[libcat] was out of service for a bit this afternoon while I upgraded to version 2.0 of the WordPress software it runs on, but everything should be back to normal now.

Er, everything should be properly functional now.

(visitors to the site will have noticed i put a new theme up while i was mucking around in the site. whadday’all think?)

so i’m at work today, because, well, I wasn’t doing anything else, and hey, $50 to sit on my ass all day. sure, whatthefuck, why not?

i’ll tell you why not: mutherfucking library is boring during interim. aside from a few people returning books, i’ve seen two patrons today, professors looking for a journal and a book, respectively, that both turned out to be at storage (edit: and some crazy russian lady who couldn’t believe she’d have to go to the medschool library to find a physics article—that was published in a general science (not physics) journal that we don’t carry.). my supervisor is out taking care of a window that got broken out of her car, so i’m here all alone listening to the air conditioning (apparently all the labs are on vacation, too, so i don’t even get to listen to the freaky noises some of the equipment makes. . .). i don’t even hardly feel like doing stuff online right now, or even reading. . . i just want to sleep.

And I’m not even that tired.

Yesterday was truly adventurous, and we had some adventures. I got a haircut, at a real salon, and then we went to an apparently-inauthentic, though not-all-that-bad, Thai restaurant in Craig Street (see Kat’s review here). Then we went home briefly, and then we went down to the Greyhound station. We went down on the 67H, a strange little route that, if you look at the map, bears a strong resemblance to a deformed ballpeen hammer. . . .

Apparently Greyhound counterfolken aren’t well trained in end-of-shift and start-of-shift procedures—one guy who was finishing his shift must have gone between the counter and the office between it five times between taking his drawer out and the time we left—each time moving about as quickly as a tweaker snail. When we got there at first, there were two men working the counter, while two women stood behind them talking and doing not much else. then the two women disappeared. . . then the two men reached the end of their shift, and left. . . . then one of the men came out, did something at the counter, and returned to the office. . . . then the other guy (in a wheelchair) came out to the station he’d left. . . and immediately returned to the office, followed a moment later by a limping maintenance man (which nineteenfishes said looked like something out of a David Lynch movie). . . . this went on for a while. then one of the women came out. . . without a drawer, so she couldn’t do anything involving cash. fortunately, i’d already paid for my ticket online, so at this point—45 minutes or so after we’d gotten there—i was finally able to pick up my ticket back to ann arbor the night of the 27th. then i had to wait another 15 or 25 minutes for someone who wasn’t a trainee to (a) emerge from the office and (b) stop doing other things long enough to answer my question about my ticket back to pgh on the 31st. (I had a ticket from August that was AA->DET->PGH; I wanted to switch to one that was Toledo->PGH. Turns out I can still use a DET->PGH ticket but just get on in Toledo. . . . . For this (and a newly printed ticket) I stood in line for an extra 20 minutes. . . .

after that, we went to target (where we also spent what seemed like a somewhat absurd amount of time), then to PetCo to look at kitties and buy food for the Beasts; then we met jillontherocks and went *back* to Target (to get Jill a broom), then to Giant Eagle, and then we went home. And then we picked up lillyv, and went to help jillontherocks clean up her apartment, and then we went to the Goat, and then we went home. Again.

The end.

In other news. . . .

• In England, someone has invented a way to get small amounts (for traffic lights, say) of power from passing cars themselves.
• More importantly, however, producers of the new Superman movie have apparently not been too happy with the actor playing him: his package is too big.
• “I have found my soul and it is deep fried pork.â€?
• The Governor’s Transportation Funding and Reform Commission will meet in Pittsburgh on Jan 26 to examine “options to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public transit, highways and bridges, and their underlying funding.” You can go! (Though if you want to talk, sign up in advance by writing tfrc@state.pa.us or the street address in the article.)
• And, finally, with a little ($48M) help from their friends and yours, PNC Bank will plant another ass-ugly building on their property downtown, on Fifth Ave near Wood St. It’ll be 25–30 stories high and feature massive amounts of office space as well as a 150-room “luxury hotel” and 30 top-floor condos. Another project, announced last week, will go up across the street with 28 condos and 19 “rooftop townhouses”. All the poor people, of course, can just stay down on ground level, where they belong. . . . .

John Spencer, The West Wing’s Leo McGarry, died of a heart attack Friday. He was 58.

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds.

Former senator Eugene McCarthy, who opposed Lyndon Johnson’s 1968 re-election run over the Vietnam War, died this weekend of Parkinson’s complications. He was 89. Maybe now I’ll finally read his book…

In other “I didn’t even know he was still alive” news, comedian Richard Pryor also died this weekend, of a heart attack after 20 years of MS. He was 65.

Iggy and Whitman,
originally uploaded by libcat.

After three and a half months of living together, the cats and I still aren’t entirely sure we like each other—just this weekend, Iggy peed in a box with some of my stuff, including a box of unused checks and some pens. But sometimes they’re actually rather cute.

Too bad I won’t be around for most of this…

Tonight
Mostly cloudy with a 40 percent chance of rain showers. Lows in the mid 30s.
Tuesday
A chance of rain showers in the morning. Cloudy with a chance of snow showers. Little or no snow accumulation. Morning highs in the upper 30s… Chance of precipitation 50 percent.
Tuesday Night
Cloudy with a 50 percent chance of snow showers. Lows in the mid 20s.
Wednesday
Mostly cloudy with a 50 percent chance of snow showers. Highs in the mid 30s.
Wednesday Night
Mostly cloudy with a 50 percent chance of snow showers. Lows in the upper 20s.
Thanksgiving Day
Cloudy with a 40 percent chance of snow showers. Highs in the mid 30s.
Thursday Night and Friday
Mostly cloudy with a 40 percent chance of snow showers. Lows in the lower 20s. Highs in the lower 30s.
Friday Night and Saturday
Partly cloudy with a 40 percent chance of snow showers. Lows in the lower 20s. Highs in the lower 30s.

In Ann Arbor, meanwhile…

Wednesday
Cloudy with snow likely. Minor accumulations possible. Highs 32 to 36… Chance of snow 60 percent.
Wednesday Night
Cloudy with snow likely. Minor accumulations possible. Lows 21 to 25. Chance of snow 60 percent.
Thanksgiving Day
Mostly cloudy with scattered snow showers. Highs 29 to 33. Chance of snow 40 percent.
Thursday Night
Mostly cloudy with scattered snow showers. Lows 18 to 22. Chance of snow 40 percent.
Friday
Mostly cloudy with a chance of snow showers. Highs 28 to 32. Chance of snow 30 percent.
Friday Night
Mostly cloudy with a chance of snow showers. Lows 17 to 21. Chance of snow 30 percent.
Saturday
Mostly cloudy with a chance of snow showers. Highs 30 to 34. Chance of snow 30 percent.

I can’t wait. It’s about bloody time it snowed. (I can’t believe a week ago I was walking around DC in just a light jacket, or less…)
[forecasts from wunderground.com]

On the Friday morning before Halloween, 10 to 15 students, all of whom are residents of the Fox Chapel area’s most affluent neighborhoods, marched into school dressed as students from Sharpsburg, a less wealthy neighborhood [in] which a minority of Fox Chapel Area High School students live.

… And it was tolerated by the administration.

— Fox Chapel High: Where it’s OK to dress as an alien(ator)

CNN’s “Game Over” column reviews the new Xbox.

Meanwhile, the American Heart Association suggests that Drinking decaffeinated coffee may be harmful to heart health.

Decaffeinated — not caffeinated — coffee may cause an increase in harmful LDL cholesterol by increasing a specific type of blood fat linked to the metabolic syndrome, hints a new study presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2005.

(both via slashdot.org)

Looks like it’s time to update
the shirt again….

anyone know a good screenprinter in Pittsburgh?