pettybureaucrat

It's been forever, just not much to report

Wife and I visited our youngest daughter in Ohio, where she's working this summer at Cedar Point, a theme park that features 17 rollercoasters. Unfortunately, due to my weight, I couldn't ride most of them. Of course, there were some I didn't really want to ride.

But the big news from Adrianna was that she received a job offer to teach English to elementary students in KOREA. This seems a little strange since her second language is Japanese, but she says the grammar is the same so all she needs is vocabulary.

The other consequence of this is that she is going to marry her fiance before she leaves in mid-August.

MARRIED?!?!?!?

I just walked her to the school bus for kindergarten last year!!

Things change.

I haven't posted forever. Really not much to report. Always thought being retired would be more interesting, but health and the economy kind of spoiled things.

Seen a lot of good movies. 'Knowing' was surprisingly good and much different from what I expected. 'Watchmen' was also very entertaining.

I was very glad when I caught an early report on MSN yesterday about the rescue of the ship's captain. The bastards that were holding him had it coming.

In my opinion, that's how all these pirates should be dealt with when they're apprehended. Catch them in the act, hold a summary court martial and hang them from the yardarm. Or whatever passes for a yardarm on modern ships. I think that might make a lot of these scumbags have very serious second thoughts about their career choice.

Enough rant, I'm just glad that the captain made it though.

Haven't posted in a long time - nothing all that unusual going on.

Both daughters and their finaces were here for Xmas, including my oldest girl's French boyfriend. Very nice young man. They're not actually getting married, not to start with. They're doing the French equivalent of a civil union. It has some French name that I can't remember though.

My youngest has a job already even though she's still got one semester to go at Findlay U. Her finace is learning to drive big rigs to make money until they can move to someplace where he can use his CGI skills. Not much work for him in NW Ohio.

Been going to a lot of movies.

Quantum of Solace - Outstanding. Daniel Craig is just perfect as Bond. His 'glare' could cut glass, exactly the way Fleming wrote Bond in the 50s.

The Spirit - a fun romp with Frank Miller's trademark film style. Samuel L. Jackson's Octopus was totally over-the-top. The best wacked out villain since Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man.

The Day the Earth Stood Still - Interesting, but doesn't hold a candle to the original.

Valkyrie - Surprisingly moving and historically accurate to boot (within the normal cinematic limits). Tom Cruise was quite effective in the role in my opinion. Too bad he's such a dumbass in real life, being a Scientologist. Can't imagine what anyone can see in those charlatans.

Will probably see Craig again this weekend in Defiance. The History Channel showed a documentary about the Bielski (spelling?) brothers, whose story Defiance depicts. A truly amazing tale of survival.

Other than that life is ordinary.

Hope everyone had a pleasant holiday (Xmas, Hannukah (sp?), Kwanzaa, Solstice, whatever) and are enjoying a not-too-stressful New Year.

For hpgw_100 Butterbeer prompt.

Words: 100
Rating: R
Harry discovers the best way to drink butterbeer.

( Goblet of Fire )

I know I've talked about my oldest daughter, Andromeda, teaching English in France. Well, here she is playing a flute solo from Beethoven's Chorale Fantasy with the University of Mulhouse orchestra. The tape is courtesy of her boyfriend, Ben, whom we'll finally get to meet at Christmas when they come here.

And yes, she was absolutely thrilled when she read her name in OotP.

A little drabble in response to shocolate's squick list.

D'you like my squicks in a fic thing sign-up...
unexpected bodily fluids during sex, Harry/Hermione, graphic torture, OOC!Ron, Slytherins, first time fics including the words 'oh, baby, you are so wet for me' or simultaneous climaxes from penetrative intercourse, unexpected small Malfoys in epilogue compliant fic (how many Ron/Hermiones have been ruined, for me, by a 'humourous' Rose/Scorpius ruining Ron's life?), Slytherins, Hermione having shiny ringlets, Slytherins (and this includes Scorpius... don't rub him all over Rose and claim he's a Hufflepuff...), the word 'mione', Slytherins


Title: All my Squicks
Rating: R

( Squick ME! )

Just thought I'd post a quick note since it's been so long.

Not much to write about, life goes on rather boringly.

Retirement is alright, but getting older isn't. I'm getting 'old person' ailments which I won't gross you out with.

Of course, my nest egg has taken a severe beating due to the economic meltdown. I'm sort of looking for work, but then, so are a lot of people who probably need a job a lot worse than I do. We're not going to starve or lose the house or anything.

I am working on some fics for several Fall/Winter fests. Have two done and getting along on one other. Still a little stuck on how to tackle the fourth though. May have overcommitted.

To any Brits on my flist, is there a British equivalent to the Pulitzer prize? I'd like to know for a plot bunny that's been bugging me.

Hope everyone has a Happy Halloween, if that's your thing. If it's not, hopefully the neighborhood kids will leave you alone.

This was my entry in iulia-linnea's Harry Potter Random Fact Fest over on Insane Journal
http://pettybureaucrat.insanejournal.com/3314.html

gakked this from my flist.

I'm rather surprised I've been to so many states. I was in Alaska for about 2 hours once, on a flight back from SE Asia.


visited 35 states (70%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or determine the next president

Haven't really had much to say here recently.

Both my daughters were home this past weekend. First time I'd seen them together in nearly a year.

My youngest is now back in Ohio with her fiance after her year in Japan.

My oldest, well, she's going to teach English at the Univ. of Mulhouse, then see about entering into a civil union with her French boyfriend.

Seen a few movies. The Dark Knight was amazing. The new Mummy flick was alright, but not as good as the first two. I missed Rachel Weisz.

Going to the VA hospital today to see about filing a claim for Agent Orange problems.

Damn shocolate for putting this in her journal!

I'm hooked!



Actually I'm pretty damn happy with this score. You try clicking on Nuremburg on a blank map of Europe with only five seconds to think about it.

Seen this on a lot of my Flist.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)
note: i've put an asterisk next to ones i've read bits of

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen <-- saw the movie
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien <-- saw the movies, too
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible*
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell <-- saw both movies
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller <-- saw the movie, too
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare *
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier <-- read ‘The Birds’ tho
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger <-- everyone in my 11th grade English class read this but
me. I read Lolita, instead.
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot <-- read ‘Silas Marner’, tho
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell <-- saw the movie
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens <-- saw the PBS version
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy <-- couldn’t keep the characters straight
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky <-- the dullest book EVER!!
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck <-- saw the movie
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis*
34 Emma - Jane Austen <-- saw the movie
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis <-- saw the movie
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres <-- saw the movie
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden <-- saw the movie
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown <-- saw the movie
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan <-- saw the movie
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert <-- went to the world premier of the movie
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens <-- saw the movie, too
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov <-- saw the movie, too
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding <-- saw the movie
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville <-- saw the movie, too
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker <-- saw the movie, and the stage play!
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett <-- saw the movie
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens <-- saw three different movie versions, and
Muppet Xmas Carol, too!
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White <-- read ‘The Once and Future King’, tho
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle <-- I’ve read every Holmes
story
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad <-- saw Apocalypse Now
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute <-- read ‘On the Beach’, tho
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas <-- saw three different movie versions
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare <-- saw the play, too
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl <-- saw the movie (both of them)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo <-- saw the musical - original cast, no less!

Read 23 of them. Not too bad.

I don't believe it. I actually OWN my house now, free and clear, no mortgage, no lines of credit.

Of course, there's always the bastards at the tax office.

Saw 'The Happening' very creepy. Shyamalan's best since 'Signs' as far as I'm concerned.

Been ages since I posted anything. Not really much to report. Life is boring. I need to find work, but my health issures make finding something I can do hard.

Seen a few movies. Forbidden Kingdom was fun. Iron Man was excellent. Indiana Jones was good.

Now I have a really stupid question for my flist. Is there anyway to delete stuff from my Friends pages? I often get duplicates of entries since writers and artists often post at more than one site. I've looked at the documentation for LJ but I can't seem to find anything. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right place. So, if anyone knows and can take pity on me, I'd love to hear from you.

Both my daughters will be home at the same time at the beginning of August! It will have been nearly a year since they were both here and saw each other.

My oldest has gotten another job in France, starting in Sept., teaching English at the Univ. of Mulhouse. She is planning on entering into a formal 'domestic partnership' with her boyfriend sometime in the next year.

My youngest is coming back from her year of study abroad in Japan. She's probably getting married in early August despite having one more year of school at Findlay U. in Ohio. She and her boyfriend just wanted to 'live together' for the year, but his family seems to have issues with that. They're both over 21, so they can do what they want. My wife and I had no real issues with them just moving in with each other, but we told her if marriage is needed to maintain peace with his family, that we have no objections.

That's about it. I think I've suddenly become lactose intolerant, which means I'm probably going to die. If I can't eat pizza anymore, I'll probably blow my brains out.

Watched the PBS presentation last night. A heartbreaking story, all the more so since it's true.

Quite impressed with all the cast. Dan certainly brought intensity to the role.

I was yelling at him to just lie still at the end and stop trying to be a fucking hero. It might have been possible that the Germans would have picked him up when they searched for their own wounded. Despite an earlier comment in the show, at least at the beginning of the war, the Germans treated their British POWs fairly decently, especially officers.

I've always had a morbid fascination with World War I, wondering what could have driven sensible men on all sides to simply fling their bodies into the maelstrom of shells and bullets that they HAD to know they had no chance of surviving.

During the 4 years and approx. 3 months of WWI, around 4 soldiers were killed EVERY MINUTE.

I recall another PBS British show a number of years ago about a 'Pals' battalion made up of farm workers that apparently surrendered and then were summarily executed by the Turks at Gallipoli. Does anyone remember this and what the title might have been?

Seen a few movies the last few weeks. 10000 B.C. which was a silly movie but fun nonetheless. The Other Boleyn Girl which wasn't as good as I had hoped but was still interesting. Doomsday, which was surprisingly good (for the sort of film it was). It did steal a lot from Mad Max/Road Warrior and Mad Max/Beyond Thunderdome. Getting away in a Bentley, though, now that's CLASS!

Just replaced cable with Satellite TV. Better picture, lower prices, plus a free year of Showtime! Started watching 'The Tudors' which looks like a really good show.

And here is the final section.

Written for lunalovepotter for r_becca's Changing Seasons.

( Lily of the Hollow )

Wow! Two posts in the same day.

I have just heard that the City of Greenbelt is being sued by the ACLU and the NAACP for having no minority representatives on its five-member city council. The population is around 22,000, which is about 40% white, 40% black, and 20% Latino.

The one fact which the appelants seem to have overlooked is that in the last six city elections which have occurred since my family moved here, no black or Latino has ever put their name forward to run on the council. The council is non-partisan, but we've had avowed Socialists, Greens and Libertarians all run for it in the past. The current council is as 'middle-class' as can be, three men and two women, all of whom have been in office for at least three terms, some for a lot longer. All would have to be called 'Moderates.'

In the way of a little history, Greenbelt was founded in 1937 as part of the New Deal, to create jobs and to provide affordable housing to middle income families. Two other 'Green' towns were founded at the same time, Greendale, WI, and Greenhills, OH.

Greenbelt has a long history of civic activism. The council members receive only a modest stipend for their service. Greenbelt provides some excellent public services, particularly parks and a city-run fitness center with indoor and outdoor swimming pools. Of course, the residents pay for this with extra taxes.

Still, as towns go, Greenbelt is better than most I've lived in here in Maryland.

I'm just wondering what relief the appelants are going to request. As far as I know, to run for City Council you just have to file your name, I don't think you even need 'x' number of signatures on a petition to do so.

Any opinions?

This was pubbed over the TQP as part of their 'Birds and the Bees' Challenge. I hope you find it amusing.

Title: How Not to Bee Stung
Rating: NC-17
Words: ~8500
Parings: Harry/Ginny, guest appearances by Hermione and Luna
Warnings: Strong sexual content, conspiracy
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and locations are the property of JK Rowling. This is a work of adult fiction and is not intended to condone or promote the activities depicted herein. All 'participants' are of age.

( Bee Stung )

Wow, I'm posting again already

I had an opportunity yesterday to finally drink one of the beers my oldest daughter so thoughtfully gave me for Christmas. She's the one teaching English in French elementary schools in Metz.

I presume the official name of this beer is "L'Alsacienne" - the girl from Alsace. However, she tells me every one orders it by asking for a "Sans Coulotte" - without panties.

I wonder why?

The beer is actually very, very good. So, if you find yourself in Alsace-Lorraine anytime, you know what to ask for at the bar!

Saw "There Will Be Blood" last night. Easy to see why Daniel Day-Lewis took Best Actor. But, if you saw this movie, could you explain to me just what the hell was the point?