random observations

For all you potential and current homeowners with some sort of a lawn, I have a tip for you. Never use any of the following as ground cover, or you will regret it to your dying day:

• juniper
• ivy
• mint

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I went to a very large high school that was probably 30% black, 34% white, 20% asian, 15% hispanic, and 1% other. This is a completely random guess-pulled-out-of-my-butt, based on what I can remember. As a result, there are so many people I had interacted with of any particular one of those races that I don’t hold any individual in my mind as an archetype of a racial background. Not at all because I’m a better person than anyone — because, as much as I would like to think I am, I’m simply not — but because I am just used to lots of different people, I never think to myself, “This is how white people are,” or “This is how black people are.” I can see how easy it would be if you’ve only been friends with one person of a specific race to think to yourself, “Hmm, my Asian friend says this about Asians, so I guess it’s probably true.” I hold people I meet accountable as individuals, not representatives of their race or socio-economic background. I would eventually like to send my future kids to a school with a good racial mix so that they can experience the same kind of diversity I did growing up.

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Listening to the State of the Union address made me want to scream. Actually, in the car last night as I was driving to Seppo’s work from my work, I screamed as loudly as I can, “F&*% YOU!!” at Bush on the radio. I think his presidency is ruining, among many many many many other more important things, my equanimity and my blood pressure.

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Hearing my sister upset really tears me up inside and makes me want to go on a violent rampage. There goes my equanimity again.

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I finally bumped a really painful bug off my queue and am so happy.

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I don’t think I mentioned it earlier, but I have been promoted (on paper) to Software Engineer 5, T17. I have no idea what T17 means, but my guess is it’s some weird internal code that refers to the pay scale. How weird. Anyway, the odd thing is that I’ve been considered a level 5 Software Engineer (basically, a senior software engineer) since about… 2000? 2001? Maybe not level 5, quite, but I’ve had the senior title since about then. I lost it when I came to my new job, because I was inexperienced in the things I am working in right now, but they gave me back the title because they saw that I was performing to their expectations. Yay! But it was still weird to be “promoted” to what I had been thinking of myself for years.

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I can’t even speak about Alito without wanting grab my head and shake myself for hours. So I won’t. There is a discussion at Angry Chad though.

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Seppo and I constantly talk about the differences in our mental lives. My guess is that I could go on months of “down-time” if no one was making me feel guilty about it. Seppo gets antsy and needs to work/create/clean/something with even just a day off. I think that I often feel so mentally and emotionally drained that I have not yet in my life hit a satiation point for feeling mentally rested. I look forward to when I do. 🙂

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I hate asshole drivers.

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Holly sent me a link to MagKnits which has this on the front page:

Hee!

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Arrested Development ROCKS!!!!!!!! I ::heart:: Jason Bateman.