I love this city.

Then we went to the bloodlab, where we spent about four hours.  It was hot, close, and you could feel the frustration from people over the waiting.  The nurses didn’t think Mama looked good.  So we got to wait behind a curtain after the first hour.  Before that, I finished Into the Wild.

We had lunch, which was heaven after we’d been fasting for the testing (I fasted, too, for sympathy).

Came home, did laundry, got an email from my dissertation directory asking for my bibliography.  Scrambled to get that put together and was up late going through all of my footnotes to make sure I didn’t forget anything.

Meetings and “official” stuff already all day today.

My blood sugar is all over the place from fighting the urge to give in to stress.  I’m so tired that I feel like throwing up, but I’m having trouble sleeping also.  I have something huge going on tomorrow (if all goes as planned) that I don’t want to jinx too much by talking about.

But soon, none of this will matter.  Baby will be here.

Haven’t tried Ubuntu?  You can try it on a live disc/usb without changing your machine.  And you can always dual-boot, if you really and actually need Windoze or Shmapple sometimes.

I put these on Mrs. P’s and my minis last night, albeit crookedly. You’d think Dell might think of it, but they only put an “N Series” sticker on there, very very crookedly, like they are upset that you didn’t want Windoze on your computer. Their weird version of Ubuntu came off right away, in favor of the official Ubuntu Netbook Edition, which is beautiful and fantastic.  The Dell remix was Okay, but it was maintained on Dell’s servers, and that’s weird.  Plus, the new Netbook Ubuntu is damned sexy.

Also, Walmart’s coming to Remington/Old Goucher.  Wow.  I don’t know how I feel about this.  But I know some “buffies” who love the Walmart in Cockeysville who are celebrating.  They moved that fucker from the lightrail in Hunt Valley because, you know, people from “the city” were coming up and stealing shit.  I’m sure none of these little white boys get off soccer practice and steal themselves a Red Bull, right?  And of course we all know that the best get-away from crime is a mass transit train that leaves Hunt Valley station very slowly.

But at least it’s better than a car dealership.  Yes.  I said it.  We have enough cars killing pedestrians in this fucking city, thank you.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering. Yes. This Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream does, in fact, taste like lemons, too. I ate some.

“I think pooping is worse.”

“What?  No way.  Puking makes your whole body hurt the next day.”

“What about explosive diarrhea?  You’re bung burns for a week.  You’re shitting all over the place.”

“But you can’t control puking.”

“I repeat: What about explosive diarrhea?”

“At least you can aim it.”

“Oh, fuck.”

“Yeah, dude, puking is the worst.”

“No, worst would be double-barreling that shit.  Blowing out of both ends.  You’re like painting the walls in bile and dooky.  That would be hell.  Holy fucking shit.  That’s nasty.”

“Oh, my god.  But puking is way worse than shitting.”

“No, not necessarily when you’re sick.  I mean, only a truly fucked up individual would like to puke more than taking a big dump, like after you have after a nice pasta dinner in any given Thursday or especially after Chinese food.  But when you’re sick, it’s no holds barred with that shotgun ass.  Brown birdshot everywhere.  You get all chapped back there, I’ll bet.”

“Geezus.  How do you know?”

“What?  I don’t know.  I imagine.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m saying that sick squirts are terrible because the whole thing ruins something that is normally pleasant.  Normal people poop, and most of us like it.  It’s not like you ever puke when you’re not sick.  It always means something’s wrong.”

“You should put this on Facebook.”

“No, the person who’s sick is on Facebook.  That’s just mean.  How about the B L O G?”

“Heh heh, you should totally do that.  I’m going to check.”

“Let me get this fucking poll thing to work….wait a minute….shit.  I hope this works.”

So I ask my kind readers which bodily [mal]function that you find LESS pleasant when you’re sick — not in normal time?

Piles of Climate Change.

Snow doesn’t disprove Global Warming.  It proves (or at least works toward it — I realize that it does not constitute a real proof) Climate Change.  Sorta.

The refusal to acknowledge the “new” popular terminology for how we’re fucking up the planet does go a long way toward proving that denials of Climate Change have nothing to do with science and a lot to do with habit, politics and curmudeonliness — maybe even frustration that this state and city lean to the left just a little, sometimes. But I think I’m overstepping myself there.  Aside from spending a lot of money and our high taxes, you’d think we didn’t live in a blue state sometimes though.

I wish I could lend my arm, but the OB says that won’t work.

So, in the name of productivity, I don’t always turn it off at night and thereby waste power.  They want us to turn them off, since we’re in the midst of a 30% energy reduction plan.  I know all the naysayers like to point out that running a desktop computer uses “only” the amount of energy of a lightbulb. I like to ask: do you leave  your stupid damned lamps on all the time?  No.  And if you do, you’re a poopface.

I realize part of this slowness and waste of time is my job’s network crap and probably also them spying on me (I work at a state university, and they warn us, yadda yadda — HI, GUYZ!).  But still, this happens at home, too.

My home desktop with two hard-drives (one Windoze, one Ubuntu) does something similar, on the same freakin machine.  Ubuntu getting ‘er done time (power button to writing an email in Yahoo! webmail): a minute tops.  Windoze (power button to writing an email in Yahoo! webmail): 3-5 minutes on a good day, and I don’t use it enough to update my VP software anymore, either.

Ugh.  I think I need to start bringing my mini to work?  Or maybe boot Ubuntu on a live disk, since my work machine is so loaded with RAM?

Paper, a phone and a typewriter?

With Baby this close and so much left to do, I’m finding it difficult to really care about much else. My hair looks terribly.  Seriously.

Aside from getting ready for Baby in practical ways, all I find myself interested in is hanging out with Mama, listening to music for Baby, watching the Olympics, “Gilmore Girls” and movies from Netflix.

Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google — and its users — from future attack.

Google and the NSA declined to comment on the partnership. But sources with knowledge of the arrangement, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the alliance is being designed to allow the two organizations to share critical information without violating Google’s policies or laws that protect the privacy of Americans’ online communications. The sources said the deal does not mean the NSA will be viewing users’ searches or e-mail accounts or that Google will be sharing proprietary data.

The ACLU is urging its members and supporters to speak out:

The partnership is supposed to help protect Google’s networks, but the ramifications of companies like Google working with the NSA are frightening.

The NSA — a component of the Department of Defense — is an intelligence collection agency with few effective checks against abuse, and no public oversight of its activities. The NSA sucks up the equivalent of the contents of the Library of Congress every six to eight hours, every single day. In the last decade, the NSA’s dragnet, suspicionless surveillance has targeted everyday Americans, in violation of the law and the Constitution.

Google’s never won much praise from folks concerned about their privacy (do your own web searching on that if you’re interested), not that other search giants are exactly revolutionary in this area.  And maybe this  means nothing.  But it’s sure creepy, to me, too.