Who knew?

So go figure. The TWU struck. I have to admit I didn't think it'd come to this. But it did.

I spent the day working from home, a rare and precious blessing, given that I'm actually a temp. My employers at The Media Giant must have faith in me. It's a great motivator. I think I worked harder, and got up from my computer less today than I do on a normal day. Of course, it helps that there's no pantry near my computer here (unless you count the refrigerator I've drained of anything tasty), and that there's no cafeteria in the apartment building.

That might have something to do with it. Although I did get up to pee a couple times. That was probably too much information.

Today, a court in Pennsylvania -- my home state, by the way, and for those of you who didn't know it, a bastion of the Ku Klux Klan -- ruled that the school board in Dover, PA can't force the school to teach Intelligent Design. I don't know on which side of this debate you fall (I hope to God you fall on the side of ID being taught in church, but I'm not judging).

I think Richard Dawkins put it quite nicely (via Jason Kotke).

This, by the way, is a marriage that is made... well, in heaven. Why didn't someone think of this before?!?

I just saw a Chanel commercial with Nicole Kidman in which Rodrigo Santoro plays her love interest, and is, like, forty-seven times more hot in a 60-second commercial in which he's barely featured than in the entirety of Love Actually. I'm just saying.

It's just something to consider next time you're thinking of casting him in a movie. I wish, actually, that I could understand Portugese, so I could watch more of his films.

Again, just saying.

I realized recently that -- because I've not had a working computer -- I never got to post the photos from my trip home for Thanksgiving. Not that I took that many or that they were very good, for some reason, but still, I think my family would enjoy looking at them, and the rest of you palookas can just suck it up.

On the left there are my brother Patrick (who often manages to put his back to my camera. Sneaky), my sister Sue, my Mom, and my sister Lois. As you can see, they're presiding over the remnants of the Thanksgiving feast.

There's my mom; I have no idea who she's talking to on the phone, but she sure seems serious about it, doesn't she? Actually, most likely it's some one calling to comfort here... it was, after all, the first major holiday since my dad's passing. That was hard to deal with, I can tell you. It's one of the reasons we had the dinner at my mom's place. Traditionally we celebrate the holiday at my sister's house; but she wasn't looking forward to seeing the empty seat at the table. I wasn't either.

There was some fun. My niece, Maggie, helped Sue put up the Christmas decorations. Rachel -- my sister's other daughter -- came along later and helped. They all have a fondness for silly headgear.

All in all, the holiday was great. It was getting there and getting bck that was the pain in the ass! Greyhound to be its usual freakfest. And the folks at the terminal in Pittsburgh were particularly inept at wrangling the extra-heavy holiday traffic. I showed up at the terminal nearly two hours before my bus was supposed to leave so I could queue up to get a seat. The nice lady from Greyhound pointed me at one line, and about an hour before I was supposed to leave, started redirecting us all to different lines... it was chaos. I left nearly two hours late. Thank you, Greyhound. You suck snot. The picture at the left is of the line long before it got hairy.