Lessons Learned

First, I have the most amazing husband in the world (but I already knew that)

Second, if you get a flat tire, don't sit there with your headlights on with the engine not running or in addition to being stuck there with a flat tire, you may also have a dead battery. (it seemed like a good idea at the time since it was very dark along 101 and I thought if my lights were on people would see my car and not hit it... but honestly I didn't think about it at all, I just left them on, oh well)

Third, after a long while the highway patrol does come and check on you if you look stranded enough, but boy am I glad I had my cell phone to call my amazing husband instead of having to wait for CHIPS.

yes, it was one of those days...

Wear Red

February 2, 2007, is National Wear Red Day, a day when Americans nationwide wear red to show their support for women's heart disease awareness.

Puzzle Day -- a different kind

It turns out that today is Puzzle Day -- mostly Jigsaw Puzzle Day that is, but people are using it as an excuse for all sorts of different puzzles (and we do love people who want to do puzzles!!!)

Here are some links about it:

Holiday Insights

Teacher Planet Resources

Reach Every Child

Clip Art

The Greensboro Children's Museum held National Puzzle Day Competitions: National Puzzle day honors puzzles of all sizes, shapes, and forms. We’ll have crossword puzzles, sudoku puzzles, and regular jigsaw puzzles. The entire family can enjoy this event so sign-up today for a day of fun!

Even the Square Dancers are getting into the act.

Square Books in Oxford, MS also had a crossword puzzle contest today.

The Appalachian School of Law Library (Grundy, VA) blogged a fun lawyer-related logic puzzle to separate

Vicky B writes, "This is National Puzzle Day. Puzzles come in all sizes, shapes and formats from easy word searches to building furniture. Imagine you are in the business of creating puzzles. What new type would you come up with? How many pieces would it have? How big is it? Do you need tools to assemble, or a dictionary to solve? Is there a prize for the first solver? Let your imagination puzzle the facts out."

and of course, zillions more sites out there talking about it ... hopefully you'll all take this opportunity to check out Silicon Valley Puzzle Day!!

Quiet on the blog...

Goodness, I've been terrible about blogging this week. S laughed that I thought it was ok to go a few days here without blogging after the trouble I dragged him through to find an internet connection some of the days on our trip so I could post updates (though it was fun to drive around downtown Jerusalem with my laptop scanning for a wifi signal... the whole downtown is a hotspot once I figured out how to find it). But this week has been a whirlwind of catching up and various projects. Put together the MH Friends newsletter on Sunday, am trying to finish up some presenation notes for tomorrow's presentation on blogging to the Gilroy Writing Project group (hello to anyone following the link here from there!), and of course there is puzzle day and our BBC meeting last night was a reminder of how much we need to do to finish pulling that together (so if you want to get involved, please let me know!). Add to that work, which has been crazy (2 weeks off leaves a big pile to catch up on, plus our librarian left so I'm learning to fill in on her duties until we hire a new person for that), and all the other things that have piled up here, and I can see why I haven't been blogging much... but I'll get back into the swing of things I'm sure.

I've added a few more days of photos to the trip but still have a few to go. If you're looking for the trip report, start here and you can follow the links at the top to walk through day by day.

Feb 24: Puzzle Day!

Sharpen your pencils and save the date! The inaugural Silicon Valley Puzzle Day is coming on Feb 24th here in Morgan Hill. There will be crossword puzzle and sudoku tournaments (and other fun things). If you want to participate, help out, or be a sponsor, let me know!

What time is it?

Is your cell phone an hour off too?

December

Its December again -- let the seasonal craziness begin (or continue, I guess its already started). As always, this should be a packed month but hopefully a fun one as well!

Snow there...

Its cold here, but unlikely to snow. Of course it didn't seem likely that it'd be snowing in Seattle Monday night... and now I hear that Aspen just got 2 feet! -- it was so warm and snow-less when we were there just a couple of days ago!

Bundt pans

Lisa emailed to point out that today is the 60th anniversary of the bundt pan, and Nov. 15 is officially National Bundt Day and the "symbolic kick-off to the holiday baking season."

NordicWare Anniversary Web Site
NordicWare® 60th Anniversary Press Release

According to the press release, "If there is a kitchen in the home, more often than not there is a Bundt pan or Nordic Ware product to be found -- in two out of three American households to be exact." I'm one of the 1 out of 3 without one I guess...

Chocolates to soldiers

Send Your Hug to the IDF Soldiers. You can send your wishes and HAS Advantage and Strauss-Elite will add chocolate to help sweeten their day. Click to send your own personal hug to the troops. It’s free!

Our thoughts here are with Tomer (stationed on the border) and everyone else over there...

Terra Pass

Mom read about this in the Times and it sounds like a great concept:

TerraPass is an innovative product that allows you to easily and affordably negate the environmental impact of your car. Cars account for 25% of carbon dioxide emissions, a major source of global warming.

With TerraPass, you can offset an amount of carbon dioxide that exactly counterbalances your driving. TerraPass requires no modifications to your car. So now you can finally balance your needs with your environmental responsibilities. TerraPass funds clean energy projects like wind farms, methane capture and more.

4.7

Woke up rather abruptly this morning to a 4.7 earthquake centered about 9 miles East of here. Just felt one big shake but it wasn't strong enough to knock anything off the shelves or anything.

Cat vs. Bear

Parker pointed out this great story about an orange tabby chasing a bear up a tree! We can't quite imagine our own orange tabby being quite so brave...

Chocolate Spoon Cafe

Did you know that there is a Chocolate Spoon Cafe in White Bear Lake, MN? I only realized this because I got a message that should have gone to some other people about an event there. Unfortunately its about 2,280 miles from here, but I'll definitely check them out next time I'm in Minnesota (which I have actually been to once, and I apparently have a cool cousin who works at the Mall of America, so maybe I'll be back again one day!)

[p.s. if you are here on my site because you were looking for the cafe... oops!]

Skip Lunch Day

Today is Skip Lunch Day

On Thursday, June 8, 2006, feed 20 people without lifting a finger (or a fork).

Skip lunch and donate the money you would have spent to Second Harvest Food Bank. A donation of $10 is enough to provide 20 nutritious meals to people in need.

I saw this originally by following a link that got me to this design firm that did a 24 hour design marathon to come up with all the materials, web site, etc. I would so love to be part of another marathon design project like that -- I had a blast when we competed in one at NMP to make a web site for a nonprofit (and I still have the jacket I won when our team got first place!)

And then I noticed that MPOW (my place of work) is a participant and will be collecting donations outside of the cafeteria today.

Israel in the Garden

It was absolutely gorgeous today in SF, a perfect day for an outdoor festival! We wandered around, ate delicious foods, I registered to be a marrow donor (S had signed up at last year's festival), and worked from 12:45-3 at the information booth. It was a good thing we were there as a team, because about 1/2 the questions came in English and half in Hebrew. At 3 we were able to go to hear Rami Kleinstein, great Israeli composer and performer (and husband to Rita the Diva!) along with Shiri Maimon (who had represented Israel in the Eurovision song contest last year).

Afterwards we wandered around some more, bought a new mezuzah  for the house, and had a fantastic tea at the Samorvar Tea Lounge on the upper terrace overlooking the Yerba Buena Gardens.

We also bought a kids book in Hebrew about an orange cat to give to Bonnie.

Quite a year!

Its been quite a year -- we got engaged right around this time last year (I didn't announce it to anyone until June 7 here on the blog). Since then we've moved twice, bought new cars, got married, bought a house, visited San Diego twice, Seattle once, Pennsylvania once, Connecticut three times, Hawaii once, Arizona once, went camping once (and once time staying in a cabin), got a cat, and all sorts of other things. I've graduated from library school, switched from being a part-tme intern to a full-time contractor, read a pile of books, seen a bunch of plays, watched a lot of tv, and... of course... blogged a whole lot about all those things and more.

Thanks for being with me for all these adventures!

Today's a nice quiet day at home. I submitted an application to be on the local library commission, we hung out at the library for a while, went to the farmer's market and our favorite fruitstand (where we loaded up on plums and apricots), stopped by the hardware store for a pipe wrench, and have been spending the day hanging out outside reading, fixing the drip irrigation system (hence the pipe wrench) and making fruit soup with the bruised fruit. Tomorrow we're volunteering at Israel in the Gardens in San Francisco.

New Addiction

I discovered this game the other day and now both S and I are completely addicted (and even Dad looked tempted by it when we showed it to him)...

Bookworm

Warning, it can eat up hours and hours...

Platelets

After I so enthusiastically gave blood last time (and mostly because I apparently have a very useful blood type), the blood center wrote a few weeks ago to recruit me for apheresis (automated blood collection) to give platelets instead of just regular whole blood. It takes about 90 minutes and its a much more involved process (i don't want to gross you out by explaining it if you're squeemish) but doesn't feel too much different than your usual blood donation (though it takes significantly longer, so they give you headphones and your own tv) and actually doesn't leave you feeling as depleted as I usually do after giving blood (since really they only take part of your blood and give the rest back).

And now I have a tshirt that says: "Take your blood for a spin! Donate ABC"

Keeping Up

I enjoyed this piece over at Creating Passionate Users about The myth of "keeping up" -- especially the graphic at the top comparing what I plan to read this week to what actually gets read. Given that I spend all day every day working with information resources - reports, web sites, books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, rss feeds, emails, etc. - I definitely fall into the trap of trying to take on more than I can possible consume -- particularly since I consider myself a generalist and have very few areas that I really feel I specialize in or focus on (at times being a generalist serves me well, but often it just leaves me feeling scatter brained and behind in everything). At least I'm not alone... It'd be nice to have the time to get through the stacks though...

Random Monsters?

Karen seems to have unexpectedly received 2 monsters carrying off a garden gnome with my cell phone as the return address on the package. Its quite a mystery since I didn't order them... she's going to investigate further... I realize gnomes have a tendency to show up on their own places, but this may be the first random monster/gnome appearance? If you are responsible, please take credit :)

In other random news, I seem to have won a free book from the Tournament of Books wagering at coudal.com which was quite exciting for me.

Bonnie Toolah (what I'm calling her today -- toolah is short for cHatool -- which is cat in Hebrew) seems to be feeling a bit better today and played a good game of chase the little scrap of paper with S which was quite amusing to watch.

Grups

Ok, so I know I'm not actually cool and hip enough to count as a "grup" (I certainly don't listen to the right music anyway), but I found this article from New York Magazine on Up With Grups really fascinating (since I don't usually feel very grown up).

This cohort is not interested in putting away childish things. They are a generation or two of affluent, urban adults who are now happily sailing through their thirties and forties, and even fifties, clad in beat-up sneakers and cashmere hoodies, content that they can enjoy all the good parts of being a grown-up (a real paycheck, a family, the warm touch of cashmere) with none of the bad parts (Dockers, management seminars, indentured servitude at the local Gymboree). It’s about a brave new world whose citizens are radically rethinking what it means to be a grown-up and whether being a grown-up still requires, you know, actually growing up.

Tea

Today was Mom's annual fundraiser - formerly the "Ladies Lunch" this year a tea (since these ladies really don't have time for lunch!) Tea, of course, is pretty much the perfect meal - little tea sandwiches, gingerbread, scones w/ clotted cream, and amazingly light and fluffly trifle. mmmm!!

The centerpieces picked up on the theme from On the Verge (since the party was held in the rehearsal space at the Playhouse. They're eggbeaters in hats sitting in tubs of fake cool whip... you sort of have to see the play to appreciate how perfect they were!

I Love Robert Reich

I had the opportunity to listen to Robert Reich (not a relation unfortunately) speak today at a market research conference and, as always, he was brilliant and roll-in-the-aisles funny. I just love hearing him talk about the world!

Though the first question he was asked after his talk was whether he had found a house to buy in Berkeley and what kind of mortgage he had taken out (he is an economist afterall, and it would have said something about his expectations of interest rates, etc.) And of course he said that he hadn't found a house and that it was better to rent in this crazy market anyway (ugh)

Eegads, its March

March 2006 has arrived! This is going to be a pretty busy month around here!

No word back yet on our bid... we were supposed to find out last night but the seller's in Singapore right now so there's a bit of a lag...

Biz Week on Amherst

Dad's been sending along some interesting pieces on Amherst from Business Week:

Campus Revolutionary: Tony Marx has a radical plan to get more poor kids into top colleges, starting with Amherst

Amherst's "A" List: Affluence, Achievement, Athletics
"If you think this is a level playing field, forget it," says the admissions chief. Talent with a hockey stick helps, too

(Am'erst covered it last week as well)

Giving Blood

There was a blood drive at work today so I checked to see if they had changed the elibility rules about Mad Cow -- and they had! Previously, I hadn't been able to donate because of my stint in France, but now the rules just say the UK or 5+ years in Europe (and I was only there about 9 months). I was SO excited to be able to donate again (though they made me site there extra long afterwards since it had been so long since I had donated and they didn't want me to pass out)

[eek, this entry got deleted so I'm trying to recreate it -- sorry!}

WHS Update

There's an article on Westport Now today about the Westport Historical Society (including a really nice shot of the building in the snow) that quotes Mom. I've volunteered for various things there over the years and love the place. Its sad to see it having to fire the staff, but hopefully it will continue to do fun and educational things for the town.

Update 2/17: Now its in The Minuteman too.

Crazy Snow!

Look at the crazy snow photos Mom sent. Have I mentioned how much I like living in CA?

Apparently there's two feet so far and its still coming down...

Wear Red Tomorrow

February 3, 2006, is National Wear Red Day where people are encouraged tol wear red to show their support for women's heart disease awareness.

Coolest Towel Ever

I received this fantastic late birthday present today in the mail -- it says "To Emily, from Shachar's Mother". I love it! Thank you!

(In high school, Stephanie gave me a monogrammed purple towel that said Guildenstern - from Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, one of my favorite Tom Stoppard plays/movies - who knew that monogrammed towels would make me so happy?)

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with. - Douglas Adams

Women in CS

Very interesting read from Parker on Why do so few women major in computer science?, his notes and thoughts from a colloquium he attended. As a computer science major (though at a liberal arts college) who just went on to join a very female dominated field (library science), I've always been interested in gender and technology issues and am still not sure where I feel I fit into all of that. I definitely want to muse on this more later...

Fortune

We went out for Chinese food and my fortune cookie was empty, no fortune. That seemed like bad luck, so I requested another one. The fortune in the second cookie?

"Practice makes perfect."

:)

Thanksgiving Week Weather

No, it doesn't really feel like late November here. But since we're usually traveling somewhere else, I thought I'd do a quick weather check (not to rub it in...)

Here's the upcoming week here:

(it wasn't quite this nice last year, we really are having exceptionally nice weather right now)

And where we'll be for thanksgiving:

And at home in CT (sorry Mom):

Yes, that does appear to be 50% chance of Thanksgiving snow...

And checking in on Dad & Jane...

and the future in-laws:

San Jose Cooks

We went to the San Jose Cooks show today at Parkside Hall. The radio ads promised that it would unleash the culinary master in us, but that may have overstated it a bit. It was fun to try different food and watch the demos though. Mostly we watched the Kitchen Craft demo with some extremely snazzy pots and an amazing talk by Richard Alexander (who apparently was a rock star in a former life?) that convinced us to get rid of any pans with teflon and pretty much everything else we've been cooking with or eating.

Now S is attempting to fix our fireplace (which the chimney sweep yesterday said desperately needed the loose bricks to be reattached) and setting a (humane sounding) trap for the mouse we discovered attempting to break into our supply of rice in the cupboard (I thought I had seen something scurry past a few weeks ago!).

Pledge tonight on KTEH, so if you're watching As Time Goes By: You Must Remember This and you see a pledge break, I'll be working one of the cameras...

Dinner Club

S has a group of friends that have a dinner party group where they pick a theme and everyone cooks something. Last night was pizza night and we were treated to 8 very different and delicious pizza varieties. We made dessert pizza, which was basically a giant sugar cookie with a cream cheese/whipped cream frosting, a lot of fruit, and an orange glaze.

Housing Prices

Business Week had an interesting piece on Where the Affordable Homes Are, reminding us that you can get a lot more house anywhere but here.

You'd be hard-pressed to find a bargain anywhere in California, which is probably the most overvalued state in the Union. In the San Francisco metro area, the median price is $722,000. (enough for an entire neighborhood in Danville, Ill.)

Update: speaking of housing, check out this awesome combination of craigslist listings and google maps -- Housingmaps.com (via what I learned today) Though many of the posts have expired, it's fun to see them all mapped out! [and Emy & Ray might like this weather station mapping one, though they've probably already located themselves on it.

Methyl Bromide Conference

Good luck today to S, who is speaking at the 2005 Annual International Research Conference on Methyl Bromide Alternatives and Emissions Reductions in San Diego.

Today he is talking about the "Effect of Alternative Tarp and Fumigants Combinations with Metam Sodium on Strawberry Yield"

and Thursday, his talk is on the "Effect of Band or Bed Top Applied Basamid on Strawberry Weed Control and Yield."

Daylight Savings

Oops, forgot to set my clock back last night. But I didn't set my alarm so it didn't really matter I guess.

Take Back Your Time Day

Today is Take Back Your Time Day (one of the speaker's at last night's event is on the national board of the group celebrating TBYTD and mentioned it). This year it celebrates the 65th anniversary of the day in 1940 when the 40-hour workweek became law. Time Day takes place 9 weeks before the end of the year, to emphasize the fact that Americans work an average of 9 weeks more per year than do European workers.

Julie on Martha

Julie Powell (see my note about Julie/Julia, which got picked up by Parker and the fine folks at Am'erst) was on Martha today (they made Beef Bourguinon)

(yes, I'm supposed to be working on my paper, sheesh.. I only watched a couple of minutes...)

Pumpkin Time!

We went down to the overpriced but very festive pumpkin patch down the road and picked out our pumpkins for the season. It was a pretty crazy place with a 4000 pumpkin pyramid and a Field of Screams Corn Maze (open at 7:30pm Thurs-Sunday, but I'm not sure I'm brave enough to try it)

Easy Fast

The secret to an easy fast, IMHO, is a good afternoon nap...

Cool Conference and an old friend

This looks like it will be a cool conference (unfortunately I'm already booked up tomorrow and Friday with other meetings).

CREATIVITY MATTERS is a leadership conference that embraces creativity as integral to the success of our economy and community and calls the community’s leadership into action.

The first day of the conference builds context by looking outward to ideas and models for creative communities from around the nation and the world. The second day sets the stage for local action by looking inwardly and critically assessing Silicon Valley’s challenges, assets and opportunities for enhancing creativity.

One of the speakers is the father of one of my best friends from elementary school, Anne (who, it seems, went on to become an awesome celloist in a cool band which unfortunately disbanded recently. You can listen to a bit here and here.)

Anyway, I think I'll add the books written by some of the conference speakers to my get-around-to-one-day list:

Charles Landry, The Creative City—A Toolkit for Innovators
Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind: : Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age

Update: In one of those great small world moments, it turns out that a) my friend Bryan is reading my blog from London (hello!!) and b) he knows Anne who 1) turned out to be roommates at Yale with one of our fellow Staples classmates and 2) that one of his college friends played violin with Anne in middle school. Go figure. This is what makes blogging so much fun!

End of the season

Our softball team lost 12-7 in tonight's playoff game, so that's the end of the season for us. I was feeling a bit guiltly from going right from the game to services (stopping to change and buy a chocolate chip cookie on the way) but then the rabbi's sermon was all about the baseball playoffs so it seemed quite fitting that I had just come from the game ;)

I was up 4 times, hit two pop-ups to the pitcher (ugh), got one good hit but got stranded on third at the end of the inning, and hit into the last play of the game (fielder's choice, they got the guy going to third out so if it hadn't been two outs when I got up, I would have at least made it on base one last time) Oh well. It was great fun though and really wonderful teammates.

Cars, cars, cars

Here are some of our photos from last week's Concours (I'm still catching up on everything after being away for so long)

Bill's red-white-and-blue Javelin

Mom borrowed a 1930's cape for me from the Historical Society's costume collection and I played docent in the barn, talking about the scale model of what Westport's downtown was like c. 1900.

S and I both voted for this one as our pick for People's Choice

In this one, the whole front of the car opened up

Check out the matching shirt

All set for a picnic!

Special thanks to all the sponsors

Western Farm Press Article

A nice press clipping from the Western Farm Press.

Salinas Valley trials monitor covers, con-till
Sep 6, 2003 12:00 PM
By Dan Bryant

"Can cover crops and conservation tillage work in Salinas Valley vegetables? Growers likely have their opinions, but University of California researchers hope to harvest details about the concept from current trials with broccoli at USDA's Spence Research Farm south of Salinas."
...

Fennimore also cooperated with Shachar Shem-Tov, a visiting scientist from Israel, in a trial at the Spence site to quantify the advantages of pre-irrigating lettuce fields as a weed control practice.

By stimulating early weed emergence, local growers have found that much of the growth can be destroyed by tillage prior to seeding and the amount of herbicide needed can be reduced. In the trial, Kerb was used at rates of 0.6 and 1.2 pounds per acre.

The two researchers confirmed that weed densities and hand weeding time were reduced by preirrigation vs. no preirrigation. They measured weed densities 21 days after planting and the time required to thin the stand.

“Where a one-week preplant interval was used, sprinkler irrigation was the most effective method to deplete weed emergence, while furrow irrigation resulted in no reduction in weed densities,” Shem-Tov reported.

Where a two-week preplant interval was used, he added, weed densities in the control plots were twice those in the preirrigated plots regardless of irrigation method.

“Thinning times in the furrow- and sprinkler-irrigated plot were reduced by 37 percent to 49 percent compared with the control,” Shem-Tov said.

Differences between the preirrigation treatments and the control were significant, regardless of whether the low or high rate of Kerb was applied.

No meaningful difference was observed between the two rates, suggesting that the low rate could be used.

Playoffs

So our softball team made the playoffs (ok, so all the teams made the playoffs, but still...) and then we actually made it to the next round (ok, so the other team didn't show up for tonight's game, but still...) But we had a great practice and all got a lot of time to practice our batting. Plus, since the other team forfeited we got free pizza... and if we had lost it would have been the last game of the season (and they didn't sign up for the fall leagues)

Methyl Bromide

For those of you wondering what S does, one of the projects he's working on is testing alternatives to methyl bromide. This article came across one of the mailing lists I'm on today:

Methyl Bromide Loophole for U.S. Prolongs Ozone Hole

On July 1, 2005 a dozen nations agreed under the Montreal Protocol on
Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer to reduce exemptions for "critical use" of methyl bromide by 20% in 2006. Methyl bromide is a powerful ozone depleting chemical, 50 times more destructive to the ozone layer than chlorine from CFCs (chloroflurocarbons), the other major class of chemicals targeted by the treaty. In 1987, sixteen industrial nations, including the U.S., agreed under the Protocol to end all use of methyl bromide by 2005, and developing countries agreed to end use in 2015. Instead, use of methyl bromide as a soil fumigant
pesticide has increased in the U.S.

The 20% reduction appears to be an environmental victory, but in fact, U.S. consumption of methyl bromide rose so steeply in 2005 that the 20% "reduction" represents an increase over 2002-2004 levels. The U.S. walked into the negotiations for 2006 "critical use" exemptions requesting exemptions to use 37% of its 1991 baseline number (set at 25,528 metric tons), despite the fact that users in the U.S. in 2002 got by with less than 30% of the baseline. The Parties awarded the U.S. 32% of the 1991 base, and have indicated they will hold nations to 29% of baseline numbers in 2007. That represents a release in the U.S. alone, of 7,403 metric tons of methyl bromide into the atmosphere, a significant "loophole" that serves to prolong the hole in the ozone.
...
But in 2004 the Bush administration began to pressure for "critical use" exemptions (permission to continue using a substance) for methyl bromide, primarily as a pre-plant fumigant for tomato growers in Florida and strawberry producers in California. For the treaty's first decade, critical use exemptions were confined to needs based on national security or medical uses where there was no alternative, but in 1997 the Parties to the Protocol allowed economic considerations to be a factor to justify an exemption for use of methyl bromide. Environmental groups, including PAN North America, argued at the time that inclusion of economic challenges would open the door to increased use of methyl bromide as a soil fumigation pesticide. Unfortunately, that is exactly what has happened.

Instead of completing the methyl bromide phaseout as promised in 2005, sixteen nations, lead by the U.S., asked for and were granted exemptions for use of 16,050 metric tons in 2005. The U.S. exemptions totaled 9,500 metric tons and were by far the largest, allowing the nation's use in 2005 to increase. In July 2005 the Parties recommended approval of 13,466 metric tons of methyl bromide for "critical use" in the developed nations in 2006. Allotments were modest for Australia (9.25 tons); Canada (2 tons) and Japan (75 tons). The United States was allowed 8,075 tons; and PAN has learned that the Administration is already working on a request to continue exemptions in 2007.

...

It goes on longer and suggests that for more information see the website for the UN Environmental Programme Ozone Secretariat. The PANNA website contains extensive resources and fact sheets on methyl bromide's use for soil fumigation.

Sources: UNEP Report of Second Extraordinary Meeting of the parties to the
Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, Advance Copy, July 1, 2005, p.4; Associated Press, July 2, 2005; Background, Critical Use
Exemptions for Access to Methyl Bromide, Dept of the Environment & Heritage, Australian Government; PANUPS, December 10, 2004, April 5, 2004; Methyl Bromide Briefing Kit, 1995, Methyl Bromide Alternatives Network, PANNA website; Contact: PANNA.

Students

This came in today's alumni enews:

AMHERST, WILLIAMS ESTABLISH PROGRAM FOR XAVIER STUDENTS -- Amherst and Williams have established a program that provides fall enrollment, room, board and fees for students from Xavier University in Louisiana's distinguished pre-med program. To date, seven Xavier students have enrolled at Amherst. The college also has reached out to local students who had been previously enrolled at other Gulf Coast colleges; five students from Tulane have come to Amherst this fall, to take classes until their home institution reopens.

2 wins!

Well, our opponents forfeited, so its not a real win, but we weren't going to complain (not only would we get to practice on the field for an hour, but there's pizza and two pitchers of beer on the house -- apparently charged to the no-show team). But then another team was short on women so three of us got recruited to go and play for them (you have to have three women or you forfeit as well.) And on that team, we won 16-3! I hit a double, a sacrifice grounder (i.e. I got out before reaching first, but brought in a run) and a single where unfortunately I got the guy ahead of me tagged out. I got tagged out once running home (I'd like to think I can blame that on bad base coaching?) and left on third the other time. I missed one awful play at home (I was the catcher), but otherwise we had such great fielding that there weren't many plays at home to worry about.

So I feel like I had two wins tonight! I think it was my new lucky cleats (plus when I bought them this afternoon I found out that I get a discount at the local sporting good store from my job).

More than techies

Interesting NY times article:

A Techie, Absolutely, and More
by Steve Lohr
aug 23

"If you have only technical knowledge, you are vulnerable," said Thomas W. Malone, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of "The Future of Work" (Harvard Business School Press, 2004). "But if you can combine business or scientific knowledge with technical savvy, there are a lot of opportunities. And it's a lot harder to move that kind of work offshore."

and people looked at me funny when I tried to go all interdisciplinary with my CS studies back in college... ha!

Cleats

After a really embarassing wipe-out on the way to first base (after a pretty decent hit... and I would totally have made it to first if I hadn't been flat on my stomach), I have finally come to understand the usefulness of having cleats. Our team actually won tonight (making our record 2-5 I think), but with absolutely no help from me. But I think I'm going to have to treat myself to some cleats to avoid repeating this useful lesson. I bought myself some years ago (with some of the gift certificate Carrie and I had won at the Oriole's game by having the number in our program read out over the loud speaker -- one of my all time life highlights) but they never surfaced after my rapid departure from DC years ago.

2nd base

Turns out that i like playing second base in softball. Go figure. I managed two decent plays, 2 hits, one rbi. Of course we still lost by about 14 runs, but we were really starting to gel out there by the end.

Next week we get our team hats and it'll all be different. Of course Mom will be here visiting so I may not get to play (and wouldn't it be depressing if they won the one game I didn't show up for? hmmm)

In withdrawl

Hello. My name is Emily and I am an Internet addict. Sheesh. You'd think I could go a day without DSL, but I am hopeless. On the plus side, I am amazingly more productive when I can't check my email or feeds and almost all the boxes are now unpacked. Thankfully the neighborhood Starbucks is a hotspot so I'm here to catch up a bit and enjoy my ice soy chai...

Of course, I go offline for a moment and look what I miss. Thank you Mom for sending this along: Brian's all over the RNC web site.

Grumbles

My DSL was working wonderfully for the first two weeks of living in our new place, and then it just stopped working on Tuesday. Yesterday there were three messages on our voice mail explaining that there was a delay in the start-up date and that we won't have DSL until August 2nd, 5th, and then 11th. So I spent about an hour on hold trying to talk to someone there and learned that there was nothing we could do -- that it wasn't supposed to be working earlier and that they didn't know why there was a delay. GRRR!!!! It was working, why couldn't they have just left it working? It's not like they had to do anything to activate it, it was active! So frustrating! And I know I'm terribly spoiled with my level of net access, but I really am quite dependent on it. Especially since I was going to stay home tomorrow to catch up on things.

Actually, I pretty much have to stay home tomorrow because they've closed most of downtown San Jose for the big Grand Prix. The street in front of our offices is already closed, making for a rather complicated route to work. They're urging everyone who can work from home or take tomorrow off to do so.

And my final grumble is that it's the Gilroy Garlic Festival this weekend (the town one south of us on 101) so there is likely to be a tremendous amount of highway traffic all weekend by us as well. Mostly I'm going the other way since I have to be up in the northern parts of the county for a conference on Saturday and work on Sunday, but I expect more headaches getting around.

Ok, I'll stop grumbling and try to get some work done. Sorry to vent at you all.

Now a hurricane...

According to the latest advisories, "EMILY HAS RAPIDLY INTENSIFIED INTO A HURRICANE THIS EVENING."

Won't hire bloggers

This bothered me -- Bloggers Need Not Apply from the Chronicle of Education (via one of the blogs on the cool list of feeds of people attending Blogher but I didn't save the post, just the link, so I can't give credit, sorry).

I had saved this as a draft since I wasn't sure I really wanted to post it, but then I read this reaction and figured I'd go ahead and post it.

I do wonder sometimes about blogging... but I really enjoy doing it and if you don't want to read it, you don't have to :)

I'm a tropical storm

Emy just pointed out that they've named the latest tropical storm Emily. (and there's even an rss feed to track her.) I have news clippings somewhere from the last hurricane Emily that Brian had clipped for me... hopefully this one won't do quite as much damage.

We won!

Our softball team won our first game 17-10! I had 4 hits, one run, one rbi, and one decent play at second. And I got tagged out in a really embarassing forced out when the runner on first kept going even though I had stopped at second. But it was great fun, and I'll definitely be back for next week's game!

Softball!

Tonight was the first practice of our work softball team (yes, i have joined the softball team... don't sound so surprised! Yes, I abandoned little league at a very early age, forever disappointing my father, but I played on the Apple and NMP softball teams when I worked at each of those companies, and the team here assured me that they really did welcome players of all abilities.) The organizer is a fantastic coach and took a lot of time helping two of us who clearly needed the most coaching, but I surprised myself and held up a lot better than I expected for my first time out in years. First game is on Monday (though i expect to do some serious bench warming)

Happy Fourth of July

Happy 4th of July everyone! I opted out of any of the festivities (though LG has an all day fest down on the town green) and popped up to SF for dim sum with Carrie (mmmm) and then came home and finished up my take-home cataloging midterm. I'm going to attempt to spend the evening cleaning up in preparation for packing, but since my Tivo is full and there is a pile of library books waiting for me, I'm not sure how far I'll get...

Mom's Roses

Mom is understandably very proud of her lovely roses.

June

I'm having trouble believing it's June again/already. Tomorrow's my first cataloging class (my last SLIS class... eek), the next KTEH pledge drive is this weekend, Eduard's graduating from HS next week so I'll be heading back East for a quick trip, I'm going to try to finally get down to San Diego to see Paul/Aimee/Seth this month, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants opened today (but I didn't go yet), lots of work to be done and the weather is of course pretty much perfect, I have a huge stack of books to read (including one that Mom just sent that I know BobbiLynn will want next)... Guess I'll just have to see what else turns up this month.

Staples High School Day

According to Westport Now, CT Governor Jodi Rell proclaimed May 26, 2005, as Staples High School Day in the State of Connecticut (in honor of some science achievements by current students). Pretty snazzy. My sister Annie goes there (I'm SHS '92)

Playhouse Reopens

Great photos of the re-opening of the Westport Playhouse on WestportNow today (inside and out) Congrats to Mom on all the hard work she put toward this amazing renovation and the revival of such a great theatrical institution. I can't wait to see a show in the newly improved space! It's going to be so nice to have an actual lobby to stand in instead of huddling outside in the rain! Unfortunately nothing seems to be playing the 3 days I'll be there in June, but now that they'll have shows ALL YEAR, I'm sure I'll make it to something.

Update: and Mom's in the picture here!

Jury Duty Status: Not

So I took light rail down to the court house, waited in line to get in and through the metal detectors, waited in line to check into the jury area, sat and waited for my panel to be called... and then was told that our case had been settled and we could all go home (it seems odd that they just wouldn't put us on the next one, since we weren't even told that we were assigned anywhere).

I'm actually pretty disappointed -- I did want to serve. But since it was a criminal case and probably would have been 2-3 weeks, it's probably just as well. I at least wanted to get to the questions part. Oh well, back at work now (though I came in really early and got most of my stuff done for the day just in case.)

Jury Duty Status

On for tomorrow :)

Jury Status

Jury Status: Still On Call

(not nearly as interesting as Brett's baby status, which we're all monitoring)

National Volunteer Week

It's National Volunteer Week! (April 17-23)

2005 Statistics in Volunteering
September 2003 – September 2004
Reported by Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor

• During the past year, 64.5 million people volunteered in some capacity – up from 63.8 million for the similar period ended in September 2003. The volunteer rate held steady at 28.8 percent.
  
• About 23.6 percent of men and 31.0 percent of women did volunteer work, about the same proportions as in the prior year. Women volunteered at a higher rate than men across age groups, education levels, and other major characteristics.
  
• By age, 35- to 44-year olds were the most likely to volunteer, closely followed by 45- to 54-year olds and 55 to 64 year olds. Their volunteer rates were 34.2 percent, 32.8 percent, and 30.1 percent respectively. Teenagers also had a relatively high volunteer rate at 29.4 percent, perhaps reflecting an emphasis on volunteer activities in schools. Volunteer rates were lowest among persons in their early twenties (20.0 percent) and among those 65 and over (24.6 percent). Volunteer rates within the 65 years and over group decreased as age increased.
  

Cookie Monster

Alex tipped me off to this very sad development in the world of Cookie Monster (Brian, did you hear about this???): From CNN Has Cookie Monster given up sweets?

My beloved blue, furry monster -- who sang "C is for cookie, that's good enough for me" -- is now advocating eating healthy. There's even a new song -- "A Cookie Is a Sometimes Food," where Cookie Monster learns there are "anytime" foods and "sometimes" foods.

Sigh.

In related news, Emy found out that they're building a Krispie Kreme _way_ too close to us here in San Jose.

Sigh.

Midsummer Reunion

In 1966, the Staples Players (the theater group from our high school) put on an award winning production of "A Midsummer's Night Dream." Tonight most of the original cast (including Mom and Uncle Doug) got together for a grand reunion. There's a photo up on Westport Now (of course) -- and there's Mom in the front with a very snazzy long white coat. I wasn't cool enough to be in the Players when I was at SHS (that and I can't act to save my life, despite a starring role as Alice #6 in the 5th grade production of Alice in Wonderland)

Late night

Well, I think I'll pay for it in the morning, but I had a great evening out with Emy seeing Vincent at Brixton at Theatre Works. On the way home, I shocked Emy by admitting I had never been to a Krispie Kreme for fresh-from-the-oven donuts, so we went through the 24 hour drive-in and treated ourselves to some excellent (but not hot because we didn't time it right) donuts. We're just going to have to go back...

The play was really excellent but I'll have to write about it in the morning... it's waaaay too late on a school night (and I do have a paper to finish...)

Leprechaun Lattes for Literacy

Unfortunately these are only sold on the East Coast, but for any of you there:

Karen writes: "I am proud to announce the start of this year's Starbucks Leprechaun Lattes for Literacy campaign with some exciting news - the contribution to Jumpstart from Starbucks per latte sold has increased from $.05 to $.25 this year!! So treat yourself to a tasty and colorful Peppermint Mocha today and tomorrow...and the next day, and thank our local Starbucks friends for their support of Jumpstart."

Starbucks is the Official Growth Partner and National Sponsor of Jump Start.

Teen TV

Ok, so I'm supposed to watch TV and movies aimed at teenagers for my YA class (yes, this is homework, I have to keep a journal and stuff). Any suggestions? I had Tivo grab American Idol, One Tree Hill, Gilmore Girls, some MTV shows and a couple of random others. What else should I add to my list? C'mon - I know you guys watch :)

So on the One Tree Hill episode I watched, the kids at Tree Hill High School in North Carolina are recording videos for a time capsule that won't be opened for 50 years. Its a great conceit for an episode, which allows the characters to reveal all sorts of things to us the audience that they're friends and families may not know (until two sneak into school and watch them, of course). I am struck by how much older high school kids on TV look than I felt when I was in high school. I liked the transitions from one scene to the next where one word is picked up in a completely different contect. According to one fan site, the characters are supposed to be sophomores - or maybe juniors this season I guess. There seems to be a love triangle of sorts between two half-brothers and a residual custody battle involving the parents. Now they're all sitting around drinking at a party. I like the description from The Tangled Web: "As the youth of Tree Hill do their best to find their way in a world riddled with emotional ups and downs, the adults must grapple with the consequences of the choices they've made along the way. Will the children make the same mistakes as their parents, or will they also have to struggle to make sense of a life that is anything but predictable?"

Getting along, finding love, figuring out who you are, fitting in, what you're meant for, making sense of the world, tearing down your parents... regular stuff I guess (shown in the parallel to how similar the issues were in the 1954 tape).

The actors seem to be well known teen stars: Hilarie Burton, who plays Peyton Sawyer, is an MTV dj and interviews people on TRL. Chad Michael Murray, one of the brothers, was Katie Holmes' love interest in Dawson's Creek, was in the remake of Freaky Friday, with Jamie Lee Curtis, and was the love interest in Cinderella Story, opposite Hilary Duff. And the coach is the from Northern Exposure!

I'm a bit surprised at the number of ads aimed at parents of young kids (interspersed among the soda, fast food, cell phones, and promos for other WB shows), but maybe it doesn't really correlate. The best ad was a Mastercard ad to win an intership (and a preview for the upcoming Ice Princess movie opening 3/18 of course))

The episode featured music from kaiser chiefs, kasabian, jem, and bettie serveert (and yes, I feel old) All of which can be downloaded as ringtones to my cingular cell phone I suppose from the wb site)

Not that I'm watching

I'm not actually watching the game, since I'm here at work at the library, but had to share these stats I heard on Morning Edition the other day:

Morning Edition, February 4, 2005 · The Super Bowl is also Supersnack Sunday, and diet columnist Charles Stuart Platkin has come up with the following incentive for you to try low-calorie alternatives. To melt off the calories in a single nacho chip loaded down with beans, cheese and guacamole -- would take nine minutes at training camp. A handful of beer nuts? Twenty-one minutes of cheerleading. And two slices of pizza? Doing the wave 1,182 times

Crash

Hear that? That's the sound of some of the 8,000 balls I have up in the air crashing to the ground.

Yeah, not so good.

Oriented

As of today's orientation, I guess I am officially oriented to my new internship. And, for the first time I had a moment to actually look out the window from my floor (my office doesn't have a window, but there are other windows of course). It occurred to me that I've never actually worked up that high in a real office building before! The highest I've ever worked was on the fourth floor of a building I think. I have to say that the view from the 17th is pretty darn cool (of course a lot of orientation was what to do in case of a fire or earthquake...) Tomorrow I get to attend an all-day training on the site management software I'll be using which should be cool. I'm definitely learning a lot!

Future Librarians?

Had a fun lunch today at Alan & Margaret's with two potential new library school recruits (hello to Jenny and Kari!)

Of course we had to talk about my blog and about hay of course :) but it was fun having a discussion about the library profession and library school. I found that I'm feeling quite positive right now about the whole thing -- I couldn't even find anything particularly negative to say about the program and find myself looking forward to the semester starting back up! It was fun to meet them and I look forward to learning if they end up becoming librarians or not.

Forever Frangos

Jane sent along this article from today's Seattle Times about those divine chocolate treats formerly known as Frangos

Don't call it Frango in Seattle
The new name doesn't exactly roll off the tongue -- or melt in the mouth -- but Frango chocolate truffles, a part of Seattle for almost as long as the Smith Tower, are being rebranded later this month as Frederick & Nelson The Original.
Full story

Frangos (which I will continue to think of them as) are these wonderful chocolates that come in 10 flavors and were always packaged in these cool hexagon-shaped packages. My favorite are still the mint ones, and they remind me of teacher-conference days in elementary school when Mom would take Brian and I to lunch at the basement cafe at Frederick & Nelson and we would have Frango Mint ice cream milkshakes -- one of the best things ever. I know that Carrie H (being a good Chicago-native), shares my appreciation of a good Frango :)

From the Marshall Field's site: "There are other mints and other chocolates, but only one Frango mint chocolate."

No blogging today

I stupidly decided to celebrate my new internship yesterday by taking myself out for Indian food and came down with food poisening or the flu or something. Since I was up all night I did manage to finish another book, but I'm too tired to blog and am going to bed.

Winter

Happy first day of winter -- the shortest day and the longest night of the year. The very thought makes me want to stay home and knit (but instead, I'm starting my new internship today - wish me luck!)

It looks like officially Winter solstice for 2004 will occured at 4:42 am PST on December 21. There's some interesting solstice history here and a great A to Z list of Solstice celebrations in different cultures.

But its a good turning point as well, as this site explains, "The Winter Solstice is unique among days of the year — the time of the longest night and the shortest day. The dark triumphs but only briefly. For the Solstice is also a turning point. From now on (until the Summer Solstice, at any rate), the nights grow shorter and the days grow longer, the dark wanes and the Sun waxes in power."

Weather

So I was checking out the weather on Weather Underground (ok, I admit I was going to see how warm it was here today since I noticed they had gotten snow back East) and there on my weather page is "Ray's Station" (the one Emy and I were talking about in the comments a few days ago and which is sitting on top of her roof). So cool!

Off to The Tech...

Jumpstart in NYTimes

Karen wrote this morning to point out that Jumpstart was mentioned in a story that started on the FRONT page of the New York Times today, about charitable giving through retail. They even pictured the American Eagle bracelets that helped them raise almost $300,000.

Stores Are Hoping to Do Well by Urging Shoppers to Do Good
By TRACIE ROZHON
Published: December 16, 2004

She also points out that "Spark Cards" are still available on their web site. Spark Cards are a great holiday gift (I just got one in the mail from my Aunt and Uncle for a birthday/Chanukkah present - thanks!) Spark Cards give "the gift of one-to-one reading to a child in need."

Children from low-income families lack essential one-to-one reading time, which is necessary for future success in school and in life. Children from middle-income backgrounds receive up to 1,700 hours of one-to-one reading before school while children from low-income backgrounds only receive 25 hours. This discrepancy leads to early inequalities in skills that persist and increase with time. A child’s performance in preschool is directly related to success later in his or her school career.

Its a wonderful way for your holiday gifts to make a real difference in someone's life.

Congrats again to Karen for all the great work she's doing there!

New Michael Graves Building at Temple

Interesting... Michael Graves Selected as Architect for New Fox School Building

Darkness

For those of you getting bummed out by the short days, Parker (who I just found out had a blog - Hi Parker!!!) points out that yesterday was the earliest sunset of the year, which means that "from here on in, you’re getting more light in your day." Its still a while before the days start to actually get longer, but at least it'll stop getting darker earlier and earlier each day!

Antiques Show

And if you're around Westport today, don't forget to stop by the annual antiques show benefitting our high school radio station, WWPT.

NOV. 27-28: The 27th Annual Westport Holiday Antiques Show will have 65 exhibitors of fine arts, prints, silver, glass, textiles, and American, English and European furniture. Bedford Middle School, 88 North Ave., Westport. Nov. 27, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Nov. 28, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. $8. Call show manager Lillian Gilman at 222-2259.

(Usually the show's at Staples, but its still under construction)

Thanksgiving break always makes me think of WWPT anyway -- when we were at Staples, we used to do a Thanksgiving marathon where we would broadcast straight from Wednesday's half day of school until Sunday night, with pledge breaks between the songs to beg our family and friends for donations to the station (usually the station would only broadcast live from 3pm when school got out until 10 or 12 at night I think). It was one of the best highlights of the year -- and especially when you were an upper classman and got to snag the coveted graveyard shifts (not sure why I thought it was so cool then to get the midnight to 6am spot since definitely no one was listening at that hour, but it was exciting I guess to be up and on campus in the middle of the night. I even flew back early from Thanksgiving in Seattle one year so that I could make a late shift (and some of the guys who were on air at the time paged me in the airport on the way back which was pretty exciting at the time as well).

Mark was the GM of the station, I was news director (and had a blast doing election coverage for school board elections and the 1992 presidential primaries where we had Mr. Green and Darin doing color commentary in the studio while Stephanie and others were sent out into the field to interview people at each of the campaign HQs). Katy and I had a show Sunday mornings from 9-noon where we played pretty much anything we wanted and had a great time dancing around the studio. Brett had a show before any of the rest of us and I remember hanging out during his show - I guess the summer between freshman and sophomore year maybe? We were even all featured once on MTV (though poor Mark had food poisoning or something that day) talking about the station and feeling quite cool.

Newspapers

Brett pointed out this Wired piece on newspapers (basically reporting that our 18-34 demographic isn't really interested in reading print newspapers for various readings, including not having old papers pile up, and get our news in other ways).

For anyone who has seen my apartment*, you know that I have long wrestled with the dilemma of getting the paper or not (because I hate wasting all that paper and I hate dragging things all the way down to the recycling and I have a serious pat-rack problem and generally hate to throw anything away...) But since I'm about to start a daily morning internship thing and won't have time in the morning to get through the Times anyway, I actually had just decided to go back to just getting the Sunday instead of the daily edition. I know I mostly get the Times because I like being a "New York Times [gal]" -- especially out here in CA (despite periodic episodes of guilt that I'm not following the local Bay Area news as much as I could be) and because, of course, my parents religiously read the Times (no matter which coast they're living on).

Hmmm... so anyway, I thought it was an interesting article...

*now, thanks to Shachar, minus an entire cart-load (literally) of piles of newspapers but you can barely tell the difference there is still so much other stuff piled up right now...

Congratulations Lois

Via Westport Now (though Mom did tell me about it first and may have some pictures to add later if they came out), Lois was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2004 Athena Award ceremony in Norwalk from the Westport/Weston Chamber of Commerce. According to the web site, "The ATHENA Award was created to recognize the exceptional professional accomplishments and generous community service of women working and/or living in Westport or Weston." Congratulations Lois!

Tuesday

Ok, quick roundup of the day: job interview (fingers crossed), various meetings and appointments (with various levels of frustration), some quality Starbucks time, 5-9 in Milpitas (lots of good questions and a project searching for available DVDs online), and finally now home to catch up on email and realize I don't have much of anything to blog about today.

Peggy suggested this site and has her own Canadian escape plan in the works...

Oh, and finally a bit of good news from the administration... I was struck by the hand written note, is that in case his computer files are tapped?

Support JumpStart through American Eagle

Karen sent this along and since she said to "forward the following message to inform and rally your colleagues, friends, and family to become involved in the American Eagle Outfitters Great Gifts program, which directly supports Jumpstart - and encourage them to forward it to their friends and family as well," I figured I might as well blog it. They also have a new website at www.jstart.org (though Karen's profile page seems to be blank still).
 

Good Friends. Good Times. Great Gifts.
 
Generosity never goes out of style! Jumpstart is pleased to announce the American Eagle Outfitters Good Friends. Good Times. Great Gifts. campaign, which aims to promote volunteerism through action rather than words.
 
In AE stores across the country, customers are being encouraged to make a cash donation to one of AE's partner charities, Jumpstart or YMCA National Safe Place. In return for a $1 donation, customers will receive an AE bracelet as a thank you.
 
Jumpstart will receive 100 percent of every donation made to Jumpstart through AE! Customers can choose between four different bracelet colors* and show off their support for Jumpstart and their local community.
 
For more information about the Great Gifts campaign - including details about campaign spokesperson, actress Rachel Leigh Cook, and recent survey findings regarding youth volunteerism - please visit www.jstart.org. More information can also be found at www.ae.com. We encourage you to visit an AE store near you to get involved in this campaign. And please join us in thanking AE employees for supporting Jumpstart. 

At work, depressed

I'm here at work at the library, but its deathly quiet and I'm still reeling from yesterday. I thought work would distract me and cheer me up, but its going to be a long night. Plus it seems to be pouring rain, or was a while ago and chances are will be when I try to leave.

I've been seeing some hopeful postings around the net but still very little good news to focus on.

Looking at that map and seeing us blue staters squeezed into the coasts is rather daunting. Even here in California, the state is pretty divided and its just the very left coast that went for Kerry (luckily by enough to matter.)

I hadn't even had a chance to check in on the local races, but very sadly my state senate district just elected an anti-choice republican, defeating Peg Pinard here in the 15th District, who I really should have done phone banking for (I kept meaning to... famous last words felt everywhere today I guess) It does look like Ira Ruskin won for State Rep which is good, but it doesn't seem to be official yet. Barbara Boxer won at least. On the plus side, Prop 71 for Stem Cell Research passed, but I think most of the other ones I had voted for went down and the ones I voted against passed easily. Here's a full list.

Around the country, of those ten races I was watching 4 won: Barbara Boxer here in CA, Alison Schwartz in PA, Stephanie Herseth in SD, Darlene Hooley in Oregon. The rest did not fare as well: Diane Farrell CT, Betty Castor in FL, Granny D in NH, Lois Murphy in PA, Ginny Schrader in PA, and Inez Tenenbaum in SC.

Sigh.

Thursday

Worked this morning at the Los Altos Library and then stopped by Uncommon Threads for the first time (my S&B friends are always talking about it, it turns out to be 1 minute from the library, and wonderful Rika had given me a gift certificate!) I bought some very soft yarn called "Poof" in various colors to make some scarves (and it knits up extremely quickly on 17 needles so I should have a FO by tomorrow).

Meanwhile Carrie spent the day with Jon Bon Jovi and Leonard DiCaprio who were stumpin' in Iowa. Looking forward to her blog entries when she has a chance to catch up (probably after Tuesday...)

Off to curl up with the new Sujata Massey book that Lisa sent! This time Rei's in Washington, DC, which should definitely be interesting (though the best part of earlier books was Japan as the backdrop.)

Unbelievable!

I think the headline on Boston.com tonight says it all:

Amazing.

Wednesday

Tech this morning, more roller coasters and earthquakes. Lunch with Julia (other people's french fries have no calories). Home briefly and then worked this evening at the Los Altos library. Checked the scores now and then from there and its clear that Eduard (and many many others) are very happy campers tonight.

Keeping my fingers crossed for Eduard who turned in his first early decision college app today! Good luck!

West Wing is on now -- along with campaign ads for Barbara Boxer, Prop 71 (including one with Michael J Fox), etc during the breaks.

Rainy Day

It was quite a rainy day here -- one of the first of the season. It wasn't too bad -- I got to wear my snazzy boots which always cheer me up. A couple of people called in sick so I got to sub at the last minute on the reference desk (adult side) in Milpitas. Then I raced down to The Tech for our Volunteer Advisory Board Meeting. But now I'm worn out and think I'll curl up for a bit and finally finish the scarf I've been working on (since it may actually be cold enough to wear it soon)

Buycott Today

Mom sent this along last week:

She Stops Shopping To Conquer Business Week - September 20, 2004 If women shut their purses and didn't shop for a day, would the economy suffer? The idea gets tested on Oct. 19 by 85 Broads, a networking group founded in 1999 by Janet Hanson, who worked for Goldman Sachs, headquartered at 85 Broad St.

BusinessWeek has learned that 85 Broads is asking its 4,000-plus members in
450 companies, colleges, and B-schools not to spend that day. Hanson says the "boycott" will show the gap between women's purchasing power and their
under