Twelve years ago today, when the calendar made its periodic leap, we buried my father in the frozen earth of February.

Not twelve anymore. Sixteen. Nearly half my life. I don't have any more insight into it, or much more feeling, than in that post from four years ago. Well no - that's not quite true. I think of my father a lot lately.
I think of how he always voted Democrat, unthinking and unquestioning, and how disgusted that made me then and still makes me now. He voted however the union told him to. Think for yourself! little grade-school me would shout at him.
But I also think of how he taught me the sanctity of your own vote, how it's this precious thing that should be protected at all costs.
I think of how he lectured us all on the value of a good steady job. Be happy you have one, don't rock the boat.
I think of how his death was the beginning of the slow unraveling of my family, how distorted everything became, and how quickly. Just because he wasn't there.
I think of him whenever I get blood tests, in those tense moments before the doctor tells me all my levels are peachy-keen, but don't get complacent about it.
And I think of him whenever I don't feel like going to the gym, as a motivating force. A healthy heart is as precious as a right to vote. I don't have to die young.

I think of him on Leap Year Day, once every four years I let myself really think of him, and deep deep down I want to cry and throw things. If you get to know your parents in your adulthood, I think so much is different. It's just different if they're gone before you thoroughly grow up. I have things left to say, and no one to say them to. Loose ends and unfinished arguments and endless, endless questions. Not the warm fuzzy questions that Hollywood dreams up, but demands for information. About him, about my mother, about the insides of their heads and hearts. Things I wouldn't even think to ask back then, and things I'd only have the strength to ask now.

But there's nothing but dust in a coffin, so no answers for me.

I told a friend of mine once - her father died when she was a teenager, too, and she called me once in a crying-and-throwing-things mood and feeling all guilty for her selfishness in wanting him back just so she could yell at him. I told her, there's nothing selfish about it. It's a natural outrage. It's like a book that ended, a story that never got finished. Not the story of his life, but the story of you and him. There was supposed to be a few more chapters where all the plot lines could play out and resolve themselves. But one day you turn the page and there's nothing but white space, all the way to the back cover. It's just mean, to end our story like that. It's unfair. And we're stuck with it.

Every once in a while, you open the book and stare at the white pages and want to scream and cry and throw things at the blankness. Lucky for me, that's only once ever 4 years or so.

Shut the fuck up, how cool is that shit!

(I now return to my regularly scheduled overdose of political readings, pending clinical diagnosis of and deprivation therapy for my election-obsession. Peace out.)

Um. I forgot today was Monday. Or really, I actually was fully aware for every minute of the day that it was, in fact, Monday. I just forgot it was SBD.

Sorry.

Anyone?

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my beloved friend Tom for calling me up and talking politics with me for nearly an hour before his adorable son began screeching too loud for us to continue. Tom remains my favorite person on earth to talk politics with. We agree in all the right places and our disagreements only makes us love each other more, but most of all? It's just fun. For whatever reason, it's just fun with him. Somehow, it always makes me feel about 18 years old again, nattering on the phone with him about the world and what's important and How I See It and et cetera and stuff.

Did I mention his wife is pregnant again? I think I did. Tom the twice-over dad: a good thing.

Okay, I slept like 10 hours last night and then took a wee nap this afternoon (hey, I had a LOT of sleep to catch up on, and also I worked out this morning and ran errands, so it's not like I'm all sloth all the time, okay) but have failed to eat anything but a sammich about 6 hours ago. So I need food. Stat. I also need milk, for lo! The milk bottle is empty.

I kinda want Indian food. Guess I could pick some up on my way to get milk? Hmmm. Well whatever I do, I better do it soon before I start gnawing on the woodwork.

Oh jaysus somebody STOP ME from sucking up election coverage like a pimpled poli-sci major. Seriously, I have a problem. It surfaces every election year. I need therapy or something. Because it's not the polls and the positions and the debates and the posturing and the scandals and blah blah blah that gets me sucked in (though they do have their charms) (well, not the polls, those are utterly charmless), it's the very simple act of voting. Who votes, where they vote, how they vote - not who they vote for, you understand, but the physical act of voting. People overseas can vote by net? Does that state have a paper ballot that has you circle a name or fill in a bubble or what? What's this now about the Democratic districts in Texas and how delegates are apportioned? Can I go watch a caucus in another state just to see? Please? Omigod did you know that here in Illinois, there was a mini-scandale about how a handful of voters were given these plastic styluses (to be used on touch-screen voting machines) to write with on paper ballots and when they saw the "pens" didn't write, they were told it was invisible ink? And then when the machines wouldn't take the blank ballot, the poll workers just manually overrode the machine and forced it to eat blank paper? Did you know that? Do you know how simultaneously hilarious and appalling that is? Did you know they had to track down the circa 20 voters who were told about the magic invisible ink and get them to come back out and vote?

DO YOU SEE I HAVE A MENTAL PROBLEM????

Really, it's been a while since I cared for anything more than the voting mechanics. The occasional congressional or state election is good, but there just isn't usually as much coverage as I crave. It's good for a few days, but that's all. The last presidential election was just impossible for me to get remotely interested in anything (gawd, seriously - was there ever a more depressing set of campaigns and candidates, to say nothing of the outcome?) And then the 2000 election was just like tailor-made for a freak like me, but I couldn't soak myself in any of it because I was living in France that whole fall. Which honestly, it was really for the best. Except for that class of French high school students I taught, who repeatedly made the mistake of asking me to explain how that whole American general election thing works. Those poor kids. I hope someone woke them up for graduation.

But now I'm making the really DUMB mistake of reading tons of campaign coverage. Stupid fucking punditry, talking heads and talking points. So very, very, very retarded. I KNOW better, but I can't seem to stop myself. It's sick. This is not what I should be filling my brain with, I know. I swear to christ, I KNOW.

I blame the writer's strike. There is a lack of fine entertainment, dammit.

Maybe I should take up papier-mache or something.

Celebrate SBD with

Salomé!
and
Kerry!
but
not Kate, whose obvious guilt over failing to write a valid SBD clearly needs to be validated by my rejecting all three entries in this very pointed and public way.

I am not really SBDing because... well because I'm not. But I will address various comments left on the last SBD:

1. My sinuses are suspiciously all better these last few days, without the aid of hot whiskey-n-honey-n-lemon. Thanks for the suggestion, but that concoction actually only works on a bad cough, for me.

2. I was totally over the Obama video I linked that one time inside of 48 hours, because that's how I am about songs that take me by storm, in all genres and at all times - except The Shins, because they are some kind of musical freaks and I still listen to Chutes Too Narrow like every other day and am still not sick of it. Kee-razy. However, Kate is totally right about the hilariousness of this video which I still go back to every now and again, when I need a giggle.

3. Paying off my car isn't exciting because I own the car and get the title and all that. I could not possibly care less about the actual ownership of it. Ho hum. It's exciting and important because I have $230 less in bills every month. EVERY MONTH.

4. Laura, you better plan a trip to The Bookstore That Is So Very Far Away, because I plan to read a couple of Kleypas novels that Snookie finds fabulous and I could very well have even MORE recommended reading. (She did mention that it's possible I'll despise them and it'll be a Bad Moment of our friendship, in the tradition of The Kite Runner Incident Of Ought Seven, but we're generally more in sych when it comes to Romance. So I predict more glowing-to-semi-glowing reviews.)

5. Robin says this thread (SPOILERS! SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS!) will show me idiots who hated The Spymaster's Lady for all the wrong reasons, but I agreed with all the criticisms right through about page 6 or so. They were all valid criticisms, and I should've mentioned that the book does take a heee-yuge supension of disbelief. But then, what historical Romance doesn't, to some extent? There are a ton of really dumb-ass twists and turns in that book, it's just that I find all of them entirely forgiveable. Sometimes, you just gotta go with the flow and err on the side of escapism.

But then I got to page 7 of that link and saw accusations of a TSTL heroine, and then I was done with that. God, romance readers can be SO FUCKING STUPID about heroines. It's disgusting, it really is.

6. Tacoma, I bet you can find The Spymaster's Lady in a larger grocery store. It's kinda everywhere, assaulting eyeballs around the globe with that godawful cover. My biggest problem in finding it at the bookstore was trying to remember the author's name, so I temporarily dubbed the book The Spymaster's Lady Is Born. Born = Bourne. A BOURNE lady, HAHAHAHAHAHHA. (Note: this mnemonic device might not work if your internal dialogue s even slightly more sane than my own.)

That's all. I got nothing else. Except if you're one of the zero number of people remotely interested in my ongoing observations of the websites of potential presidential nominees, I will point out the rather alarming discovery that McCain's site now sports a new and big fat slogan right there on the homepage, starting a few days ago. And that slogan is: Ready To Lead On Day One. I'm trying to figure out if I find it subversively hilarious, or just really pathetic.

In conclusion, these are the best sockies in the whole entire universe, and I cannot thank Dawn enough for the fantastic gift of The Monkey Slippers Of Surpassing Goofy Cuteness.

Hallo, lovies, it's

SBD

You know the drill. Will you be drilling? Do tell.

Man, why is it so hard lately for me to remember to blog? I dunno, I feel like my entire life is both excessively boring and also falling into a state of severe sloth which makes it impossible to care about saying anything. Sorry.

Snooks is visiting today, but I will post later. Because if nothing else, there are all these comments I should respond to. And I need to take a picture of the slippers Dawn sent me, and share them with the world for lo! They are awesome.

But right now I gotta eat something. I dunno what, but something.

Au revoir récrire!

It turns out that I apparently can't work a tire pressure gauge. At all.

I don't wanna talk about it.

Celebrate Smart Bitches Day with

Lyvvie
and
Kate
and
Salome

and you should totally read

The Spymaster's Lady by Joanna Bourne despite its unbearably awful cover. I think the only comparable gap between quality of writing and cringe-factor of cover was the original for (Kinsale Alert!) Flowers From the Storm. (At least Fabio on FFtS still cracks me up. Ah, comedy.) And I believe I've said it before but I'll go ahead and say it again: the cheesey embarrassing covers? They matter to me. They won't keep me from buying a book, that's for sure, but they certainly prevent me from reading in public. Hell, I even asked for a gift receipt. (It's not for me! A friend! Really!) Publishers should be ashamed of driving me to such deception. And don't give me shit about daring to care what strangers think of me - I think we'd all ask for a gift receipt when buying certain things, like How To Cure A Chronic Yeast Infection In 10 Easy Steps, for instance - and my real gripe is that a cover like that makes it damn near impossible to share the joy of a good book with a Romance outsider.

Argh. Not the point. But I find a cover like that both insulting and frustrating and I just had to get it off my (smooth, bare, impressively muscled) chest.

ANYWAY.

It's really difficult to discuss the goods and bads of this book without giving too much away, but I shall try.

Plot: It's set after the Terror, during the time when Napoleon was getting all up in the rest of Europe's face. The heroine is a French spy, the hero is an English spy, the fate of nations hang in the balance as they are chased across two countries by people who want their secrets and their deaths. That about sums it up.

My absolute favorite thing is the heroine, who is just about everything anyone could ever want a character to be. She's young and stupid about love and lust, but not about much else - and wise enough to recognize how stupid the love/lust makes her. She's very clear-eyed about herself, the world, and her place in the world. And after spending about 25 pages with this character, you start to think of all those other heroines you've met who are described as "resourceful", and every last one of them is put to shame. She veers dangerously close to being too good at everything, but manages to avoid it somehow. Instead of being superhero, she turns out to be a very exceptional person in very specific ways. And she's so fantastically complex that I seriously just wanted to applaud every once in a while.

Now, this Fabulous Heroine thing is not to be taken lightly. I suppose some readers will hate her - they always do, any time you dare write a strong, intelligent, unique female who is flawed and human and, well, full of character. Many of us looooooooove these complex creatures, but just as many hate hate haaaaaaaate them. I don't know why. And this is the first one I think I've ever read one who I think has the chance of being truly admired by most readers, right or wrong. I just can't think of what accusations could be leveled against her: she's not a bitch, or dumb, or perfect, or humorless, or flighty, or deceptive, or spineless, or... I dunno, any of the other million reasons readers find to hate a good fleshed-out, interesting heroine. So I'd be interested in hearing what the haters come up with.

Maybe the reason she works so well is because the hero... doesn't. Well okay, that's not fair: he works fine. He's just not to die for, make em swoon, panties-on-fire and scream like it's Elvis HERO. He's good and strong and smart and fiercely loyal and all that, without being controlling or otherwise a boorish caveman type. There's just a depth that's missing to the character, and maybe that's how it has to be in order to make room for her depths. A shame, really, since ALL the other characters are wonderfully complex, even the ones you never even meet - who are discussed but not present. So it's not that the author is incapable of it. But he's just sorta... flat? That's not quite the word. He's three-dimensional and believable, but he's just kinda there. For her. Which is what allows the reader to really love her, I think. Because you're not so completely in love with him that you start judging her. Which I think is what Romance readers tend to do, in a subconscious, you're-not-good-enough-for-my-boyfriend kinda way.

This isn't to say that I don't think these two are a good match. I think they are, and I think it's precisely because he's so solid and predictable and good, from a nice family with a good stable upbringing. I was reminded a lot of (Kinsale Alert #2!) Melanthe and Ruck in For My Lady's Heart. Which if you haven't read it - she's sort of a bitch with mysterious depths, and he's good and strong and true. But in that hero, there was a lot of other stuff going on. In this book, there really isn't all that much going on in our guy. He's just a very good man who happens to be a really formidable British spy and really, genuinely loves and admires the heroine. If there had been something else to him, I could have irrevocably fallen in love with him. But I didn't. I just really liked him and really, really wanted him to get the girl, for both their sakes.

Anyway, that's the characters. On to the writing! My lasting impression is one of intense gratitude, that I as a reader was treated as an intelligent being who did not need every detail of plot and character rammed repeatedly into my cranium. THANK YOU for not spoon-feeding me. THANK YOU for trusting me to understand what was happening both in the plot and in the characters without spelling out an obvious explanation of every last word and deed. Thank you for the notable lack of empty-headed filler material, that literary equivalent of styrofoam peanuts. Thank you, in short, for paying attention to the words. Funny how few writers do.

However, I can't thank you for the annoying twists that constantly reminded me of Alias and various other spy shows. It's not that I could see them coming (at least not all of them), it's just that they all made me sigh kind of tiredly and think Of course... None of it was a deal-breaker for me, I just wish it could've been a slightly less stale on the plot-twist front. My advice to most every writer who's got some Big Reveal (or several) which isn't the whole point of the book: don't make it a big reveal to the reader. Make it a big reveal to the character, and build our anticipation as we wait for the character to learn what we know.

But I digress. My only other annoyance came from how the heroine spoke. She's French, and we are made to understand that they're all speaking in French (for a significant portion of the book) even though we're reading it in English. And yet she - and ONLY she - is speaking with the syntactical quirks of French. These quirks are dead accurate, mind you, and are perfectly called for when she's speaking English - in which she is not fluent. But you're either speaking perfectly in one language or imperfectly in another. None of the English characters spoke these cute little Frenchisms in their fluent French. What I'm trying to say is: the native French speaker was speaking French with an accent. That's how it came out on the page. And maybe I'm one of the few people who'd be so eternally annoyed by this - no wait, I can think of at least one other reader who has a keen enough ear (Kinsale Alert #3!) to be distracted by it - but it's there and it's wrong and it bugged me and there, I said it.

But other than those relatively minor quibbles? I freaking LOVED this book. It's intelligent, it's got good dialogue, very competent prose, fascinating characters, fun plot, a wonderful attention to detail, and did I say intelligent? Because it really is. It's honestly one of the best I've read in years and actually deserves the hype it's been getting. Talk about rare.

***EDIT: I totally forgot to mention that I also really loved that the heroine was very loyal to France, and the author didn't cop out by making her a double agent or converting her to see the error of her Revolutionary ways and ending up all Hail Britannia, I heart John Bull, for England and St George, etc. This is what really lent the credibility and complexity to the character - that she believed in what she was doing, but she never saw herself or anyone as The Good Guys. She kind of saw all of them as the not-good-but-necessary players in a dirty and not exactly noble game. And this was yet another really amazing achievement in this book, and the element that made it all so very interesting and dynamic. I can't praise the author enough for unapologetically sticking with such a difficult character point and letting her characters be who they were, and had to be.

So go read it. Enjoy. Or don't and tell me why.

Mwah!

Happy Monday! It's like two below zero even without factoring in the wind chill and I get to go out in it so I can be at work! Hurray! I love today SO MUCH!

I also love

SBD

but without the sarcasm. Do show your love by participating. What the hell are you reading these days, anyhow? Share with the class. Comments open, and see ya later.

Sub-zero temps again and the sinus thing just will not stop, and I just cannot find the will or strength to walk out the door. Goodbye, clean laundry. Farewell, stocked cupboards. So long, productive weekend.

Hello to food delivery and sloth. Huzzah!

Also, I am like 30 pages from the end of that there romance novel and have totallllllllllllllly been loving it, so I plan to at least get started on my SBD tonight instead of waiting til tomorrow evening when I'm filled to the gills with Monday exhaustion and apathy. Wish me luck.

How I spent my Friday night

I paid off my car. In full. Three months ahead of schedule.

(And still have money to take that vacation, typed the smug self-satisfied financial goddess from her new laptop.)



:-D

Still, with the sinus issues. GAH. Like a full month on sudafed. This can't be good.

Anyway, whatever, the point: I feel like ass.

I got The Spymaster's Lady, which all of Romanceland is gushing about. Let's see if I hate it or not, huh? I'm pretty sure I'll do nothing but laze about, blowing my nose all weekend. So I should have time to read it and report back. I confess myself intrigued by all the hype.

Continuing my curiosity-driven Investigation Lite of presidential hopers's's's websites, I finally checked out McCain's place. More of the I-I-I me-me-me language, but it was really easy to find pertinent and substantive information there. Sure, it has all the rhetoric too, but the bottom line is there and easy to be found, and I hugely appreciate this bluntness. I was actually all impressed for a second to see a sub-section under "Issues" called "Human Dignity". Silly me, I thought there'd be something about McCain's (much treasured, by me) stance on torture. But no - it was all anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage blabbity blab. Not only does anti-torture apparently not fit under "Human Dignity", it doesn't fit anywhere in any of the listed issues. Politics. Sigh.

It's stodgy-looking and not necessarily anywhere I could imagine returning for leisurely browsing, but it's a good use of the web. Lots of info, broken down into manageable pieces and organized intelligently. Kind of like a reasonable stack of pamphlets, in electronical form. Speaking of which - I think Clinton changed her site some. just a little, but nothing really significant. Maybe it's my imagination, but I swear it looks more like Obama's than it used to. I dunno why, I still can't look at Clinton's site for more than 5 minutes without getting a headache. So it's not the color scheme or layout - it's like information overload, that's what it is. Messy piles of info with nice-n-neat labels, but who wants to pick through those giant piles? Streamline, will ya? GAH. And hers also just has this Politician Extraordinaire reek about it. Here's issues! And reams of policy and positions! And talk about me me me me me me me me! And big ideas! And appeal to whoever you are, it's in here! I think I have snake oil in the back, even! Want some? No? Let me distract you with my press releases!

Predictably, after some time on those two sites, I had to go back to Obama's site to cleanse the palate. Soothing blues! Adorable but not ostentatious graphics! And he talks about me all the time, that silver-tongued charmer. Brilliant. Inviting. Eminently clickable. Kudos to whoever designed it, and even more kudos on whoever chose and edited the content.

(No I don't know why I'm treating everyone to my opinion of the sites. Except I think everyone should make a point to be informed, and any candidate's site should be a place for you to be able to quickly and easily inform yourself. And how much effort and thought is put into a site is, I think, an indicator of how much a candidate really cares about the people they want to represent, and how much they really get this whole technology thing. Which, ya know - they should. Or else. But when it comes down to it, I just want to vote for someone who I can truly believe is a decent human being, and who has real integrity. I can disagree on a ton of issues, but someone who's honest and shows a true respect for other human beings - that'll win over policy details any day. And I think I can actually give a shit again about the whole process because there are a couple of viable candidates with real decency in them. Which is the first in a very long while. So I actually want to poke around everyone's little cyber-home and check it out.)

Oh it's 10 - time for my next dose of decongestant. What a fucking joy. I think I'll go stick my head under a hot shower, then fall asleep three pages into the book.

Yeah, that works. Toodles.

Oh you wacky precipitation, you. I did try to take pictures of the madness for y'all, but my camera had no juice. Sad. Basically the whole city looks like it's covered in a very dense white carpet (with a pile height of about 10 inches and counting), and the streets/sidewalks/parking lots look like a troupe of muddy-booted kids marched all over said carpet. Which is really, really gross. But only what you can expect when slush falls from the sky for 4 straight hours or more. Or it didn't fall, really, it whipped and whizzed and dove at our heads like rabid bats. Or something. It was fierce, anyway.

Blah blah weather blah. I don't mind it too much because hello? It's February. It's supposed to be cold and miserable with the howling winds and the arctic tundras and the car doors that freeze shut. I just think we should all get an extra hour in the morning. To sleep in more (semi-hibernation is clearly called for) and clean off the car. And bundle up, too, which takes time.

Oh hey that reminds me: I take back like 60% of everything I ever said about UGG boots. Some are less fugly than others - but more importantly, they do have their time and place. Which would be now and here. Where there is about 6 inches of slush on the ground. Seriously, every year I'm all like "I should get some good warm winter boots that are big and thick knee-high and good for tromping through the snow..." Then I'm all like "Oh, it's only like once a year I'd really need them..." And every time that once-a-year comes around? I kick myself. With my inadequate moccasin-like footwear.

Nothing is going on in my life at all, not even a little bit, hence the lack of bloggage. Nothing. Except I keep eating very poorly (lack of good produce leaves me petulant and uninspired) and have a wicked bad case of sinus headache. Which means I need sudafed now. Which I wll go get now.

Yay sbd withh

Kate
and
jmc
and
Tracy (NOT Trish, GAH)

And omigod am I tired and have a headache, so here's the cliffs-notes version: Desperate Duchesses is not just a fab title, it's a fab read. Hurrah to Eloisa James, of whose very amusing and competent and entertaining writing I plan to read plenty more. It's a rather fluffy bit of a story, but has some stunningly substantial side characters, for all that. The side characters are way more complex than the main characters, actually, which works for me (in this particular treatment, anyway) and makes me wish some of them had their own book. A non-romance book, because the most fascinating things about them are incompatible with the genre's strict demands on heroes and heroines.

So read it. It's fun but not dumb.

...and thus concludes yet another lame SBD from yours truly. Gnite.

Mother of god, it's Monday again. Which means

SBD

I have a fantastically fun book to report on, so keep your fingers crossed that I can stay awake this evening. I was honestly a breath away from calling off work entirely, until I remembered it's another of those Days I Have To Be there. Sigh.

This is what I'm addicted to watching these last 24 hours or so:

When I was 19 and came home from my months in Italy (and really, what a shocking time that was - how much I miss that me), everything was different and I was so very angry. It wasn't the reverse culture shock, though that was there. It wasn't that my friends had changed, because they hadn't, and they were still very there and I was still very much in their lives. It was a situation with my mother. Which I won't get into because man is it ever involved. But it's funny how, 15 years later, it all looks so different.

I think the cruelest thing about getting older is all the ways you can look back and feel such helpless pity for your younger, more ignorant self. It's not the same as embarassment in hindsight, those Boy, I was so stupid moments where you cringe at the memory of how wrong you once were, or how selfish or how clueless or dumb. Like looking at pictures from junior high and how could you ever have not seen how awful your hair looked like that, no wonder you were constantly mocked. That's a normal kind of cringing, those mortifying things you're still embarrassed about years later.

But there are other things that you couldn't have known, that you go for many adult years without ever knowing, even. And then you learn them and look back. And there's nothing but sadness there. In my case, it's because I think that back at that time, stepping off the plane and back into my Indiana life, I could have known it - or at least understood it, if I'd let myself. But I was too busy learning other great big crushing unexpected things, and there wasn't any room for more.

I suppose that's the thing about experience: you can only get so much at one time. And you're getting it all the time, even when you don't know it. And as you get older, you're kind of destined to re-view your life and actions over and over in the context of whatever new experiences you've got in the bag. If you're the kind of person who looks back, that is. I tend to be.

Mostly you don't see yourself differently. It makes you see the other players differently. Fat lot of good it does so many years later. I always think, with my nieces especially, that I should try to give them my perspective on things, so they can at least have the option of benefitting from my experience. But the sadness part comes in when you realize that in many situations, nothing quite takes the place of personal experience. Not even for the type of girl who truly tries to learn from others' experiences. Some concepts don't fit into words, or cleverly shown-not-told. Some things you can only understand because you recognize it. After you've been through it, suddenly the words make sense. I suppose the classic example of that is falling in love, but that's a stupid example - even tiny babies know enough about love to get the general gist of it. Love is quite possibly the easiest thing to learn. It's the other stuff that's so hard - like learning to live with it. Or without it. Or with too much of it, or not enough. Et cetera.

I dunno, I don't really have a point. I don't personally believe that ignorance is bliss, but I think sometimes it's better than the alternative. Whatever. Stupid thoughts of a stupid past and a mother who was stupid even back then and a younger me who just didn't have room to understand anything more than what I was going through.

I'm going back to my exquisitely fluffy romance novel now. God bless escapism.

So the greatness of the laptop turns out not to be the mobility. It's that my desktop really is crap and slow. I don't notice it all that much, because my work computer is crazy-slow. (I keep meaning to put in for a new one now that it's calmer, but somehow... it's not all that calmer.) The laptop is so freaking fast in comparison. So now I'm all Hey What Else Can I Download And/Or Stream lady.

As a result, I'm catching up on my sorely missed Daily Show. Which made me think oh hey I'll go check out some candidates' sites, because the ongoing evolution of the relationship between politicians and the internet is (a) very interesting to me, and (b) often a great source of comedy. I started with Hillary and got bored. Let me re-phrase that: borrrrrrrrrrrrrrrred. Then I went over to barackobama.com and that's why I'm here a-bloggin. Because let me tell you something: 10 minutes on that site and suddenly I like myself about 60% more. Seriously. It's like therapy. Which, ya know - whuh?

I realized that it's because Obama's site is only about 15% about Obama. It's all about You and Me. Which I must say is a BRILLIANT tactic, whether you believe it's genuine or not. (I personally believe it is, even before I went to the site.) Over at the Clinton site, it was all "Read what Hillary thinks about this" and "Hillary is so [ADJECTIVE#1]" and "Hillary is so [ADJECTIVE#2]" and "Hillary is so [ADJECTIVE#3]." But at Obama's site it's all about how great we all are and hey wanna be all be great together? Let's all be AWESOME! Which sounds retarded when I say it,but is just ridiculously inspiring when he says it.

Anyway, it's my mental health Pick To Click: watch some Obama videos. You get feeling all warm n fuzzy about yourself.

Dudes. The snow. It will not stop. It's kind of totally awesome, if I didn't have to go out in it. I'd even call off, except I can't because it's one of those Important To Be There days.

But the snow. Is everywhere. It's all blizzard-like. Hardly any cars going by, and the sound of the shovels of an ambitious few scraping concrete. Radiators hissing, cat purring. And snow swirling all over, all day yesterday and when I woke up today, still falling and blowing and white everywhere.

I dunno, I just find it totally cool. Except the part where I have to clean off my car.