Sunday, May 9, 2004

More about Mom

I'm IMing with Euan, and just wrote this about missing Mom. :

It's easier than it comes off in my post. In many ways I miss her, but in some I don't. Her leaving was a mercy too. The world is a stage, Shakespeare said. We all need to make our exit at some point. Mom had curtain calls in her last day. There were flowers tossed on stage. It wasn't bad. And so many deaths are. I'm told it takes a year to adjust... to a new house, a new town, a new relationship. My relatiionship with Mom now is with the wisdom she left behind. It's another kind of presence, not unlike Shakespeare's.

Still feels strange

My first mother's day without Mom. Also without Mom to remind me fifty times that Mother's Day is coming up. I even miss the nagging.

Not speaking of which, Mom's grandson has a great collection of questions posed on Wondir. My fave: How do you make slime? I only know the verbal methods.

Pledgeware

Henri Poole has just launced PeoplesPledge, whereby hours on behalf of Kerry can be promised by citizens who support various issues from a list that might be planks in a Kerry platform. (The message is, adopt my planks and I'll work for you.) Interesting that I favor only seven out of the eighteen listed planks — and I'm not counting on Kerry to carry through on most of them. (Aboloshing the death penalty, for example, isn't likely to win many votes, and it might cost quite a few.) Still, it's an intresting idea, especially since it says, literally (and not just metaphorically) that time = money.

Have a fuzzball

SpaceWeather.com calls Comet NEAT "a fuzzball with a stubby tail." Which is about what we saw last night. It'll still be around for the next few days. Tonight it will be easy to spot next to Procyon, the bright star that's well above the horizon in the Southwest sky.

Chumming for content

I just added a forum topic over at IT Garage: What are the Garage Effects of SCO's FUD? Specifically, I'm looking for stories of IT staffers having their jobs made worse by SCO's scare tactics. More details over at the garage.

Whole little shakin' going on

Just had an earthquake. Here's the data, according to the Southern California Earthquake Data Center:

Magnitude: 4.6; Date: 2004/05/09; Tme, 01:57:17; Lat, 34.403N; Lon, 120.027W; Depth, 3.8 km; Location, 16 km (10 mi) W of Isla Vista, CA.

There was a 2.5 in almost exactly the same place 44 minutes earlier. That one didn't wake us up, but the 4.6 did.

I had been dreaming that I was still in England. So, when the quake hit, I raised my head, looked out the windows and down at the town (we live on a hill overlooking Santa Barbara) and thought They don't have many quakes here in England, do they? I was watching the lights below move slowly around as the ground under the house became more like sea than land. Then my wife said "Earthquake," and I snapped out of it.

It was small, as quakes go, and I doubt it did much if any damage. The motions weren't near as large as the ones we felt from the quake near Paso Robles last December 20. That one measured 6.5 on the Richter Scale and killed two people.