via a search engine: you want the Simple Access module and the Token Authentication module to make this work.)

I would also like to add this related note: beer drunk in celebration is doubly tasty.

Dateline: New Westminster, BC.
(Note to self: Go see the old one sometime.)

As I've retold this story countless times in the time since I've returned, I figured the least I could do is share it here as well. I suspect it loses some of its boozy, imperative nature when committed to the written word, though; I think it's probably far funnier in person.

A cultural difference worth knowing: I was raised to hear pretty words, but not to take all of them at face value. An invitation to come stay with someone, if not repeated or mentioned again, was very likely someone just being polite -- not something to be acted upon. It turns out this is not true of everyone: some people issue an invitation only once, really hoping you'll take them up on it, and then shut up if you don't act on it. Ah, North versus South, are there any gaffes this cultural divide can't inspire?

Fast-forward.

Lunch with Wendy today led to a snicker-filled discussion about a flap in the publishing world I hadn't heard about yet. Apparently a prolific romance novelist, Cassie Edwards, who has authored over a hundred romance novels, was outed as a plagiarist by the romance-novel review blog Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books, whose contributors used Google Book Search to spot numerous similarities between Edwards' work and other works.

If you're curious, check the site; Smart Bitches has posted transcripts. (Ouchie.)

The real winning moment, however, comes from this article in the New York Times:

Two links, partly because they both interest me and partly because I need to test whether or not my changes have fixed the permissions problems I was seeing yesterday (HT to Geof for tipping me off) --

Sun acquires mySQL - cue standard O NOES from all involved geeks until we have some idea how this will actually shake out. I won't bother to pretend I know, but I'll be watching with avid interest ...

and

...an excerpt of Iain Banks' new novel is available on Orbit books -- and yes, it is a Culture novel. I've heard references that indicate his Culture novels are each intended to serve as a different perspective on the same civilization (from inside, from those they conquer, from those who run it, etc.). (Thanks, Patrick)

As part of today's haircut, the stylist offered to style my hair. She pitched the idea of ironing out my hair. Curiosity got the better of me. I've never actually had my hair straightened before, and I wondered what it would look like.

Now I know. It's a little creepy, actually. I pat my head and there's no sproing, just this weird odd sleekness that my hair normally can't achieve, even when wet.

It's already disturbed two co-workers and one friend. It also took a LOT of work, so I doubt that I will buy the equipment to make it work, but it was an interesting experiment and an unusual change.

From Jeff's grandmother's surprise 80th birthday party this weekend, I present definitive photographic proof that Jeff was not hatched. The 'hatched' theory holds no water when you see how much the entire family resembles each other. Link goes to photoset, or click the photo below:

We joke about people being married to their jobs, but the numbers in my own life tell quite a tale. A typical workday sees me awake for 17 hours. I spend nine of those with co-workers. Since Jeff and I keep slightly different work schedules, I only see him for about five hours per weekday.

The jokes become less comfortable when you realize that you're spending more hours per day with your co-workers than you do with the person you married. Co-workers don't have the same commitment to permanence that spouses do; they are people you spend time with, but not people you share everything with. I marvel at how few people find this strange or unusual.

A quick reminder, since some of you may have missed it the first time around. If you're reading cat.net via RSS, you need to actually log in at domesticat.net to get your new RSS feed addresses. Doing so will update the links you currently see below. (You'll see a ?token=[foo] string at the end of the next three lines if you're logged in when you view this post. That's the URL you want to use in your RSS reader from now on.)

Amy: "You're such a cliché, Charles."
Sherry: "Yeah! There you are, with your Admiral Ackbar profile photo, sucking down your Mountain Dew while eating your chili cheese Fritos."
Amy: "..and are those Converse you're wearing?"
Charles: "Yeah, but they aren't Chuck Taylors, so it's not totally bad."

I'm trying out a new way to aggregate some things I'm doing in different places. End result: solecist.net. If I'm being honest, cat.net is for long-form writing, and always has been. solecist.net is a tumblelog with more traditional bloggy things, like quotes, links, and flickr photos.

It's like cat.net, only short-form and with even less context.

(Oh, and if you're lazy like me: http://solecist.net/rss is what you're looking for.)