About This Blog
A blog about my life, universe, etc. At any given time you might find something endlessly interesting or just me ruminating on something else, which no one (not even myself) finds interesting. That's the way blogs go, I suppose. Anyway, I was eleventh in line, and you weren't. Hah!

About Me
Name:
Sarah
Age:
26
Residence:
Columbus, OH
Religion:
LDS
Political Score:
5.00/-2.15
Job:
Temp @ JPMorgan Chase
College:
Ohio State University
Majors:
Political Science, International Studies
High School: Home Educated
Hobbies:
Reading, standing in line for things, writing, research
Resume:
HotJobs
Email:
lloannna@gmail.com

About My Family
My mom is a lawyer in Pickerington; my stepdad and dad are computer guys, and my stepmom (who works with my dad) is an engineer. My sisters are, in order of age, a photographer, an artist, and a person too young to have her own website. My brothers are, in order of age, living up north, and again, a person too young to have a website. At some point soon I'll be collecting links for my aunts, uncle, and cousins. ^_^

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Message Services
(Please see the notes below the Comment Policy before sending me a message)
AIM:
lloannna
ICQ:
29395930
Yahoo:
lloannna

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My CafePress Designs

Even More CafePress Designs

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Star Wars: Episode 3 Line (Hollywood)
My Star Wars Line page

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NaNoWriMo 2007:
My Novel: Cipere Lumen




NaNoWriMo 2006:
My Novel: The Manatee Conspiracy




NaNoWriMo 2005:
My Novel: Beyond the Cliffs of Kefira





NaNoWriMo 2004:
My Novel: sul Okyar tir taTz'ileea

 
Tsunami Relief Efforts   I'll post more in a little bit, but I thought that everyone who reads this blog would be interested in the Church page on the issue. It looks like the best option for Church members is to make an offering slip out to the Humanitarian fund this Sunday.

I'm thinking I might have the kids in my Primary class do something in response to all this. It probably will depend on whether or not they've heard anything about it -- their lives have been pretty shaken up this week by the power outages (the class I subbed for on Sunday had two kids who got power back on Christmas Day itself), and they're all only 6 years old, so they might not know anything has happened. And I'd rather not take it upon myself to enlighten them -- their parents might not like it, and it's not exactly on the list of official Primary teacher duties; we are not a news agency, after all, and it's a captive audience sent in to first off learn spiritual stuff and second off (at least, in my priority system) stay out of their parents' way for two hours.

We'll see.
posted by Sarah at 8:01 PM. | 0 comments |

 
Merry Christmas!   And, a happy New Year (though that's next week). We've got power and we've got presents and apparently we're going to have prime rib in the morning. Woohoo!

I bought a total of (I think) 15 gifts for my four family members here in Ohio. Twas great fun. Easton is a last-minute gift-giver's mecca. Really. I think the reviews will be favorable. I also finally got to go inside a real Harry & David store -- man, those pears are expensive! Might have to go back after I pick up my paycheck on Monday, though. They have... cheesecake (actually, there's a Cheesecake Factory at Easton -- I may have to start hanging out at that mall, shockingly enough).

Anyway, I hope that all five of the people who read this regularly, and whoever else drops by, has a very merry holiday!
posted by Sarah at 10:47 PM. | 0 comments |

 
Part of a trend?   Maybe, maybe not. I mean, yes, Caroline has ended her employment relationship with Bear Creek, and I'll be there for another week or two at most -- but come on, this was seasonal employment! I mean, shouldn't my job have posted as a gain in October (Caroline's in November), before two losses in December? It's a net outcome of 0.

On the other hand, you know, the whole point of these kinds of statistics is that it doesn't matter what the specific situation is... you're supposed to get the overall idea of what's going on; I assume that in the grand spectrum of job types, seasonal jobs are on the Bad end (at least for people looking for happy job statistics and overall economic growth and stuff). Then again, seasonal employment probably explains why SOME of those retail jobs have been lost.

I am at least comforted that Columbus is doing well, overall. ^_^

(hat tip: BlogsNow [recommend using FireFox over IE for this site, it doesn't look right in IE at all])
posted by Sarah at 9:10 AM. | 0 comments |

 
I can't wait for Fridays   Well, Fridays in the near future, anyway. I have no guarantees that my next job will be a Monday through Friday gig (I tend to go back and forth -- the current job is, but the last two weren't), and weekends are too much like work in that scenario (what with the running of errands and the trying desperately to catch up on all my obligations and such) anyway. No, it's not about party time and sleeping in -- it's about True Geek Nirvana.

You see, SciFi is going to start airing THREE original high-quality sci fi shows on Friday nights: old faves Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, and new hopeful Battlestar Galactica (I still haven't seen the miniseries -- I was busy letting a mouse suck my soul out through my eyes at the time).

I imagine this as a total throw back to the glory days of the original Star Trek series, which aired on Friday nights at 10pm. In true geek fashion, I am often at home on Friday night (sometimes I go to church dances, or out to see a movie or something), and I think it's awesome that SciFi is catering to us in this fashion.

Now if we could just get something interesting on TV on a night other than Wednesday and Friday... (Mondays are good for Stargate and West Wing reruns, at least -- but Tuesdays and Thursdays are perfectly worthless to me) Though you're not going to hear (many) complaints from me about getting the West Wing and Lost on the same night (and they're not playing at the same time, the way that Enterprise and the West Wing used to). Actually, that's the one frustrating thing about the new SciFi Friday deal -- I'll have to tape Enterprise, or watch it on Sunday nights.

Overall, though, I'm happy enough that I'm not going to make more than cursory mention of the tragic farce that is Saturday night TV.
posted by Sarah at 8:45 PM. | 0 comments |

 
Reasons to Home School   Aren't exactly hard to come by, you know?

There's all sorts of... I guess you could call them fundamental, or basic, reasons to home school, of course. You might think that government schooling is improper from a libertarian standpoint, or that group schooling is too restrictive and conformist, or that secular schooling is unGodly, or that children should be free to move at their own pace, etc. You might be particularly attached to a specific educational philosophy (unschooling, the Trivium, Charlotte Mason -- though it seems to me those philosophies occur primarily to those already determined to start, or seriously interested in, home education). You might be completely underwhelmed with the quality of the education that you see graduates of public or private schools demonstrating. Maybe you're a home education graduate, and you've just always assumed that you're going to do the same thing for your kids.

And that's pretty cool, I think. I like it when people think through the issues, look at their kids, look at the schooling options available to them, and make a serious committment to home education. WOOT! I say, and I mean it.

But if you're ambivalent, or indecisive, or haven't really thought seriously about it, or whatever, there are always the sorts of inducements our present system seems specially designed to offer you.

Like rumors of violence at a middle school.

Or, armed kidnapping suspects outside of an elementary school.

And there's always your classic drunken school bus driver.

Of course, some people will argue that these incidents are rare, and anyway, what about that critical socialization thing home schoolers are missing out on?

I find such arguments unpersuasive.

I think this guy does, too.

^_^
posted by Sarah at 8:22 PM. | 0 comments |

 
Ahhh...   Got my copy of LOTR: Return of the King. The extended version. With the gift set statue. WOOT! Almost finished watching it (will do a re-watch on Friday night -- I can stay up as late as need be, then). ^_^
posted by Sarah at 3:27 AM. | 0 comments |

 
God and Nature 1 - Sarah 0   To the powers that be I say: Well, fine then, be that way. Go ahead, have
the snow be piled up almost two inches high when I get up this morning. If
that's the way you want to play the game, then, ummm... well, I'll just have
to accept it, I suppose.

This is why I could never do the weather on TV. Well, okay, one of the many
reasons why I could never do the weather on TV. Heh.

posted by Sarah at 6:29 AM. | 0 comments |

 
Heh, then again...   Maybe I should stay out of the weather-prediction business altogether. Most
of the snow is gone. Let's see how many more times it can switch back and
forth before I go to bed. Argh.

In other news, I'm sick of this Kerik business already. Let's move on,
people, please. I don't really care what the so-called "real" reason may or
may not be -- the man's no longer the nominee. Get over it. There are more
important things to bug Rudy Guiliani about on the streets of Manhatten, and
to fill the airwaves and blogosphere with. Really.

posted by Sarah at 11:58 AM. | 0 comments |

 
And then again, maybe not...   Because at this point we're going on three hours of more or less continuous
(light) snowfall, I'm going to revise my previous estimate. I've got
accumulation of almost an inch on my windowsill, and it looks like about a
half inch is on the grass. The streets and sidewalks are still too wet for
anything to stick, but I'm afraid this is Actual Snow and not merely the
Appearance Thereof. I knew I should have brought my gloves and scarf to
work in preparation for this day.

This is exactly why I want a camera, by the way. Snow makes everything look
cool. Maybe I'll get enough work after the holidays to get one before all
the snow melts... I need one for the line anyway.

posted by Sarah at 10:58 AM. | 0 comments |

 
SNOOOOOOOOOOWWWWW!   Is on the ground.

I wonder if it'll still be there in a few hours... probably not. Even if it
is cold enough for it to stick, we're also getting a lot of actual rain,
which will turn it all to slush. Nonetheless, this is the first fall that's
more than a mere dusting (the sort of stuff that actually blows off the
grass -- and then the next day it's 65 degrees outside) since the start of
fall.

I always freak out the first time it snows after a long time without it...
this time was worse, because of course I'd gotten used to Disney snow
(glycerin bubbles -- soap, basically), which made the actual snow feel fake
this morning. Heh.

Anyway, just thought I'd share. In case you were wondering, you're supposed
to say the title of this post the way William Shatner said the title
character's name in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Go ahead, try it, it's
a lot of fun. A good way to get the Monday blahs out of your system. Say
it with me now. SNOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!! Ahhhh...

posted by Sarah at 6:21 AM. | 0 comments |

 
A couple of things   That I need to take care of. Administrative stuff, you know.

First, if anyone out there knows of someone who is definitely getting me the Return of the King Extended Version DVD, please email me ASAP. Otherwise, I'm going to buy it for myself.

Second, I've deleted the USS Clueless link from my blogroll. It's too depressing to keep checking and seeing he's still not writing. I've resigned myself to him not putting anything out anymore, and am satisfied, to the extent I can be, with having the archives of the site on my harddrive for future reference.

Third, I am pleased to report that I've started dreaming about bulk personalized mug orders instead of timecards. Thank you, LiningUp.Net.
posted by Sarah at 6:20 PM. | 0 comments |

 
I am SO glad...   That I was home schooled.

I mean, sure, being incessantly and brutally tortured in high school could very easily be a formative experience that expresses itself in the form of total coolness and an genuinely spiffy existence as an adult.

But I wasn't that kind of lucky as a child, and so I'm glad I was home schooled. That is all.
posted by Sarah at 9:00 PM. | 0 comments |

 
State of the Novel Report -- The End is In Sight   Not the actual end, my friends, but something like it.

Yes. We have reached the 50,000 line. We are teetering back and forth like a petulant child about six inches from the line, whining about how it's way too soon to be done with this goal and aren't we still like 10,000 words behind or something? We're going to ignore that whining and teetering and just call it a win, for the purposes of this post.

It has been an illuminating journey, and the project is far from actual completion. There is still work to do. But hey, its party time. Will provide further details later. Yay us.
posted by Sarah at 9:54 PM. | 0 comments |

 
41k and a Frosted World  

 I woke up this morning with a 41,683 word partial novel on my hands, and a frost over the entire world.  Or at least the entire state.  I look out the window, and it's like looking at a cake you can buy at one of those really expensive bakeries, with the whole delicate powdered sugar coating on everything.  It's actually really cool; I wish I had a camera.  Of coures it'll be gone in another hour or two, but hey...

Meanwhile, the NaNo is coming along swimmingly.  I didn't quite meet my personal goal of 5,000 words on Wednesday, but I made up for that with over 6,000 on Thursday.  I am actually officially caught up with where you're supposed to be, on the "slow and steady, every day a minimum number of words" plan.  I only need to write 1700 words a day to finish in time.  I'd prefer not to take the risk, though, and plan to write another 3-6k tonight and Saturday.

In completely unrelated news, the warehouse that my department is in (I work in an office just down the hall from the warehouse door) has been chilled to something around 25 degrees Fahrenheit.  I have to wear gloves and a knit cap to get to my department's main office.  It's really, really cold.  Like, "the refridgerators we keep some of the plants in are actually warmer than the so-called ambient temperature section of the warehouse" cold.  We could lower the temp in the fridges if we kept their doors open.  Yuck.

I am so looking forward to CA temps and fake snow (Disneyland uses glycerin to make bubble snow, which is extra strange and therefore cool).  To think that 50 is "really cold" and worthy of a heavy coat... sigh.

posted by Sarah at 8:49 AM. | 0 comments |

 
Well begun isn't half-done,   But actually half-done SO IS.

The NaNo is now at 25,085 words. I'm 10,000 behind and catching up. Look out, November 30th, Sarah is on her way.
posted by Sarah at 9:19 PM. | 0 comments |

 
State of the Novel Report III   So, there hasn't been a lot of news on this front, and for that I apologize. The last two weeks have been rough on the noveling process, and we're more than a little behind. But I'm pleased to report that almost 8,000 words have been written in the last three days, and we find ourselves now at 33% of our minimum goal.

The road ahead is unlikely to be entirely pleasant. But it is one we are committed to taking. So, with 33,533 words to go, I bid the world good night.
posted by Sarah at 10:09 PM. | 0 comments |

 
Scarred for Life   I just saw a girl, maybe 18-20 years old, wearing pink flip-flops and yellow
and pink striped leg warmers. I may never fully recover my sanity.

On a related note, I have to work tomorrow morning. Let's all take a moment
to send me happy
get-done-before-noon-so-you-can-watch-the-OSU-Michigan-game-kickoff vibes.
There you go. That's it. Thanks, everyone!

posted by Sarah at 12:12 PM. | 0 comments |

 
Home Education and Screedish Reporting   I sent the following to the editors of the Akron Beacon-Journal. Hat tip: Homeschool and Other Education Stuff.

I was homeschooled for 11th and 12th grade in the Bucyrus City Schools district, which is right by Galion's. We were in the Naugatuck (CT) schools area for two years before that, and the Auborn Hills (MI) area for the year before that. What utter rubbish, is what I have to say about claims that less than 13% of Galion's homeschoolers are educating their children in this manner for "the right reasons." It is even more apparent as to what class of rubbish that this is (namely, self-serving, finger-pointing, "please please don't look at how utterly disastrous public education in Crawford County is" rubbish) when you actually go and see what homeschooling and public education are like in these actual districts. That kind of rubbish which your anti-homeschooling screed of an article series is, alas, defies the possibliity of a civilized name, but I'm working on it, and will keep you posted if necessary.

To you, the newspaper reporters, and the academic researchers you talked with: Spend a week going to all the homeschool activity meetings at the Bucyrus library. Visit with the girl scout troops where a third of the girls homeschool. Walk down our old street -- our next-door neighbors homeschooled their boys at the same time my sisters and I were there, and were doing a fabulous job. Meanwhile, Bucyrus high school had exactly ONE AP course (English) during my senior year, and when I was asked to go take the 9th grade proficiency test (they were going to see if I could get a diploma from Bucyrus High), most of the kids in the high school auditorium who took it with me, were taking one or more sections for the third, fourth, or fifth time. They were seniors, like me, only they'd been taking that test every six months since the end of ninth grade. Honestly. Visit the high schools and the middle schools and the elementary schools, and go to a PTA meeting or three. Talk to me then about how misguided and undersupervised the homeschoolers are.

I received a 1380 on the SAT, and 29 on the ACT, and was accepted as a direct enrollment student in Ohio State's Engineering Honors program (I was the only female Computer Engineering student so admitted that term). I doubt very much that I am all that unusual, especially seeing as how my sisters are also performing at above-average levels, and so are the majority of the actual homeschooling students I know. How many actual homeschoolers do you know? How many have the reporters who wrote this entire series actually met, and spoken to? How many of the children have you seen, and had an intelligent conversation with? Moreover, seriously, how much scrutiny have you given to the parents and teachers and students associated with the public schools in Ohio and elsewhere? Have you made a serious effort to determine how well they're really doing, and whether they get their textbooks and standardized exams (which, incidentally, are the only sort of exams that Bob Jones provides -- SAT 9 and the like, the good old-fashioned normed tests you're probably very familiar with) from a source you feel you'd be able to hang out with and have something to say to? Dare I say that you are uncomfortable with the idea that people would want to get their educational materials from an overtly religious institution, and rather than say that, you're relying on an entirely irrelevant but far more scandalous-sounding point: some people have accused them of racism!!!

Speaking of racism, I find it interesting that National Merit Scholars and honors students and spelling bee winners are hardly indicative of any kind of a trend, but one racist child is a clear indication that homeschoolers are dangerously sheltered and without proper perspective. Actual students admitted to specific universities are a nifty anomaly, but unsubstantiated claims by schools -- many of which have extremely prejudicial admissions policies for homeschoolers (Notre Dame wanted five $100 SAT-II subject exams with my application, in addition to my SAT-I score and the application fee, and all the other things they require of everyone -- I chose not to apply) -- that homeschoolers are "underrepresented" (what does that mean, precisely; do they mean that the total proportion of their class that claims to have been homeschooled has gone down, and have they accounted for students whose parents did things like form "private schools" for just their own children?), is a sign that homeschoolers aren't very accompished.

I won't go into statistical validity, and I won't go into basic principles of liberty, and I won't even mention (beyond this one time, and only in passing) the rather sordid history of public schooling in this country. I will take a moment to remind you, the Akron Beacon-Journal, that for most of its first 100 years, this country was run by homeschooled kids. We didn't call it back then -- we said that Lincoln was only able to go to school for a year, and that he had to read out of law books to become a lawyer. We noted that John Adams went to Harvard at 12, and never mind what his parents taught him before that (or what he and Abigail Adams taught their sons and daughters, in their home). We obsess about accountability now in large part because there is such abundant and plentiful failure. Show me the homeschooled children who are neglected and maltreated and given over to minimally academic pursuits, and I will say "give them a standardized test, and allow them to prove that things aren't what they seem -- or counsel them to change their methods." Show me the public schools, and I'll say the same thing. Show me Eton, Polytechnic in California, the Columbus School for Girls, and close to a million highly successful homeschoolers, and I will say "great! more power to them, let's give everyone a tax cut because the government isn't having to do more recovery work thanks to these people who've taken the initiative."

To the superintendents and board of education members, especially those who gave quotes to these articles: Worry about your public school students. That's where the limited stewardship of our government school supervisors actually is: the government schools. If the parents in your area have decided they're not doing a good job, you should look to your own methods and your own standards and your own policies and your own employees, rather than trying to find fault with those parents. Or in other words, don't shoot the messenger.

I said they could quote me and warned them not to mangle my name (it's SARAH PARKER-ALLEN, already -- there's an "h" and a hyphen and both have been sorely neglected by the news media in recent years) or my words. I doubt they'll mangle anything because I doubt they'll quote anything, but at least I got that off my chest.
posted by Sarah at 9:43 PM. | 0 comments |

 
Bah humbug   I'm going to bed. I can't get more than a nap at this point; Bush is ahead by 150k in Ohio according to the Secretary of State's website. I was hoping to stay up till some kind of speech was made, but it looks to be a while before that last 6% of results come in.

Will likely blog more tomorrow, during my NaNoWriMo time. Argh.
posted by Sarah at 2:13 AM. | 0 comments |

 
Round on the sides and high in the middle!   From a post I wrote at LiningUp.Net, with some minor editing for context and a few fixes, including a parenthetical statement that became four paragraphs... I started this post at around 11:30pm EST.

First, for those who, like me, are without remote controls:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/elections/2004/channel_surfer_2004.html

*********

[NOTE: in the half hour since I started writing this, the totals have changed, though the proportions haven't; I STRONGLY suggest actually looking at the data in the SOS link below]

My county has so far gone 63% for Bush. It looks so far, from the Ohio SecState's website, like only Cuyohoga Co. (Cleveland) has a Democratic advantage that's of significance within the state as a whole (150k for Kerry, 90k for Bush). Butler is closer but with smaller numbers (23k Kerry to 20k Bush), as are Erie (20k vs 18k), Franklin (222k to 200k), Loraine (59k to 47k) Lucas (29k to 17k), Mahoning (63k to 42k), Monroe (4k to 3k), Montgomery (99k to 97k), Portage (16k to 14k), Stark (41k to 39k), Summit (96k to 70k), and Trumbull (52k to 32k). All the remaining counties (there are 88 total, but Cuyohoga and Franklin are the biggest by a fairly big margin, as they are the homes of Cleveland and Columbus) are going for Bush (I could be wrong, as I'm running short of sleep -- verify on the links below). Hamilton (Cincinnati) and Lucas (Toledo) are next up in terms of population; Dayton is in Montgomery county.

Of the four largest counties by population (and those four are MUCH larger than their neighbors -- Fairfield is next to Franklin, and it's about 15% of its size in population terms), all but one -- Franklin -- are at around 30% reporting. Franklin's at 80%. And all four are pretty much going the way most people in Ohio would expect those counties to go, with the possible exception of Lucas (Toledo), which might go more conservative (but probably not, it's been hit pretty hard with factory closings).

Now, there are some nearby neighbor trends you want to look at: Lake County is right next to Cuyohoga, and is far more conservative (60k Bush to 57k Kerry). It's relatively small (118k votes total), but remember that's worth 7 or 8 other counties. That's how my county, Fairfield, sometimes works -- it's a +20% boost for whoever gets that little "R" by their name, [compared to our neighbor's totals]. But [then again,] Loraine is the little-yet-big neighbor to Eerie, and it's actually slightly more Kerry-leaning today (and Democrat in general) than Eerie is (Kerry is leading by 55%, 59k to 47k).

I point this out because while we have 35% type reporting levels in the biggest counties, their neighbors are at 70% or higher, and you can make rough predictions based on how the neighbors are behaving. [This is] in part because unlike with the larger counties, the neighbors are more likely to be uniform across precincts -- there's no notable difference amongst Pickerington A-G, the Bloomfield Township and Canal Winchester districts, etc. -- to compare, I just look at the differences in the OSU area, where neighboring precincts include the Ohio State dorm area (there's quite a few for the 10k dorm residents and 15k apartment/frat dwellers; it takes 4 or 5 different buildings to distribute all the kids, and that's despite the fact that so many of them vote absentee in their home counties) and Upper Arlington (a very conservative upper-middle class area). When you can get a rough idea of how much more conservative or liberal (I hesitate to use the word in Ohio, where the Democrats are often Republicans with the support of organized labor) a smaller neighbor is relative to a larger county, you can to a limited extent predict how big the difference between the parties will be.


Blech. That was annoying to write. For Ohio Election returns broken down by county:
http://election.sos.state.oh.us/results/RaceDetail.aspx?race=PP

And for a quick map of Ohio's counties:
http://www.osuedc.org/profiles/

and one that tells you where people live, but has difficult to read county names (that's why the one up there is the one I like better):
http://www.dot.state.oh.us/map1/ohiomap/images/OTM2003Sm.jpg

(the large one is easy to read, but HUGE:
http://www.dot.state.oh.us/map1/ohiomap/images/otm2003Lg.jpg)


Anyway, look to the neighbors, if you really want to see how some of those big counties with small responses will go. I'm pretty confident the rates won't change much, except that trends expressed will get stronger (that Kerry leads will get bigger, and so will Bush leads). Since I started writing this, for instance, Kerry's lead in Franklin county has increased by 1%, with an additional 13% reporting.

In other words, I'm not seeing surprises here. If Kerry does win, it'll require an absolute landslide in ALL the counties he's leading in, plus the largest possible gain in all the counties we're still waiting for (including ones where that's unlikely), which seems doubtful as all the counties are already at leads I was expecting. If it does go for Kerry it'll be something like 3.1 million to 3 million. And it'll be a move, with 70% reporting right now, of 5% -- Bush is leading 52% to 47%

Possible, but I wouldn't go putting a lot of money on it right now.

I'm really interested to see how the actual counties break down soon. I was planning to go to bed (I slept for the entire 8pm-11pm "oh my gosh polls are CLOSING!!!" thing, and it felt nice, and I was thinking of doing some more sleeping before leaving for work in 4 hours) but this is a lot more interesting than I thought it would be.

Oh! Something I just noticed that's helpful: for trying to figure out those mystery "0% reporting" counties and seeing if they matter, try the list of counties on this page:
http://www.dot.state.oh.us/map1/ohiomap/

Jackson and Huron I think are the only offenders remaining. When you click on them you can see they have very very VERY small populations.

EDIT: I forgot to add, the biggest Bush lead in any county is 75%, in Holmes county:
http://www.dot.state.oh.us/map1/ohiomap/images/county/hol.jpg

(woohoo, they have an airport!)

I don't know for sure, but it's hard to see the rather larger and more diverse Cuyohoga getting that kind of support level for ANYone (Kerry's at 62%, with 62% of precincts reporting as of this edit).
posted by Sarah at 1:43 AM. | 0 comments |

 
State of the Novel Report 2   My fellow Netizens, good evening and welcome. Today my message is brief, and to the point: we have begun!

So far the novel has proceeded admirably from the state of a poor blank page to that of 10 pages covered with more than 3,000 individual words, many of which are indeed worthwhile and may even find their way into the final work.

I have taken the liberty of posting a section of today's work in a public forum, that others might see my words and decide to write some of their own. Go forth, my friends, and read. Read, and think, and choose to write.

Thank you, and good night.
posted by Sarah at 4:39 PM. | 0 comments |

 
A proposal I'd vote for   Election Season Extended -- Candidates, Voters Demand Answers

Columbus, OH -- The observation of Daylight Savings Time has forced the election season to be extended by an hour as of 2am this Sunday, thanks to an antiquated piece of World War I era legislation and an act passed by often-criticized then-President Richard Nixon.

"I can't believe I have to live through another hour of this nightmare -- that's probably worth ten or fifteen poorly made commercials filled with overblown and unprovable accusations, in the middle of my shows!" Ms. Keira Thomas of Gahanna exclaimed when we spoke to her, and other local citizens, at area malls this Saturday. "Why couldn't they have put this extra hour after the election?"

Why, indeed? Libertarian Franklin County Board of Supervisors candidate Shoshona Richards has joined forces with her Constitution Party and Independent opponents in adding this issue to their platforms: "Even if I lose -- which I mean, you know, is going to happen this time, I'm pretty sure -- you have to admit, it's a real problem. I don't ordinarily like letting government fix anything except their own messes, but you've gotta understand, this is one of their messes."

She and her fellow third-party candidates are pushing the front-runners in their race to pass a resolution delaying all future Daylight Savings Time changeovers to happen in such a way that they won't frustrate voters in Presidential election years. "It just says that in national election years, Daylight Savings Time within the county limits won't go into effect until 2am the day after the election," Ms. Richard's Independent opponent, Douggie Sandler, explained on Friday. Ohio's election season, which starts at the beginning of March, would be shorter by an hour each national election year if the national election happened before the Daylight Savings switch, instead of after, as it does now.

Backers are hoping that other counties in Ohio will follow Franklin County's lead before the 2008 election, which already promises to be contentious.

"It's going to be impossible to retain our sanity as it is, no matter who wins this year," political analyst Debbie Carson told us on Friday at her Columbus office. "If Kerry wins, the Republicans will go crazy, and we'll be looking at anti-Kerry ads two years before the election actually starts. If Bush wins, we'll have to sit through the nightmare that will be constant anti-Hillary Clinton attack ads. It seems small, but an extra hour added to that, right near the end, is enough to cause serious stress to the voting public."

Most of the Board of Supervisors candidates we spoke to said this proposal was necessary almost entirely because Ohio's a swing state, subjected to extra attention. All of them said they felt that the sheer amount of political coverage has caused real harm to Ohio's residents. Psychiatrist Rudolph Adams agrees.

"It's a perception thing, sure, but all of my patients were sick of this election a month ago. One of my guys has seven personalities -- we've made real progress this week, because they finally all agreed on one thing: this election has got to end as soon as possible. Of course he's got some problems connecting to reality, and half of his personalities have formed a rebellion; they insist that the election is already over, and won't do anything at all until the others agree. It's really a nightmare. My schedule is so full this week; the only reason I'm taking time out to vote is because if I don't, there seems to be a chance that we'll have to extend the election past this Tuesday to figure out who really won. Now, while I'd really like to be able to finally afford that yacht I've always wanted, I'm not sure my own psyche could handle another month of this."

The backers of the Franklin County proposal admit there are some problems with their plan. The Uniform Time Act of 1974 makes it clear that it is the state government that dictates whether it will participate in Daylight Savings or not. The time of observance isn't up for debate -- it's spelled out quite clearly. But the proposal's supporters just don't care. "They can say it's an hour earlier all they want, I guess," Ms. Richards conceded. "But we're just not going to agree. From the last Sunday in October, 2008, until the first Wednesday after the first Monday in November, we'll all pretend they're not talking."

Some members of the Board of Supervisors are concerned about the precedent such action might set: "What's next, are we going to just decide that some Presidential candidates aren't running for office, and take them off the ballot?" asked an annoyed staffer who asked to remain annonymous. "We can't dictate the terms of our reality. We have to submit to the will of the universe." The proposal's supporters remain unconvinced.

"That's just the rantings of an uninspired bureaucratic underling. The Peter Principle, remember that..." was the response we got from Independent candidate Sandler.

In general, most people we asked thought that putting off that extra hour of time by a half week was a great idea. "Every second we don't find ourselves sitting through a campaign commercial, talking to a pollster, or watching a demonstration or rally completely disrupt traffic, is a great thing," Westerville resident Sandy Gilbert said outside of the Easton Wendy's. "I almost feel like they're stealing my life from me with this adding an hour deal. Why can't they wait a week? The only people who'll be complaining are the guys who sell earplugs and antiacid."

The Democrat and Republican running for the seat Richards and Sandler are competing for declined to comment on the proposal, for fear of having to spend more money on last-minute radio spots on the subject. Regardless of how the proposal pans out, backers are already looking to the future. "If it can't get through the board of supervisors, we'll just take it to the state house. Or maybe a referendum or something. I don't care -- I just don't want to have to endure any more election season than is absolutely necessary." Backers are also looking into the possibility of having Ohio's election take place on the Friday before the Daylight Savings switch each year. "Whatever it takes," Richards vowed. "Whatever it takes."

***********
(yes, that was a parody -- but you try living in Ohio during a national election and THEN tell me it's not a good idea, darn it)
posted by Sarah at 9:58 AM. | 0 comments |

 
Difficult Choices   Ack! This evening I finished watching my tapes of last week's "Lost" and "West Wing" (I was at a NaNoWriMo Columbus meeting at the best Borders I've ever been in), finished my comfort food dinner. Now, I realized at around 4pm -- which was the time I woke up, more than 14 hours after going to bed the previous evening -- that it'd been more than a week since I had a day off from dealing with the world at large; considering the overall absence of nearly psychotic "LEAVE ME ALONE NOW I MUST GET AWAY FROM YOU PEOPLE STOP TALKING TO ME ARRRRRGHHH" thoughts and random comments form myself to other people yesterday I think I handled the social overload rather well!) since... well, at least my birthday (if you don't count my birthday as a real day off, it's more like 11 days), so I was rather overdue for some intense relaxation.

Anyway, I finished watching the tapes, put away the stuff I moved into the living room to watch them, washed my dishes -- and then, as I was getting ready to transfer back down to the basement for the evening, I got to channel 49 -- Spike TV -- and found "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episodes playing. Whoa, I thought, that's cool. A commercial came -- one chance to briefly scan around and see if anything more compelling is on -- and so I moved to Channel 50, TNT. Which had "Stand By Me" on.

Yes, that's right, I had to choose between awesome Wil Wheaton related Star Trek episodes, and awesome Wil Wheaton AND Jerry O'Connell filled Stephen King novella-cum-movie goodness. What a crisis!

In the end I chose "Stand By Me," because it comes on less frequently than Star Trek, and the Star Trek episodes on didn't have Wil in them. Would that all the choices we have to face this week were this inconsequential...

Anyway, that's what I did today. Very exciting, yes? Of course yes!

(I did other stuff, too, don't worry -- progress was made on the constructed language for my NaNovel, a title was selected, message board posts were made, etc. -- though really, my whole system apparently declared a vacation on me without any kind of a planning meeting or formal announcement, and I'd hardly call this evening spectacularly productive; about the only thing of consequence I've done since waking up is fill the car with gas)
posted by Sarah at 4:01 AM. | 0 comments |

 
Happy birthday to ME!   I'm now, officially, 24 years old.

Well, all right, fine. In about 14 hours and 25 minutes, I'll be 24 years old. I've been struggling not to say I'm 24 for the last ten months -- it'll be interesting to see if I try spending most of the next year trying to avoid saying I'm 25.

One year ago today I was performing as a dancer in "Store Search: The Search for the Next American Icon", at the Disneyland Stores Party talent show in Disney's California Adventure. I wore a Mickey Mouse "Happy Birthday" sticker as part of my costume for one number. That made me a lot more well-known within my department. ^_^

Tonight, I may go and see "Uncle Vanya" at CATCO. Stay tuned.
posted by Sarah at 3:19 AM. | 0 comments |

 
Candidate Match   So, I decided to take the Candidate Match thing at our local CBS affiliate's website:

10TV Candidate Match

Amongst the Presidential candidates, I got the following scores of agreement:

Michael Badnarik (Libertarian) -- 2,000
George Bush (Republican) -- 1,400
Michael A. Peroutka (Constitution) -- 1,400
John F. Kerry (Democratic) -- -200


As to the Senatorial race in Ohio, the results were similar:

George Voinovich (Republican) -- 1,150
Eric D. Fingerhut (Democratic) -- -200


And, for my Congressional district... (the Ohio 7th)

Dave Hobson (Republican) -- 1,850
Kara Anastasio (Democratic) -- -750



What's interesting to me? My congressional Republican candidate ranks higher than the President, while my senatorial Republican candidate ranks lower than the Constitution party Presidential candidate (!!!). More interestingly, the congressional candidate, Hobson, ranks closer to the Libertarian candidate (overall, though not much on the specific issues) than the President does. Weird. I have to wonder if the senatorial Democratic candidate, Fingerhut, has the same platform as Kerry. That would seem to me an unwise tactic, and there are other reasons to explain why he and Kerry have identical agreement scores (when compared to me), since of course this thing is based on calculating "distance from agreement" and then adding "how relevant to the voter" multipliers. In other words, there are many roads that lead to a -200 score.

And meanwhile, I don't feel nearly as bad about voting a "party" ticket as I usually do (it seems intellectually weak), as the agreement scores here are pretty straightforward. I have no intention of voting for the Constitution party candidate, and I feel that in this case, in this place, a vote for Badnarik would be irresponsible. It's mildly comforting that he and I agree overall, but when you look at some of the places where we disagree most strongly (i.e. where I said "very important" he said "not important", or he said "strongly disagree" to my "strongly agree"), it's quite frankly a matter of non-negotiable matters. I wouldn't go so far as to take a "single issue voter" stance ala InstaPundit, but I can't in good conscience take the Libertarian party seriously this year.

Last time around (my first election EVER) was different. We weren't at war. For crying out loud, look at what was dominating the news cycle from April 2000 to September 10th 2001. Doesn't anyone else remember how much airtime was being granted to Gary Condit? It was easy, and largely relevant, to sit in a nifty "debate watching" event with John Glenn and say on regional news networks that I didn't see any material difference between the two candidates, based on what they were saying. I see a difference now. End of story.

The fact that I agree with Bush so much more than I agree with Kerry is, quite frankly, icing on the cake of responsibility.
posted by Sarah at 2:20 AM. | 0 comments |

 
Best. Idea. Ever.   "Wouldn't it be cool if Sean and I did some book signings and things together? When I finish his book, I'm going to call him and suggest it."
posted by Sarah at 4:03 PM. | 0 comments |

 
Revising a Wish List   So. It's come to my attention recently that my Amazon wish list hasn't been updated in forever, and also isn't that useful, because it's too big and isn't prioritized particularly well. Okay then, says I, let's start over!

Entry number one is a bit pricey and isn't available yet, but has the advantage of being something I could really use:




I've seen what Glenn Reynolds did with his, and I LIKE this camera. So there.
posted by Sarah at 11:07 PM. | 0 comments |

 
State of the Novel Report 1   Ladies and gentlemen of the blogosphere, honored NaNoWriMo participants, beloved guests:

Today I stand before you a writer of... well, not much of anything, yet, because National Novel Writing Month doesn't start for another three weeks. And yet still I feel in my heart that great progress towards my ongoing project has been made.

Work has begun on pre-writing; why, this very day, we have successfully identified our heroine's goals, why we're writing this story -- even, in fact, the central point of conflict about which the entire work revolves! Do not say, "where is the first chapter," for that time is not yet come. Say, instead, "these are definitely writing exercises," for we have a ton of those. Each day we have produced a five-minute exercise on a random topic -- and for the last several exercises, we have gone so far as to write these exercises from the point of view of our main character!

Yet there is still much work to do -- there are as yet many maps, many diagrams, even many character biographies to produce. We have a limited amount of time, and blogging may be limited. But do not worry, as from this day forth there will be a daily word count of at least 3000 amongst all my published works, whether they be here on this blog, or at the LiveJournal, or in such articles and essays as we may, from time to time, make available on the internet. I cannot say that these words will all be good -- but they will be plentiful, as we are gearing up for the trial that is a deadline of 50,000 words written in a short 30 day period. And hey, isn't the blogosphere at least as much about volume as it is about quality? I know you know it's true.

In the next few days, look forward to seeing more information about the actual project at hand. Perhaps even new and interesting forms of content that are as yet in development. Weep not for the lack of words on this blog, for they are being sacrificed for a greater cause. And in any event this blog shall resume its undirected verbosity after the first of December.

Thank you, my friends, and good night.
posted by Sarah at 10:48 PM. | 0 comments |

 
Irregular Tuesday Song Lyrics!   Okay, this has been a perennial favorite of mine. It always manages to remind me not to be so gosh darned introspective (which I tend to be nearly all the time). It's U2's "Stuck in a Moment", which amongst other things was the theme I picked for Queen/Senator Amidala for the interactive speculative fiction project (isn't that a mouthful?) StarWarsII -- specifically from Obi-Wan's perspective (he thought she was way too introspective, too):

I'm not afraid of anything in this world...
There's nothing you can throw at me, that I haven't already heard.

I'm just trying to find a decent melody:
A song that I can sing in my own company.

I never thought you were a fool -- but darling look at you.
You gotta stand up straight, carry your own weight;
These tears are going nowhere, baby...


[Chorus]
You've got to get yourself together,
You've got stuck in a moment --
And now you can't get out of it.

Don't say that later will be better;
Now you're stuck in a moment,
And you can't get out of it.


I will not forsake the colors that you bring.
The nights you filled with fireworks -- they left you with nothing.

I am still enchanted by the light you brought to me.
I listen through your ears, through your eyes I can see.

And you are such a fool, to worry like you do.
I know it's tough, and you can never get enough
Of what you don't really need, now.
My, oh my.

You've got to get yourself together,
You've got stuck in a moment --
And now you can't get out of it.

Oh love, look at you now:
You've got yourself stuck in a moment,
And you can't get out of it.

I was unconscious, half asleep...
The water is warm 'til you discover how deep.

I wasn't jumping, for me it was a fall --
It's a long way down to nothing at all.

[Chorus]

And if the night runs over, and if the day won't last...
And if our way should falter along the stony pass;

And if the night runs over, and if the day won't last..
And if your way should falter, along this stony pass:

It's just a moment;
This time will pass.

Now off to NaNoWriMo exercises and the rest of my Institute prep with me!
posted by Sarah at 1:54 AM. | 0 comments |

 
Some stuff that isn't on this blog...   While I haven't updated the blog since I left for Michigan (trip report is coming soon!), I HAVE updated the LiveJournal. Not only does it have a spiffy (and possibly grammatically correct) Latin title, it also has the first two NaNoWriMo exercises (five minute writings with single-word prompts) I've done. I'll probably do today's (Thursday's) early tomorrow evening. What's bizarre is that if I typed as fast and as determinedly DURING National Novel Writing Month (EXPANDED ACRONYM EXPLANATIONS GO!) as I have for these time-sensitive exercises, I could write the entire thing in three hours. Okay, okay, a little less than 12, actually. But still. A novel in a DAY? Might be worth a shot in, say, January.
posted by Sarah at 1:10 AM. | 0 comments |

 
Something Fun   My new CafePress store was fun to make. Seriously. You think I'm kidding? Go make one yourself. So not joking. Admittedly, so far I've only sold anything to Jackie, who refuses to admit she bought the stuff. I'll get it out of her yet. It's all stuff that promotes my Spoiler Free philosophy, which would be why it all has this logo on it:



Some of it just has the "No" circle with the "S" inside of it. BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT. This thing was fun to make. Go make your own. Now!
posted by Sarah at 1:21 PM. | 0 comments |

 
Hold that tent, please   Okay. The selection of tents at Wal-Mart isn't really spectacular. I'm going to look around at some sporting-goods discount places, because while I'm willing to spend $20 on a tent, and I'm willing to get a "backpacking" tent, and all that, I'm not willing to pay $20 to get a "junior" tent, $60 to get a GIANT (aka NOT really "backpacking") backpacking tent, and there's kind of nothing in that crucial middle ground at the House of Wal. Hmm. That didn't really work well.

Anyway, I'm home-bound tomorrow until at least 6pm, and my focus from now until I have car access is going to be... STAR WARS. WOOT!!!
posted by Sarah at 4:34 AM. | 0 comments |

 
I'm Going to Buy A Tent   And other news:

-- I updated my resume (see the sidebar), with the Disneyland stuff per mom's suggestion, and the new Steak 'n Shake stuff.
-- I'm definitely going to Lizz's "Partay" in Michigan. Leaving Thursday, back on Sunday. That's why I need the tent. I'm trying to plan my wardrobe - it's hard committing to just two t-shirts. Sigh.
-- I REALLY hurt my toe kicking a flashlight. It hurts a lot. I don't recommend kicking flashlights. Fortunately it was already broken (the flashlight). I hope my toe isn't (broken, I mean). Argh. How can you even tell if a toe is broken??
-- I picked up a shift for next Monday (a week from tomorrow). I'll be updating the SarahFinder before I leave, with all the changes...
-- I'm REALLY pumped about Institute starting this week. WOOHOO!!!
-- I'm really annoyed and sad about having to miss church this Sunday. I'm changing my work availability on Sundays to "after 6pm" instead of "after 4pm". I really don't want to work Sundays at all. Sigh.
-- I'm going to start writing emails and letters to radio stations and newspapers in the Ohio area about the Line. Woohoo!

That's about all I've got at the moment. Blogging has provided a useful interlude to let my toe stop hurting so much. Now I'm off to Wal-Mart (car will be gone from 6am-6pm tomorrow).
posted by Sarah at 2:07 AM. | 0 comments |

 
Something I hardly ever talk about on the blog, but probably should,   Is home education. It's probably not obvious to casual readers of this blog (like all the visitors I still get from that one California Insider mention), but I was home schooled from seventh grade through high school graduation. I'd like to consider myself a home education success story. Certainly I did all right on the SAT and ACT (1380, 29). There was a tough transition into college, but that was a lot of "hey there's no one here to make sure I'm actually showing up to class..." and "wow, I'm 16, and there's 50,000 people here and tons of interesting things to do" and all that other growing-up stuff. I was over prepared for my humanities and language classes, in any case, and tested into an accelerated math program (I didn't show up to half the classes -- for what it's worth, if you see anything other than an "A" on my transcripts, it's because I didn't go to at least one and probably more like 15 class sessions; there is no college-level class that I've taken, attended all the classes, and NOT received an "A" -- so I ended out switching to the regular Calculus series after my first "D").

Having said that, let me tell you a little bit about the particular form of home schooling that I personally went through (I should tell you now that what I did doesn't bear a significant resemblence to the programs that Caroline and Laura have done, mostly because I started after 7 years of public school, whereas Caroline started after just a year of public kindergarten and Laura has never attended any other school -- also, I'm the oldest, also known in Family Studies classes as "She Upon Whom We Shall Experiment!")

There are a couple of phases here, and some of them I'm including because they're an important part of the overall not-in-public-school aspect of my education, even though they occurred before I was enrolled at either Stowers or Eagle Rock Elementary.

Phase I: "Teach Your Baby to Be BRILLIANT"
This would be the Glenn Doman/Suzuki phase of my education, which occurred from "way earlier than I can remember" (Mom, did you do the "listening to music during the pregnancy" thing?) through around the time of my parents' divorce (though I still sort of had Suzuki-ish piano lessons from Mom through elementary school on an irregular basis, thanks to custody quirks). Basically I did Suzuki piano, the "Teach Your Baby How To Read" curriculum, the "Give Your Baby Encyclopedic Knowledge" curriculum (BITS!!!), and the "Teach Your Baby Math" curriculum. We went to Philadelphia when I was a toddler and I had off-the-chart type reading skills (I believe that I was able to read before I could walk, though that's another "hey, Mom, am I right?" issue). I also had a big fat ZERO in physical skills because they couldn't get me to even WALK the running course. I was stubborn. Heh. Anyway, I attribute my good verbal memory (you know: read it once, remember it FOREVER) and bizarre estimations-at-a-glance skills (at Disney I would look at a disorganized assortment or pile of irregular plastic toys, make a random guess as to how many I'd need to fit our very arbitrary quotas, and then turn out to be exactly right, or at least within one or two units of being right) to the Doman books. I also wonder if I'd be better at reading music and worse at remembering the lyrics and music to my favorite songs if it hadn't been for Suzuki.

Anyway, that lasted until I was 3 or so.


Phase Two: Welcome to Aldersgate Academy
The second phase started when I was 11, and was basically the result of a confluence of three different trends. The first trend (probably the most relevant for my purposes) was the general lack of quality high-challenge public school options for extremely well-prepared smart kids over 10, particularly (though hardly exclusively) in Auborn Hills, Michigan. I went in in January of 1992 to be tested, to make sure I was ready for their version of seventh grade (I was being transferred to my mother's custody after five years with my dad -- during which time I had attended a Highly Gifted program for kids with very high IQs; there are about 300-400 slots in the Los Angeles Unified School District in this program -- that article, incidentally, mentions Mrs. Muraoka, who was my 2nd-4th grade teacher). As far as I remember, they wanted me to go into the high school, or at least 8th grade, after taking the test, and there were some concerns I'd be bored with the English and humanities classes they had at those grade levels. There was talk of going to 9th grade -- and I was a 5'1" 11 year old who had been with the same tiny group of 30 or so kids for five years.

The second trend was my sister's education. My parents (mom and stepfather) hadn't had kids in public school living in their house since I was in 1st grade seven years earlier, and I guess the kindergarten curriculum didn't impress them. They started talking about other options, including home schooling.

The last trend involves a total fluke in Michigan's teacher hiring rules. My mom had been a public school teacher in math (grades 5-10, I think), English (7-12, including students 5+ years behind grade level), and various humanities and social sciences, like Psychology (her college minor). But her degree is in Music Performance. So that's what Michigan schools could hire her for -- and they weren't exactly hiring music teachers in 1992 (I don't think anyone's been hiring music teachers, since before I started elementary school...) She spent a very long time looking for teaching work, to no avail.

So by March/Mayish, I guess, things were looking somewhat desperate, and my stepfather made a command decision -- "look, just home school them."

And that's what we did. I got word, and started getting really excited about the idea of a school situation where you could go as fast as you wanted and study what subjects you really wanted to. I told all my friends (and everyone else) that I'd be taking the SATs in a year (I didn't, which really annoyed me for the next four years, until I DID take them) and that I could probably be in college way before any of them (I was, though I'm also STILL trying to actually get my degree [paperwork... which I haven't been DOING, and need to be...], whereas most of them have graduated -- Anna at MIT, Ben at Princeton, the other Ben at UCLA, etc.) I recall some people being rather jealous at the time -- it was like a dream come true. A school where you could read any book you wanted? Sign me up, yesterday!

It wasn't really like that, though. Mom came from the perspective of having taught a lot of students in a traditional school, and there were certain, ah, "trappings" that appealed to her. So we rented a school room (actually a two-room storefront in a five-unit shopping center thing -- the front was Mom's teacher desk and Gene's consulting business desk, and the back room was our school; the dirt parking lot in the back was our playground during "recess"), walked to school each day (it was about five minutes from the house) in our blue-courdoroy-skirt-or-jumper-and-white-blouse outfits (my sister Caroline is permanently biased against courdoroy, and jumpers), said the Pledge of Alleigance, and then sat down to schoolwork. I used mostly books from the local junior college bookstore, our family library (10,000+ volumes, including the Great Books, Jr. Great Books, National Geographics from every year after 1967 and most years after 1945, and the Encycopaedia Brittanica), and my mom's cool educational finds. The one I hated the most, bar none, was the sentence-diagramming book that looked it came from 1970. Also, the history books (which we still have someplace) that smelled gross and were incredibly biased. I had to do things like read 20 big novels a year (writing a report on each) and 20 non-fiction books, too, chosen from a list Mom made (structured so that I'd have to read some Dostoevsky, some C.S. Lewis, some politics, some philosophy, etc.) There was also a lot of the "read the chapter, answer all the questions in the back of the chapter, then take the test based on the chapter" stuff, especially in the sciences and math. I hated Geometry more than anything else, unless you reminded me how much I hated Biology. I'm terrible at visualizing shapes, and I faint at the mention of blood (that's why I picked Marine Biology for my biology requirement for my bachelor's degree -- even though I get severe motion sickness on boats, and I knew I had to do a field trip on a boat...) I also got graded in Music and PE, on the basis of participation. Mom didn't mind giving me "C"s, as in Music in I think my tenth grade year (I was supposed to do 30 minutes of piano practice per day for 180 days -- I ended out with a total of I think 68 or 70 hours, mostly done in the last three weeks of the school year).

But there was some flexibility. I was able to beg off of taking any more Spanish in 9th grade, though Mom made me pick another language. I tried French (we used a cheap "learn French for your vacation" book and CD for the trial phase) but learned how much I hated French (that book smelled really bad, too -- it's a chemical smell I only find in glossy paper textbooks) and switched to Latin, which I didn't apply myself to nearly as well as I wish I had, especially now that I'm really more interested in genuine language fluency. I did the first two years of this system (7th and 8th) in one year, by completing Mom's set of requirements fast enough; I was already young for my grade going in (born in late October) and had always been the youngest or almost-youngest in my class (excluding kids in grades below me -- almost all of elementary school was spent in either a 2nd-4th mix class or 5th-6th mix class). Anyway, I turned 13 two months into my 9th grade year.

I want to say that this vaguely lassaiz-faire yet still fairly strict phase of homeschooling lasted right up until we moved from Connecticut to Ohio (we dropped the uniforms back when we moved from Michigan to Connecticut right before 10th grade). That's when things got serious (at the beginning of eleventh grade).

Phase Three:Hey, You Remember That Whole Future Thing?
Yeah. So we trucked along, and I for one became bizarrely unfocused on the future, i.e. college. I'd always idealized college in my mind. It was this Ultimate Mecca of True Intellectual Bliss. It was ten thousand people who all wanted to do nothing more than read good serious books and then discuss them intelligently, who loved Star Trek and thought 90210/New Kids on the Block was the dumbest thing ever, and wouldn't dream of spending recess playing handball rather than reading. In other words, college was full of people just like I was when I was 9, except that the people there were way smarter, way cooler, and taller. Much, much taller. Their height couldn't be exaggerated; there was no way some idiot sixth grader would intimidate them, because they were all taller (and also smarter and cooler) than the sixth graders. Mind you, I was smarter than the sixth graders who terrified me when I was 9, but I wasn't really sure about that, and they were much taller than I was. I was really focused on height as a kid.

Anyway, in the absence of terrifying 6th graders and interminable "you can't sit at the benches, PLEASE just go and PLAY for crying out loud" lunch hours and mandatory fire drills and everything else that made me want to cry when thinking about going to school each day (tests didn't bother me, homework only bugged me when I put off doing it, and once I memorized my multiplication tables, math was only a minor crisis -- I'd have much preferred staying in the classroom and doing schoolwork to facing recess, or the school bus), The Future In the Form of The Heaven That Will Be USC or Some Other Good College wasn't the most pressing escape in my mind. I didn't need one nearly as much anymore, and what I did need I got out of reading and watching Star Trek.

That all changed right around the time we moved from CT. First, we became active in the church again, which meant I started Seminary (the high school scripture study program the church runs). Second, I started looking at colleges I might want to attend -- and realized exactly how much they cost (and how little I had to pay for them!), and what needed to be done to get into them, and what I might like to major in, and all that stuff. I took the SAT and did well; then I found out that my then-dream school, Notre Dame, required home school students to take five SAT-II subject tests before being considered for admission (believe it or not, that's why I never applied to Notre Dame). I took the ACT because Ohio University (in Athens) required it, and did almost as well as I had on the SAT (SAT breakdown: 770 Verbal, 610 Math; ACT breakdown: 32 Reading, 32 Writing, 30 Science, 24 Math) I did a few college visits: to Hillsdale (a top competitor in my mind, as they had politics and morals I agreed with and welcomed home schoolers), to St. John's in Annapolis (which left me feeling very weird -- all the students were very avant-garde, they all smoked, etc. -- even though the curriculum was a dream come true), to Ohio University for interviews with the directors of the History and Physics departments, and to Ohio State for a generic admissions interview at the Honors House. I applied to Ohio State, Ohio University, and Hillsdale, and was accepted to all three (OSU put me in the Honors program; Ohio University did not -- I think in part because I told the Physics director that my Physics textbook was Creationist, from Abeka Books). I should point out that I might have gone to college after 11th grade (i.e. at the age of 15), but at the time I was intending to be a dual major (History and Physics) in the Honors department (that's why I had to get interviewed by BOTH directors at OU), and my mom thought I should take a full year of I think Trigonometry and Analytical Geometry beforehand. It was probably overkill in the end (I think I would have done better to do upper-level math at an actual community college, which is what Caroline and Laura have done/are doing), but I'm glad I wasn't 15 when I moved into the dorms. As it was I was one of the 20 or so youngest people at Ohio State (the average freshman is 19), and one of the very youngest in the dorms. My first roommate was 19 (and taller than me, sigh).

Anyway, the last two years were filled with lots of testing (which I hadn't done since elementary school, really). I took the State of Ohio 9th Grade Proficiency test, because the local superintendent wanted to try and get me a "real" diploma from Bucyrus High School (I passed easily, but because I hadn't ever enrolled at BHS, I wasn't eligible). That day I took the test, interestingly, was the first time I went inside of a public high school (other than visiting my mother's workplace as a first grader). That experience was all I needed to vindicate the home education decision (though I was even happier about it after I got through my first day in Honors English 110C).

They were also filled with lots of "oh, you need to get this done" stuff -- second-year Latin, a year of four different sciences, that sort of thing. The focus was less on interesting books and "think this through and write in your reader's journal using these six questions" and more on the kind of stuff you usually do in high school (as far as I know, it was all junior college level stuff, though -- Wheelock's Latin Grammar and such). Bizarrely, though, I also got to use some more personally-gratifying activities for school (which helped my grades -- PE for 11th and 12th grades was my Irish Dance practice), and I got to volunteer in the community (I did two weeks of Recruiting work with the Navy in Mansfield for Sea Cadets, and worked for 8 hours a week for about a year as a reenactor/docent at the Ohio Historical Society). There was less to do in the way of "normal teenage" stuff, compared with our time in CT, though (in Connecticut I was a part of the Naugatuck Teen Theatre's innaugural production, "Fiddler on the Roof" -- we moved to Ohio in the week that they had the first meeting for "Jesus Christ Superstar"), though I still did Sea Cadets (and actually became Lead Cadet in the Mansfield unit -- if I join the Navy or Coast Guard I'll automatically be an E3 from all the work I did there) one weekend a month. I also volunteered at the Los Angeles Children's Museum during my summer in Los Angeles with my dad, between 11th and 12th grade.

Concluding Stuff: I Got to Design My Own Diploma!
One cool thing almost no public high school student ever gets to do is decide what their diploma is going to look like. But I got to pick everything, right down to font sizes and the placement of the signature lines. We had the graduation party on May 31st, 1997 -- which is why that's the date I use for forms that need it. Ohio State called me one day, while they were trying to put me in as a Political Science major: it turned out that they didn't have an official graduation date for me, because someone had removed the extremely impressive transcripts my mom drew up for my five years of home education, and that's where the date had been taken from. I had to look up my own resume to figure out what the "official" date was; it was an utterly arbitrary date (I'd been done with my work for weeks), picked as much because it was a Saturday as anything else. I got a job at the Wendy's in the Ohio Union (the student union near the High Street border of the OSU campus) and worked there all summer, driving down with my stepfather each morning (he worked in Newark at the time), doing 40 hours a week and getting to know all the professors and advisors (the Ohio Union is the closest source of fast food for all the departments I've majored in -- History, Political Science, and Physics -- the Honors College, the University College freshman orientation offices and admissions office, and most other academic buildings on campus, other than the medical school and Dept. of Athletics). I found out I'm scarily good at "upselling" and really good at counting money and a lot of other things that my home schooling hadn't really covered yet still somehow prepared me for. Hmmmm...

Anyway: Back to Today
That turned out to be a LOT longer than I meant it to be. It also took over an hour to write, which just shows that writing when you bother to fact-check and look up URLs takes a lot longer than writing by the seat of your, uh, pajamas. Yeah.

Anyway, I'm going to try and make a more concerted effort to talk about home schooling stuff some more. In the meantime, go look at Brian's Education Blog. And Homeschool & Other Education Stuff. They're both in the BlogRoll and have been for a while.
posted by Sarah at 1:56 AM. | 0 comments |

 
Starlight Jar explanation   So it turns out that I (and you'd think this would be obvious, but it's not) never actually explained my Starlight Jar. Heh. Thank you, Aimee, for pointing that out...

My Starlight Jar is currently a plastic cup from Steak 'n Shake, that is holding all the donation money for the Starlight Children's Foundation, which I am supporting as part of LiningUp.Net (a group that lines up for Star Wars in Hollywood, CA, at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, for six weeks prior to each movie). My site that explains the whole thing from my perspective is here.
posted by Sarah at 9:27 PM. | 0 comments |

 
Liveblogging "Lost"   I thought I'd try my hand at genuine liveblogging. I've picked the series premiere of "Lost", which has Dominic Monaghan, also known as the second-hottest member of the Fellowship of the Ring, in a costarring role.

WARNING!!!!

This post contains MASSIVE spoilers for the premiere of ABC's Lost. As in, I talk about just about everything that happens in the show, or rather my reactions to it. I don't recommend reading this until you've seen the episode.


-- Weird beginning. I guess they wanted to get a good "this is a bizarre and wrong situation" feeling to start out. I mean, a guy in a suit in the jungle. With a golden retriever.

-- Ah, our hero. "Jack." Goes in, keeps his head, takes one (well, twenty) for the team -- then walks off to the middle of noplace to take care of his own injuries.

-- WOOHOO! Dominic Monaghan!!! He looks drugged out. Suppose that's to be expected.

-- Ewww. "Could you please stitch my wound?" I'd rather be the lady in labor. I think this girl would too.

-- While I'm not watching the wound-stitching, let me just say that I'd hope real people in real life would have the sense to MOVE AWAY FROM THE BURNING PLANE AS BITS OF IT START EXPLODING. I'd hope that would include the drugged out guy, the fat guy, and the lady in labor.

-- Oh, he looks evil. And he's smoking. That can't be a good sign. Mr. two-shirts-on-at-once is either the cause of the crash, or the cause of a lot of problems later on.

-- I guess the lady in labor was just freaking out.

-- WHY IS THE FAT GUY GATHERING FOOD??? CAN WE SAY STEREOTYPING????

-- DOMINIC SPEAKS!!! And he's building a fire.

-- I AM ALREADY DONE WITH THE WOUND STITCHING. ENOUGH ALREADY.

-- I am also done with medical school stories. MUTE on. Did the girl die? I don't really want to know. His 'dealing with the fear' speech is supposed to make us think of how well he coped with the airplane thing. It explains why he's the only person who thought to get away from the burning plane...

-- WOOT!!!! Dominic writes on his hands again!!!! I told my mom about that last week.

-- Oooh, domestic crisis. Did they break up on the plane, or is she just obstinate due to stress and stuff?

-- The fat guy offering food to the lady (not) in labor. She's Australian! Heh. And he's off to give food to someone else.

-- Awww, a dad and his kid. And what looks like a couple from China (??) He's being awfully creepy and dominant.

-- Doctor boy treating the seriously wounded. I don't think the guy's going to live, but the effort will help make wound-stitching-girl like him more.

-- Doctor boy is the oldest kid from Party of Five. Matthew Fox. That's the guy from Party of Five, right? I'll check IMDb during the commercial.

-- Doctor boy is ALSO FLYING BOY. He's a Mary Sue. I can feel it. The girl is acting like he's one. Ah, her name's Kate.

-- Loud noises in the jungle? Oh, predators. So not fun. Dominic looks bold and yet, apprehensive.

-- COMMERCIALS!! Time to upload and check IMDb.

-- YUP, he's from Party of Five.


UPDATE:

-- Ah, the expected flashback. I was sort of expecting the crash to come first. It wasn't a really *good* trick, but hey, whatever works.

-- That's why he only had one little bottle of alcohol... and why he had that look on his face when he pulled it out of his pocket.

-- So was it a terrorist or crazy person or something?

-- THAT'S what I call turbulence. I hope this part ends quickly; I already have enough issues flying as it is.

-- Ah, thank you. Much better.

-- They're going to go into scary-sound jungle to hunt down the cockpit. Kate and Jack I mean.

-- Wow, stealing the clothing from the dead sure didn't take very long. I mean, getting to that point. At this rate they'll run out of food AND be committed cannibalists by the end of the premiere episode.

-- Ahhhhh... crazy man...with the orange trick I've always hated. I guess Kate hates it too.

-- Dominic is borrowing sunblock! Woot.

-- Ah, okay, domestic-stress girl is just in denial.

-- They really should get to dealing with the bodies. Disinterrment is easy. Burying stinky three-day old bodies is not.

-- I think I would shoot myself rather than listen to this band. DriveShaft. Yeah. Shoot myself. Well, deafen myself temporarily anyway.

-- THEY ARE IN JURASSIC PARK. I am anticipating raptor attacks at any moment.

-- Crazy guy is still crazy. Woot. Dominant Asian (Chinese??) Jerk is possibly crazier; at least crazy guy is enjoying himself.

-- Where is the T-Rex already?

-- Aha, the rest of the plane. I was more expecting something the size of, say, a lunar module. I think Dominic/Charlie is reconsidering his desire to come along on the expedition...


UPDATE:
-- Oh, how lovely... using the bodies of the deceased as a form of leverage.

-- Locked cockpit... dead bodies emerging. Yeah, I definitely wouldn't have volunteered for this mission. Unless of course it turns out that the Dominant Asian (Chinese?) Jerk, Fat Guy, Not-in-Labor-Lady, et al are all going to get eaten by some huge evil predator.

-- Heh, the pilot is alive-ish. Stupid TVGuide ruined THAT surprise. I know better than to read spoiler-infested rags.

-- Wow, the pilot is actually REALLY alive. And he knew where the transciever was, which would be more helpful if it were actually functioning.

-- He's not so alive anymore. Stoooopid giant noisy predators.

-- Two things I don't believe: 1) these three characters could successfully run away from anything this presumably dangerous and survive to tell the tale; 2) that chick (Kate) would run faster than Dominic OR Matthew Fox. She'd better turn out to be a long-distance mud runner.

-- I can't blog effectively during scary/tense secenes, even when I know they're just using the "Jaws" trick on me (no clear view of the monster). I'm too busy covering my ears (even, bizarrely, when I have the volume on MUTE).

-- I might have to see that firefighter movie. It has Joaquin Phoenix. That's actually commercialblogging, right there, but I had to say it nonetheless.


UPDATE:
-- Ooh, Kate's going to go find Our Hero Jack.

-- They are really in Costa Rica. I'm not kidding. That is COMPLETELY Jurassic Park. More the park itself than Site B.

-- Hey, it stopped raining. And there are pilot's wings in the mud. AND a pilot in the trees above. And OHJ emerges unscathed. Pilot appears to be eviscerated. Did OHJ get the better deal? I'm not really sure.

-- Preview for next week -- wow, that hour went fast.


UPDATE:
-- Looks like rebel guy is indeed a huge trouble maker.

-- And it looks like they're on some kind of demented prison island. Possibly with dinosaurs and/or creepy genetically enhanced monsters.

-- I'll watch next week. I'm still mostly watching for Dominic, but I'm now approximately 25% interested in the show on its own merits.


UPDATE:
I fixed some of the formatting, added some links at the beginning, etc. I'm still on the lookout for typos but I doubt I'll make any significant edits after this point.
posted by Sarah at 8:22 PM. | 0 comments |

 
Starlight Jar Updated, woot!   I updated my Starlight Jar again. I'm up to $7. I don't think the minimum donation will be more than $75; if it is $75, then I'm almost 10% of the way towards the minimum. Woohoo!
posted by Sarah at 7:58 PM. | 0 comments |

 
Temple Blogging?   Okay, okay, that sounds... well, kind of wrong, somehow. But I'm sitting here listening to KZion, and (finally) taking some time out to read about/contemplate the Temple, and I thought, 'Hey, why not blog this?' Now, sure, you all could up and give me a bunch of excellent and depressing answers to that question, but I'm going to trust you to not do so. In other words, if your first inclination upon reading this entry is to tell me I'm not really a Christian, that my faith isn't legitimate, that temple worship or Mormonism is the work of Satan, or what have you, please go somewhere else. Thanks.

Now, I want to let you know up front that the three articles I'm going through tonight are all on the Church website, here:

http://www.lds.org/temples/purpose/0,11298,1897-1,00.html

Go there and read them in their entirety; they explain a lot of different stuff about temples.

First out, there's the article by President Hinckley, "Why These Temples?" Some of the stuff that stuck with me, followed by my comments in italics, follows:

-- the answers to these questions are not found in the wisdom of the world.
This one is something I have to remind myself of a lot; I'm very academically minded, and I sometimes place too much emphasis on the powers of reason and logic, to the detriment of my spiritual health (and sometimes even common sense)
-- a place of holiness and peace shut apart from the world.
I'm a huge fan of peace, aren't you? ^_^ Seriously, I think this benefit of the temple on earth needs to be remembered more; the idea that there are places that literally not of this world -- places you can go and be at peace -- is terribly comforting at times, especially if you're like me and really stink at creating truly "out of this world" spaces in your daily life...
-- it is not a matter of secrecy. It is a matter of sanctity.
This is something that I think sets a lot of people off -- the notion that we're keeping things secret. That's probably part of why the rumors of idol worship and blood sacrifice still have traction amongst nonmembers; what you have to remember is that there are things that are too important to be discussed on the internet, or on TV, or even at your favorite restaraunt, and the temple ceremonies are just one of those things
-- the spirit within each of us is eternal.
Hey, this is one no one should ever forget... it's something I'm trying to work harder at remembering when things in my Daily Life threaten to overwhelm me...
-- earth life is part of an eternal journey.
this one, too, of course -- this life is a test, a lesson, a trial; whatever. The point is, it's not all there is; there was stuff before this life, and there will be a LOT more stuff after, and when we act like we don't know this, we can get our priorities really messed up...
-- parents are partners with God in bringing to pass His eternal purposes.
Something that I think I'll paste on all my kids' foreheads, when I get around to having kids -- certainly something you want to remember when Junior shrinks your favorite cashmere sweater and turns all the whites a nice dusty pink...
-- their relationship and that of their children will not end with death but will continue in eternity, provided they live worthy of that blessing.
So you'd better be nice to your parents, because eternity is a REALLY INSANELY LONG TIME...
-- the opportunity to come into the temple and partake of its blessings is open to all who will accept the gospel and be baptized into the Church.
Don't yell at me for the stuff after the word "all", you knew it was coming. Anyway, if you're really determined to find out what's going on inside the temple, please feel free to come unto Christ first.
-- there's no compulsion in the work of the Lord, but there must be opportunity.
In other words, if my deceased family members are really offended that I've had temple work done for them vicariously, they can feel free to tell Jesus that themselves... somehow I doubt that'll be what they decide to do, but the door is only open for them to make that choice because of those vicarious ordinances... heh...
-- Revel. 7:13-15

What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence come they?

These are they which have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple

Just a little telegram from our favorite New Testament Revelator...
-- here we set aside our own selfishness and serve for those who cannot serve themselves.
One of the biggest reasons for temple work is the welfare of the souls of mankind; ensuring that your grandparents and parents and spouse and children and grandchilren are able to partake of the blessings of an eternal family is exactly what temples are all about.


Next, the article from Pres. Boyd K. Packer (currently the acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve), "The Holy Temple":

-- we urge every soul to qualify and prepare for the temple experience.
See the above thing regarding coming unto Christ, please. Read the Book of Mormon. Pray. Really. Go on, go right now. This post will be here when you get back.
-- they are kept confidential lest they be given to those who are unprepared.
Something I've experienced more than a little of -- getting information I wasn't really ready for or willing to accept -- and can testify is a really crummy, confusing, self-defeating kind of experience. I'd rather wait a little longer than is necessary, to learn some major Eternal Truths, and be fully prepared when I do, than rush into deep and murky waters without so much as my bathing suit on... to use a metaphor that's not only somewhat confusing, but not entirely appropriate for the spirit of the conversation... heh.
-- faith, repentance, baptism, confirmation, worthiness, a maturity and dignity worthy of one who comes invited as a guest into the house of the Lord.
I'm working on it, I'm working on it! Seriously; the faith and repentance and worthiness things are sort of a continually-trying-to-improve, doing-this-one-day-at-a-time things. I don't know for sure if I'm worthy at this point, but I'm certain I'm better now than I was two months ago, and I was better then than five years ago, so that's good... you can probably see for yourselves how much I'm lacking in the maturity/dignity department; thankfully I've been baptized and confirmed already, or this would be a really depressing self-analysis.
-- no work we do gives us more power.
I just think this is a really powerful statement. No, the pun wasn't intended, it's just 5am here (as I finish this post).

And lastly, for tonight, is Elder James E. Talmage's "A History of Temples":

-- Beth Elohim
The name in Hebrew that translates most directly with the Latin ancestor of the word "Temple". Means "house of the Lord".
-- the best, if offered willingly and with pure intent, is always excellent in the sight of God.
I think I'm more susceptible than I should be to self-criticism and doubt; this is something I need to keep in mind when I get down, particularly about my own spiritual progress.
-- first temple, in Kirtland, OH, March 1836 (D&C 109)
and the next temple in OH was dedicated in September, 1999. Took a while to get back out here; are we living worthy of this blessing in this temple district? I know I need to be better about that... I remember when the Prophet announced the temple, in 1998; he asked us if we would use it and make sure we really deserved it. I think we should remember what that moment felt like (well, the 7,000 of us who were there) and try to keep that feeling with us when they remind us about temple sessions (that goes for unendowed members too, like me). I remember a youth temple trip in 1996; it was an eight hour drive to Washington, DC. We got to go about once a year. It was an incredible experience; we felt so lucky to be able to go to a temple at all. Now we have one practically in our backyard; we should be going all the time... and we're not.
-- the offering must have been called for, and both gift and giver must be worthy.
I think this is very important... it took some 160 years for enough worthy people to be in Ohio to warrant a temple here again, after the Saints were first driven out. We need to keep being worthy of this blessing... we know the temple itself is worthy, but is our service in the right spirit and all that? How about us? We were worthy then; was that just because we were in tribulations and having to work so hard to do the temple worship we could get done, because the temple was so far away? Are we letting the proximity to our temple here in Columbus make us weak? I hope not, but if we are, we know how to fix it...

Okay, I could write more, but I also need to sleep before Conference, and I can't really do both. Hopefully all that stuff will be of benefit to someone other than me -- but if it isn't, that's okay, because blogging it really helped me sort out some of my thoughts on this topic. Good night, all...
posted by Sarah at 2:06 AM. | 0 comments |

 
Public Service Announcement   Hey, folks, please consider make sure that while you are raising children, before they get to be of an age where they're off eating at restaraunts by themselves, you teach them to give their servers a tip. In most states, servers recieve less than minimum wage (in Ohio, it's $2.13/hour). We live off of our tips. When seven or eight groups of five or more young teenagers eat at a restaraunt and take up a total of three hours of five servers' time and energy, and then leave a grand total of $1.85 in tips, that translates into slightly older teenagers and young adults not having enough gas to get home. Please make a note of this.

Yours sincerely...
posted by Sarah at 4:15 AM. | 0 comments |

 
My political compass score   It totally occurred to me that I've never put my political compass score up. Let me remedy that now.



There you go.
posted by Sarah at 5:40 PM. | 0 comments |

 
I have the most useless pair of scissors ever   And the will to use them on... well, nothing at all. They're useless, you see.

As it may be clear from the above sentences, I'm very bored right now. Due to a conspiracy of scheduling interests, my family is off doing interesting things (law school, seeing a movie) while I sit around, wait for my clothes to dry, and contemplate the Truth of My Existence, which is that I have nothing concrete to do until 6:30pm, which is when I leave for work.

I don't really feel like talking about politics right now; I can't update my Starlight Jar logo until after I work and earn that next dollar (it's a point of truth with me; I don't want to have that logo be merely "accurate" -- I said I'd put in a dollar after working and earning $10, and that's what I'm going to do). I don't feel like playing The Sims (though that's probably what I'll do -- my new Sim, Elisabeth, is supposed to be working on her network of contacts, and her vacation isn't working as well towards that end as I'd like it to) or Age of Empires, or whatever. I'm not even in the mood for a solid few hours of scriptural reading, though I REALLY should be, as I want to get caught up before Stake Conference and I'm trying to meditate more on Temple-stuff before Conference starts (we had the 5th anniversary of the dedication of the Columbus Temple, which dedication I missed due to being on my internship in DC, on the 4th -- anyway, the Temple is going to be the focus of the Conference, I believe).

In any case, I just got through another fifteen minutes by writing this post, which I'll count as a victory. Now, the shower calls to me, 90 minutes earlier than it should. Glarphg. At least I can drive myself to work today (thanks for car use, Caroline!)
posted by Sarah at 4:09 PM. | 0 comments |

 
CNN On Blogs...   I'm sitting here watching the Paula Zahn Now segment on blogs. They started with some of the file bits (the Daily Kos and Glenn Reynolds interviews from the DNC), and now they're talking to Bob Johnson from FreeRepublic, and Reynolds. Both seem to be coming off well -- Johnson in particular fits *perfectly* in the TV environment, which makes sense since he's the FR official spokesman (at least, that's how CNN billed him). But the InstaPundit is doing well, too.

Okay, now they're done (I liked Prof. Reynolds' last words -- "this has been blogged to death, and they should admit their error" pretty much sums it up for me, too). The next bit is going to be about Wonkette (they just showed some more of that DNC footage, with her "rougage" vs. "dessert" quote), so I'll be going back to the History Channel or something. I thought the segment on political blogs was interesting enough, in the sense that it got to the key points, didn't dither about with (much) silliness about how bloggers are immature/chaotic partisan/pajama-wearing amateurs, and hey, I got to see such classic names as USS Clueless (we miss you, Steven!) and IMAO on TV. Woot. I find it interesting (and maybe a little annoying) that the blog story is the way they get into mentioning the CBS document deal. With respect to everyone at PowerLine, LGF, Free Republic, etc., this isn't a blogging issue. This is a truth-in-public-discourse issue, and should be the lead story, with a hearty nod to the blogosphere in the process -- not the other way around. Right now, the blogosphere doesn't need the respect and welcome from the main stream media nearly as much as the issues at the heart of this situation need to be recognized, acknowledged, and dealt with by that media.

In other words, if CNN would devote 20 minutes to a line-by-line analysis of the forgeries in prime time, I'd be happy to forego seeing my favorite blogs on TV for at least a month. Maybe two. Come on, guys. Like they told me at my church youth conference in 1998, the world is watching!
posted by Sarah at 8:45 PM. | 0 comments |

 
This isn't a debate...   This is a slaughter (credit:InstaPundit). This so-called "Rathergate" is already decided for everyone who's paying attention, and at this point I'm calling it a complete fiasco and closing the book on the matter. It's a mopping up action now, getting the word out about what happened to those folks who don't use the Internet when they want to get news, consoling those interns who need to find a way of making the last three months not look like a complete joke, etc. CBS has had the equivalent of fifteen eternities to respond to this, even by the low standards of old media news cycle; there is no way they have a cogent argument to make defending these memos -- and even if they could come up with pure gold argument, no one is listening anymore. The First Lady is saying they're forgeries. This is Laura Bush, people. Doesn't anyone remember how much she hates political speeches? I mean, for crying out loud.

I've been waiting with extraordinary patience over the last four days, for a robust rebuttal by CBS, of some very convincing evidence, and time has run out. I doubt many disinterested observers would dispute the notion that more thought has gone into their idiotic low-yield non-responses, than went into the forgeries themselves. I don't think many people would care if a full-scale investigation were launched at CBS now, except for the brute satisfaction of seeing people get fired for this utter screw-up. Oh, and the amusement of seeing the rest of the old media having to cover this without using weasel words or tactics.

What's really inconceivable to me is that this was so easy to disprove. Is CBS used to passing things off that are this patently absurd? What about the rest of the old media? I mean, these broadcast organizations have been around for 75 years or more, and have only be subjected to serious (albeit somewhat inconsistent) fact-checking by a truly decentralized network of independent journalists and commentators (i.e. bloggers) for a little less than 4 years, by my calendar (even less if you're looking for the kind of 'critical mass' of bloggers reached after Sept. 11th). For the most part, the blogosphere ignores the traditional 6:30pm news broadcasts, as near as I can tell, favoring the blogger-friendly 24-hour news channels. I rarely see any commentary, positive or negative, about what is said or done on 20/20, or even Ted Koppel. What could be slipping by while the blogosphere is freaking out about something asisnine? Memes tend to be fleeting; we're all busy people and there's a lot going in the world and none of us (well, almost none of us) are getting paid for this. Is anyone keeping an eye on what has turned out to be the 3-foot-tall brachiasaur (the full sized ones survived almost entirely because they were so huge)? I mean, sure, the pickings are slim in terms of actual meat, but a lot of the less-aware omnivorish types are still getting their entire diet from these species, and behooves the more alert members of the pack to, you know, figure out what the wee beasties are up to.
posted by Sarah at 10:15 AM. | 0 comments |