(an excerpt from "Bertie and the Glaive-Guisarme +1", by P. G. Wodehouse)

"I am compelled, sirs and madame, to inform you of a significant inconvenience that has occurred. A short gentleman of rather stout build and with a beard of quite injudicious volume, has, without even the minimum expected decorum, barred your path through the establishment. He demands, I am sorry to add, your immediate removal from the premises lest he inflict an unspecified violent action on your persons. How shall you react?"

"Well! What a positive little bounder. I've no choice but to saunter up to the little blighter and address him with the pluck of my dogged half-elven sires, and no little wroth besides."

"No, Bertie! The dear little fellow must be of the dwarfish persuasion. He is of magical faerie-folk, one of the tenders of God's sparkling golden garden in the far-off lands of--"

"That's all very well Madeline, but I don't like this chap's disagreeable manner. I think Bertie is on the right track, but I feel inclined to go even further: if he doesn't apologize within the instant, I intend to knock his head off!"

"Steady on, Tuppy, this fellow could be armed. Quick, Biffy, what's your Spot Hidden skill?"

"It's ... ah ... I had it here just a moment ago ..."



////


This was actually written by my husband, who likes to post these snippets and pastiches to Facebook for my delectation. And now I share it with you.

I'm reading about the Mitt Romney bullying, wherein he cut the hair of a closeted gay student among other incidents, and I'm kinda twitchy and cold and pissed at the same time. Partly when Romney, despite at least five other students recalling the incident in the same way down to the details, says he doesn't remember. He calls it youthful hijinks.

No, hijinks are when you do stupid things that don't necessarily hurt anybody but don't make sense. Things like organising an impromptu dance in a parking lot late at night or handing out a petition to change the school mascot to a chiuahuahua. Those are hijinks. They're silly fun. Hurting other people deliberately is bullying.

I believe that who you are as a child isn't necessarily who you are as an adult. One of my favourite story lines is Zuko's redemption in Avatar, and man, it does not come easily. He messes up again and again, turns his back on his uncle not just once, but at least twice, and when he finally comes to realise that everything he thought he wanted was wrong, he isn't able to just regain the trust of Team Avatar by saying, "Hey, sorry about that." He has to back it up with actions. He has to deal wtih the fact that Team Avatar has some pretty justifiable anger to work through first. But at the end of it, Zuko changes. He makes amends. And then he goes on to work to change things so the things he has been complicit in can never happen again. Go, Zuko, and go, any real life person who has ever had to trace that difficult path back. Sometimes we have to do it for huge things, sometimes we do it for small things, but that's what you do when you realise you've done fucked up.

I can't speak to Romney's full experience, but I've been on the end of extreme bullying in elementary school, and I know that if Mitt seems to have the luxury of forgetting his bullying, I guarantee his victims never did. And that's why Mitt's protestations of I'm a different person now sorta make me PERSONALLY distrust him. Because I remember and know when I've done something shitty, and I don't know how that little core of shame goes unremembered. It's the thing that spurs me to apologise when I've done something wrong and HOW TO AVOID DOING IT AGAIN. And if Mitt doesn't remember it, part of me thinks that he never thought he did anything wrong, he's never learned from it, and furthermore, he wouldn't know if he was doing the wrong thing again. Sure, he's not cutting off people's hair anymore, but he admits to having enjoyed firing people and he generally displays a cluelessness about how his actions affect others. Even under Mitt's own professed religion, by his own words, he can't have undergone the process of repentence which involves acknowledgement of the action, restitution, and further change to keep it from re-occuring.

I admit I'm pretty cranky on this subject, but I speak from personal experience. Bullying is NOT hijinks. It's not "Boys will be boys." There is a real human cost to bullying.

Basically, the short version of my elementary school years: We moved back to Utah in second grade, and two weeks from the end of the school year, we moved again. I started third grade as a new student. My teacher performed a science experiment where we were all supposed to touch our fingers to an agar plate and see how the germs on our hands grew. We were told not to wash our hands, and I stupidly and obediently didn't. Many of the other girls disobeyed. My germs grew fairly quickly in the agar plate--faster than the girls' germs who had washed their hands--so they started by teasing me about my Mitchell Germs. No matter how much I bathed or made sure I wore clean clothes to school, they teased me about it. I imagine the teachers thought it was just a phase and it would soon peter out, but instead it turned into the school meme. I would walk through the halls and if I accidentally brushed somebody who wasn't one of my few friends, that person would run screaming and then try to "brush" off the "germs" onto somebody else, screaming, "Mitchell germs!" I was the school leper. I was fair game for being shoved into the boys' bathroom. I was sexually harrassed. I was locked out of classrooms. People stole my homework and claimed it for theirs. I was picked last for every sports game but chosen first for academic stuff--but only because I was one of the smartest kids in school. Once I had been used for my knowledge, it was okay to pick on me again. My hair, my glasses, my clothing, my looks were constantly the source of school amusement. And it was the entire fucking school, barring a few friends. And the teachers did nothing but tell me to ignore it. When you are eight, nine, ten, eleven years old, and people scream when you touch them, however accidentally, it really really gets to you. Finally my parents had me transferred to a different school. I left my younger siblings behind, and they still ended up getting the tail end of the bullying.

When I was bullied, I stopped trusting people. Even nice people. I expected that nice actions came with an agenda. I learned you couldn't even trust adults to do the right thing. I learned that adults would blame you for being who you were. I lived every day at school in a constant state of heightened awareness, constantly on the lookout for the signs that it was about to begin again. I learned who not to go to the bathroom with. I learned not to leave my artwork unattended. I learned that the library was the safest place in the school.

I also did learn who my friends were. There were some people who were my friends and defended me and were basically good people the entire time the rest of the school was picking on me. I wonder how hard it was for them.

But I never forgot. Forgetting has never been a luxury.

Some of the kids who tormented me in elementary school have apologised. You can count them on a hand, but I'm grateful that they said something, even if it came years late. A few kids apologised who I have no memory of them specifically doing anything to me, so I think they were likely bystanders who felt bad about not standing up or for joining in with the taunting. The worst offenders never apologised. Of the two boys that sexually harrassed me, one later went on a mission for the LDS church, never having tendered even the slightest apology for his behaviour in ninth grade. He probably doesn't remember. The way Mitt Romney doesn't remember.

It does not make me feel better that he could torment me, that he could make months of hell and cold sweats, and NOT REMEMBER. Short of medications (which as I also know from family experience) I wonder how little he thought about his actions that he can't recall that.

I've been stupid myself during those years. There are at least three people who I joined in teasing in junior high (two of whom I apologised to during our Youth Ward years and who I hope have forgiven me) and one who I can't find to apologise to, and yes, it still nags my conscience. I feel ashamed that despite my own history, I gave in. So the best I can do now is say, Parents, teach your kids that bullying is wrong. No matter what.

And people can change. But change has to be accompanied by real action. You've got to acknowledge that you fucked up for one. You may never regain the trust of the person, and you have to acknowledge that too. But you can go on with life and make it better for other folks.

My grandmother died this morning. Age and complications of sinus cancer finally caught up with her.

Genetics are a funny thing. Inheritances: great spelling (better before the internet intruded), love of writing, tendency to track my illnesses. When Grandpa and Grandma released their joint autobiographies to the family, there was a list of the family illnesses, year by year, that Grandma kept. I... did not inherit the music, the strongest Olsen legacy for many of the grandkids, but I did get the Christiansen art talents.

Memorable birthday presents from my grandmother: my first camera. My first set of acrylic paints. A stamp collecting book. Every birthday, we'd get to sleep over, make her famous rolls, and pick out our own breakfast cereal toy. Every Christmas, she'd bake a huge batch of gingerbread cookies, and we'd come over and frost a set. One of my first reading memories is Grandma helping me get through a book of jokes in the warm sunny kitchen of my grandparents' Van Nuys home.

She was my wonderful grandmother.

I'm a UI artist and designer. At work the other day, we were complaining about Facebook's UI design. Some people seem to think that Facebook has no UI design or that they change it willy-nilly. I used to think so too, but now I know better. Facebook's UI design is rather the opposite of what most UI is intended to be--instead of useful for the user, it's meant to be as opaque and as entangling as possible. It's draconian. It is, I think, probably the unsung achievement of Crowley, demon at large.

When last we saw Crowley, he had numbered these among his more stellar achievements:

The M25 Orbital freeway around London: The very shape of the M25 forms the sign odegra in the language of the Black Priesthood of Ancient Mu, and means 'Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds.' The thousands of motorists who daily fume their way around its serpentine lengths have the same effect as water on a prayer wheel, grinding out an endless fog of low-grade evil to pollute the metaphysical atmosphere for scores of miles around. It was one of Crowley's better achievements... and had involved three computer hacks, two break-ins, one minor bribery and, when all else had failed, two hours in a squelchy field shifting the marker pegs a few but occultly incredibley significant meters.

And tying up phone lines: "I tied up every portable telephone system in Central London for forty-five minutes at lunchtime. Which means that "twenty thousand people got bloody furious... You could hear the arteries clanging shut all across the city... Then they went back and took it out on their secretaries or traffic wardens or whatever, and they took it out on other people... In all kinds of vindictive little ways which, and here was the good bit, they thought up themselves... The pass-along effects were incalculable. Thousands and thousands of souls all got a faint patina of tarnish."

Thus it seems highly likely that Facebook's UI has been the work of a master. It is a pulsating web of evil, designed to draw you in via your virtues, and warp those virtues into vices. It draws on your friendship and family connections, and then inextricably knots them all together. You can't escape--the Facebook UI keeps you from being able to easily filter out all the toxic posts on Republican policy, the batshit emails, the crazy libertarian rants of obliviousness. Everybody rubs together, friction building like a slow burn, and the tools you should be able to use to moderate the levels of interaction are dangled tantalisingly before you, but only turn out to be a labyrinthine ritual of appeasement to an eternally hungry god of information. It works for a few days and then you find yourself performing yet another arcane ritual to keep your mother from finding out that you occasionally imbibe a beverage she might not approve of.

So. Yeah, it's the work of Crowley, and he's really surpassed himself this time. Well-done, you demon, you. Or ill-done, as the case may be.


PS. If you are asking yourself, who is this Crowley, go forth and educate yourself.

Last night we saw Bring It On, the musical. It was cute and while it seemed a little too much like every story about a white girl who makes a bunch of non-white friends and learns lessons, at least it seemed self-aware enough to poke fun at itself for doing so. (I STILL wonder why our heroine got forgiveness at the crucial moment for her manipulative actions except that it was the point in the story where you have to get forgiveness. We the audience knew she'd seen the error of her ways but how was anybody inside the story supposed to tell. Narrative causality strikes again!) Anyway, it was cute, silly fun for the most part. The performances were great and made you wonder how all these people could sing and dance while doing cheerleading routines. I mean, unlike the movies, it's not like there were body doubles for the trickier stunts.

Then we walked. We walked all the way from The Orpheum by the Civic Center station all the way down Market to Sansome. We walked up Sansome til we found a lady lying on the sidewalk doing leg lifts and showing her underwear to the world. We consulted each other and decided we'd better see if she was okay. She climbed up off the sidewalk and asked us if we'd seen somebody with her keys. She didn't seem to have her keys. We suggested she look through the contents of her bags which she'd strewn on the sidewalk. She started seeming more and more lucid, and she seemed to expect that she had friends in the area. We weren't certain what to do. She started muttering something about assholes. I didn't know if she meant us or her friends. Another couple walking by asked if she was okay. She sort of perfunctorily said she was. Eventually John and I decided to move on, since she didn't seem to want us to call anybody, and we weren't certain what else we could do. I'm unsure if we should have stayed but when we left, she was sorting through her stuff. She briefly ran after us to ask us about the people or her bag again, but had no further questions, and then went back to where we found her.

So. I'm just not street-wise enough. What should I do in the future? Call the cops? (I'm semi-sure she was coming off of some mind-altering thing and I'm not sure what would have happened if we'd called the cops. SF cops don't have the best rep.) She didn't seem to want any help, and she didn't seem like she'd been assaulted, but I'm not sure I would be able to tell. So not asking for help once we'd got her off the sidewalk, we left her alone to sort out her bag. I don't want to force my help on somebody who doesn't seem to want it, but I did worry about her.

Anyways, we continued up Sansome to Broadway, crossed over to Columbus, bought whiskey and biscotti gelato at Naia, continued on down Columbus to Jones, walked through Fisherman's Wharf to the Embarcadero and followed it all the way down to the Ferry Building. (Total 4.76 miles.)

My feet did pretty well, but the plantar fasciitis seems to flare up in the last quarter mile.

Dear Charities of the World:

I donate to a lot of you. I LIKE to donate. I really do.

What I do not love is the never-ending stream of dead trees that follows me once I do. And this is in spite of requesting that I do not want further information, except via email. Today, Doctors Without Borders launched a heavy packet at my mail box. I sometimes wonder if my donation turned into solely into dead trees to harrass me into giving more money. It makes me really rethink giving to you when you do this.

Then there's your practise of hiring people to charity-mug folks on the sidewalks. This is seriously seriously off-putting, especially for folks with social anxiety issues. When this dude walks up to us, smiling, saying things like Hey, Buddy, pretending friendship before swooping in with "So do you have a minute," it really mucks around with some of our anxiety issues. And when your people go further and violate my social cues that, no, I REALLY do not want to have an interaction with you, it disappoints me. I am all for kiosks at fairs and temporary booths--but I really hate sidewalk accosting. (At least the Scientologists have gotten really good at reading my Fuck Off, Scientologists cues. They almost NEVER ask me if I want a free reading.)

Let me just point out that I donate A LOT through websites and almost never (only once, that I can recall) to folks on the street.

It's always the season to be giving with me, but please please stop making it hard for me to give to you. Stop violating my wishes re: contact and treat me with respect.

When I give to charities regularly, it's generally because the charity in question is good at engaging with me, providing a community support structure in ways that are acceptable to me, and almost never ever sends me dead trees and acknowledges my request to not be contacted except for action items. And by action items, I don't mean giving them more money, I mean things like Contact These Senators About This Bill or Rally Locally For This or Do You Want To Volunteer At This Community Fair. Some charities (like Child's Play) engage me but once a year and even then, limit their announcements to their own community sites, counting on friends and word of mouth rather than accosting strangers. Other awesome charities have included zoos with an Adopt-an-Animal charity and the OLPC foundation--charity commenced and while I occasionally get email updates on what's going on with the zoos or which kids are getting laptops in which countries now. I like to think that my two laptops went to Cambodia.

Whatever you do, absolutely do not do what the Save The Children guy did, and tell me that my other causes are worthless, that if I'm not guilted into spending money right then and there that I'll just forget about it, and that I need to basically prove my worth as a human being right now. Because I have never forgotten that guy and I never ever donate to Save The Children. (There are other worthy child-based charities that do not harass me and make me feel like shit and cause me to hide out in the Verizon store so I don't have to bump into your asshole advocate again).

To sum up: More email, less paper. More showing the effects of my donation, less asking for more donation. More meaningful interaction, less charity mugging. And no auditing my choices on how I give or allocate my money.

Thanks,

Lis

I waited for this to come out in the US, checking futilely at the SkyOne site every few weeks from its air date. The trailer looked great, the casting looked superb, and we had such high hopes for it. Of course, it took bloody well forever to come out in the US, but when I finally saw it pop up on Amazon (having done my monthly or so check and contemplating buying a region free DVD player if it didn't finally finally come out in region 1) I immediately snaffled it.

And then my husband and I sat down to watch it.

What was so promising sadly petered out into a whiffle of something pretending to be a Pratchett adaptation. Where to start? Let's start with Moist von Lipwig, conman extraordinaire. Richard Coyle is adequate, but we could never decide if he just didn't have a handle on the character or if he was playing him according to the director's whims. Moist should be a showman at all times, always confident, always upstaging Reacher Gilt, always keeping Adora Belle Dearheart on her toes. Richard Coyle's Moist goes for redemption too early and too often and plays Moist as a fairly jittery and easily upstaged postmaster. With the exception of the prayer to Offler scene, Moist is upstaged in every confrontation with Reacher or Adora Belle. Not enough showman here to satisfy, and his redemption is too pat.

Then there is Claire Foy's Adora Belle. Casting here is spot on but the material takes Adora Belle to very un-Adora Belle places. Where is the Spike we come to know and love? And seriously, what was up with the lack of smoking? Look, I'm as much for the Clean Air Act as the next non-smoker (my lungs, they like the clean air) but I still love the serious anti-heroine spin Pratchett gave Adora Belle/Spike. She cries and falls apart over the news of her brother--something she'd long come to grips with in the book--and rabble-rouses the golems in petty ways. I blame the material because it's obvious that Claire Foy could make a first rate spike. But she frickin' gives up smoking at the end of the movie???? (One of my favourite lines in Postal's sequel is Moist thinking about his future children in their well-ventilated nursery. My husband and I both had the impression that Adora Belle came out of the womb with a cigarette in hand. Neither of us is smokers, but we resent tampering with our beloved Spike in order to sanitise the movie.)

Reacher Gilt is not as smart or as subtle as he is in the book. Seriously overplayed by a scenery chewing David Suchet. He tips his hand too early, he takes Moist's showmanship vibes with his Clacks Mobile Marketing, and he doesn't come across as competent enough to have stolen the Clacks in the first place.

The story line is severely tampered with. The credits say Pratchett mucked around with it, but the story doesn't feel like a worthy adaptation of the book. The sorting machine is left out, Adora Belle's knowledge is undercut to the character's detriment, there are weird side interludes that didn't happen inserted into the story line, the clever subversions of the book are undercut with cinematic tropes that feel shopworn. I understand that a certain amount of abridgement goes on to adapt a book to a screenplay, but the whole thing feels weirdly "Hollywoodised" or whatever the British equivilant would be. I know that not everything can make it into a movie, but when key favourite scenes from the book are missing while flat-feeling set pieces take their place, I am made sad. The pacing felt very erratic, particularly when Moist is being confronted with the voices of the letters.

(List of things I missed: 1) Stanley whacking Gryll in the mouth with a bag of pins 2) The only god Moist prays to is Offler? Heretics! Anoia is mightily displeased. 3) The Senior Postsmans Secret Society and their hazing of Moist 4) Moist basically being a proper showman and always being one step ahead of Reacher Gilt. 5) Drumknott's pencils. 6) The sorting machine death of Gryll. 7) The ever-present ring of smoke following Adora Belle and Moist finding her lodgings by asking cigarette sellers. 8) Moist nicknaming Adora Belle "Spike". 9) Boris! Practically neutered. Pratchett's cranky animals are the best, and Boris reigns above the likes of Rogers the Bulls and You Bastard the Camel, so making him unexpectedly docile sucked. 10) If you show Angua, I'd appreciate seeing Carrot and Nobby too, but that's just me wishing.)

There are some lovely gems buried in this sad adaptation. Andrew Sachs as Groat (despite a lack of cough syrup vapor) is wonderful, although outdone by Ian Bonar as the perfect Stanley. Stanley really is one of the better preserved characters in this adaptation and his pin-fanaticism nicely captured. Dave the Pin Dealer is a nice bit part for Paul Barber, and Tamsin Grieg as a slightly older Sacharissa made me wish they were adapting The Truth. Charles Dance is nearly perfect as one of my favouritest character, Vetinari. He only cracks a little once, smiling near the end--one of those cinematic tells I wish they wouldn't do to characters. (I wish directors would trust the audiences to get that instead of going for the obvious.) Aside from that, his deadpan delivery was a thing of beauty. Ingrid Berdal is only briefly utilised as Angua but is very effective. And I have to say I loved spotting the fellow playing Otto Chriek, the vampire photographer, in the crowds. Mr. Pump worked well, and I was pleased that his speech to Moist about killing people in increments made it into the movie, as it's one of the best bits in the book. Casting was well done for the most part--I only feel that the main characters were ill-served by the pointless script changes.

In the end, I was a bit bummed out. All that wait, and the fabulosity promised by the trailer and the book itself failed to materialise. I'm a huge Pratchett fangirl and just didn't feel that this adaptation lived up to expectations. Hogfather worked, so I know that Jean Vadim's team CAN do a decent Pratchett adaptation. (We still watch that one at Christmastime.) But this one fizzled rather than sizzled. Moist was disappointing, Adora/Spike was tampered with to make her character more palatable, and the changes to the story line weakened the presentation as a whole.

On the whole, a disappointment. I'll stick with the book, which is fantastic, and in my top five for Discworld. (1. Hogfather 2. Jingo 3. Going Postal 4. The Truth 5. Night Watch with honorable mentions going to the first three Guards books, Reaper Man, Thief of Time, and Small Gods, because it's just that hard for a girl to choose from so much excellence.)

I'm getting slightly frustrated by the reaction of people to my book transitions. I am a book lover, I will never not be a book lover. But because of allergy issues and space constraints, John and I are transitioning a large number of books from hard copy to digital. And when I tell people this, a number of them reflexively state that they could never get rid of books, that life without books isn't worth living, etc.

A little reading/listening comprehension, people. Is that too much to ask for?

I am not getting rid of ALL THE BOOKS. I am changing the form I own them in. I am STILL a book lover. I am, however, a book lover with ongoing allergies and therapy to reduce those allergies suggests that reducing allergens across the board will improve my health and quality of life. I will still have the art books, the reference books, the signed books, the ones where the ink smells too good to give them up. We're transitioning the paperbacks, the ginormous fantasy bricks (Robert Jordan takes up a whole cube in one shelf!) the fluffy romances I bought while waiting for my prescriptions, the first Victoria Holt I read until it fell apart, anything that can go digital and which doesn't have added value in hardcopy form. (BTW, I have to say that the Robert Jordan books have WAAAAY better ebook covers than the Darrell K. Sweet covers that have traditionally graced the hardcopy versions. Sorry, Darrell K. Sweet, but I think after the first two paintings for Eye of the World, you started phoning it in on this series. I've enjoyed your pen and ink illustrations and seen better stuff from you.)

I totally get the tactile sensation of flipping through a book is a wonderful thing. That the smell of ink is not replaceable in digital. If your preference is to have a ginormous Neil Gaiman style library, oh, go ahead. I know that siren song. Really, if I could, I too would have a lovely delicious woodpanelled paradise with green summer light hitting the perfect armchair as I read surrounded by walls of books. However, sometimes my lungs just don't work like they should and my many beloved bookcases are actually acting like a giant wrinkly dust-gathering brain. There's no practical way to dust them regularly* and while we'd love to get glass fronted bookcases, this knowledge comes at a time when we just lost 200 square feet of living space and are already having to downsize. So in all, it makes sense to transition a large portion of our library to digital.

Here's the other thing: I used to be able to have cats and dogs as a teenager. With my adult onset allergies, my only chance of having a furry family member again is to reduce as many other allergens as possible. We gave it a chance earlier this year, when we brought Ani home, and while my allergy therapy progressed to the point where I could be around Ani for multiple days, my immune system was still compromised when I had any sort of respiratory issue like bronchitis, poor ventilation, whatever. I'm almost there, but not quite. We figured that getting hardwood floors would help, as well as reducing the dust where we could. Bookshelves, we're looking at you.

And unlike Ani, who had to go back to her loving breeder, I can still keep my books in a different form. A form which will not cause my lungs to go WHIFF.

But it doesn't mean I love books any less, nor more than it meant that I no longer loved cats because I couldn't be around them. (Digression: As I gradually had to deal with the cat allergy, every literary reference about cats kinda hurt. I kept reading books where the main character would distrust somebody because they shied away from cats or because they couldn't be around cats. Seriously, where were all the allergic cat-loving people who realised it was cats or their lungs?)

Oh, and dear Authors whom I've loved for years: Lucky you, you'll get increased income as I replace all my books slowly with their digital versions. Dear New-to-Me Authors: I'm more likely to buy your book now that I have the digital place to put it, instead of arguing with myself about space constraints on the To Be Read Pile by the bedside table. See, you win, too!

PS. I had argued for the dominance of the traditional book form in the past before I had my ereader. Some of those arguments still hold sway, but a number (like my worry about reading in the bathtub--made possible with ziploc baggies or fancy waterproof covers) didn't hold up. I'm not trying to argue that digital books are better. They are going to be better for ME, short of an apocalypse (and even in an apocalypse, I could only cart so many books around after being pursued by water-stealing gangs, before my back gives out). But perhaps not for you. And that's totally cool. We still get the stories. My husband prefers to listen to audio books because he does a lot of painting--is that any better than my preference for the typewritten word? We still have the same story to share and laugh over. He still asks me to speculate on various Discworld/Vorkosigan/Woosterian matters.

[View the story "My Morning Hike" on Storify]

John, after a half year of unemployment and job hunting, finally settled on a position at LucasArts. Which means we're headed to San Francisco. Again.

Yup, in two weeks, we'll be leaving Seattle for the slightly less misty climes of San Francisco. We are actually both bummed and excited, not in equal measures. John has really taken to Seattle, and he's sad that we can't stay here for too much longer. He'd just started getting Warhammer buddies and really loves the roller derby and the neighbourhoods and all that. I too will miss Seattle, and hope that we'll be able to come back some day.

In the meantime, I'm excited to get back to the Bay Area. I have hopes that it will be easier to get fit once we ditch the car, as we are planning on doing, and that I'll be able to write Snakes and Ladders with renewed vigor. (Easier to do some of the research.) A bit worried that it will be harder to save money in SF, that we won't be able to afford as nice a place as we have here, and that I'll be competing in a stringent job market, but at least SF should be easier than many places to get a job.

I will miss seeing Oscar, Carley, and Robert, as well as Chirs (Lise's little brother) and his family, and my coworkers. (But the last of the Friendship! gang just transferred over to Amazon, and I know at least one of the UI team is jonesing for San Francisco maybe even more than me.) I'd also just started getting to know our next door neighbours and going to board game nights with them. (I don't know what it is about adulthood, but it feels ridiculously hard for me to work up to "Hey, wanna be friends and hang out?" specially when I know how busy folks with Real Lives are. But better late than never.)

I've got to update my portfolio and hurry up and apply for some positions so we can hit the ground running. Things are gonna be a smidge tight until the reinbursement/moving bonus comes in. Which is worrisome but not impossible to deal with. I've got to tighten my belt so I can help John as much as possible with the move-in rent. :(

Some things I will miss about Seattle:

- My commute (which I will also NOT MISS!) - I loved going over Lake Washington every day because there was always something beautiful to see: neat clouds, the trees looking like watercolours, the lights on the opposite shores....But I will also not miss it because hello! It's a commute! And my blood pressure will like me more. Plus, with the construction on the 520, they'd chopped down a lot of the trees that made it so purty.

- The Bald Eagles of Lake Washington
- The weirdness of the 520 bridge--choppy on one side, flat on the other, never the same for more than a day or two at a time
- Poppy, Andaluca, Deluxe Bar and Grill, Icon, Six Arms, The Hurricane, Tutta Bella, Serious Pie, Top Pot, Cupcake Royale, PoDog, Mexico, Il Fornaio, Teddy's, Brown Bag, Ipanema, Queen Mary, Juno, New Saigon, Piroshki Piroshki, Pan African Market, the Cajun place in Pike's Place, Sushi Connection, Taste, Urbane, Mirch Masala, Rom Mai Thai, and all the other places we used to eat. (I also include SkyCity with the caveat that the final time we ate there, John and Wendy got food poisoning from the Pepsi.)
- Being smack in the middle of downtown. We could walk to EVERYTHING. When people came for visits, super easy to arrange hangout time. My bro could stay with us for SakuraCon.
- The Seattle Public Library
- The SAM - we had memberships! Saw Alexander Calder's and Picasso's work!
- The UW bookstore
- The Blick up on Cap Hill - (Okay there will be other Blicks and other art stores, but we raided this one all the damn time.)
- The GW bunker over at Factoria
- The Rat City Roller Girls
- The Space Needle and the Seattle Center. (They have cultural events at the Seattle Center House and we'd see one every other month or so.)
- The Fremont Solstice Parade
- SNOW DAYS! - seriously, I never had any as a kid, and I get a kick getting them as an adult.

Anyway, that's just a sampling. Seattle has treated us well, and capulted to the top ranks of my favourite cities. (And I don't mind the rain--it's mostly like living in a veggie mister when it doesn't rain, and we still sorta get summer. Although not this year.)