My thoughts, they flit like butterflies

I read 1602 last week (thanks, Queue), and the description that best fits seems to be "professional fanfic." I like it, don't get me wrong, but using lots of other people's characters, even with permission, is not quite the same as starting with one's own characters, though the plot is obviously new. "Derivative" doesn't seem the right adjective, having too much of a negative connotation. "Second generation," perhaps?

Is there anything that can be done with a dead keyboard? Maybe there's a use for the individual keys?

I'm feeling better; the lymph nodes are almost back to normal. And salt water rinses really do help (especially when followed by honeyed ginger tea). Plus being woken only once in the middle of the night. I'm still a bit confused by this; I've never had a cold-like-thing that didn't progress beyond my throat, though my nose is quite happy not to have been subjected to millions of tissues, however lotion-infused they might have been. And how is it that so many people are sick just now?

Anticipated local snail mail arrived! Yay!

For the politically entranced, Bush's resume (from Merde, via Aliza 250).

It's amazing that there's another Cat 5 hurricane headed to land in the Gulf. Heck, I'm surprised that we're already at R for hurricanes this year, with so much of the season left, despite the prediction that this would be a very bad year for them. Houston's evacuating, as well as Galveston, and they're even changing highway lanes to allow people to move faster. No talk this time of the Almighty's revenge, I see. (And I can't even imagine what it must be like for the people leaving a second place in less than a month.)

Trading space

According to the bulletin board at work, the show Trading Spaces is looking for Boston-ites for their show in November. The rules include that the neighbors must be within a 15 minute drive of one another (would that be during rush hour, or not?), and that the rooms be a minimum of 12 feet by 12 feet. Which got me thinking, because I'm not sure I have a room that size. Larger in square footage, sure, but with the minimum dimensions? I'd have to measure. Not that I'm about to apply, anyway; though I like the idea of someone helping me change my space, I couldn't bring myself to give up control completely.

Schools

They've added a category to the userinfo page, schools. I'm not sure I'll bother to put mine in my userinfo, but it was interesting to browse what they've already got listed. My high school, college, and grad school are there; my elementary school and yeshiva* are not. In fact, it looks like Israel currently has no schools whatsoever, nor any cities.


* Institutions of Jewish learning for adults in Israel tend to split along gender lines not only in student bodies, but in how they're referred to. Yeshiva is for men, seminary is for women. Except that for me, anyway, sem refers to yet-another-future-working-mommy factory, not designed for in-depth learning lishma (for it's own sake), but to educate women enough to run their homes and raise their children while their husbands either work and learn or learn full time. Maybe there's another word I'm blanking on, but given the horns of this naming dilemma, Nishmat feels more like a yeshiva.

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A completely unrelated note: as I came out of the T tonight, I saw a man wearing a green T-shirt that said "I am a Keeper". The first thing I thought was that there must be some kind of live-action Fluxx game going on...