(no subject)

Today, i got a piece of e-mail that annoyed me. It informed me that it was essentially my obligation to pony up cash to help pay for Christine Gregoire's recount because there was a chance to change the outcome of the election by doing so and that "it would be a great victory for progressives."

Exactly who do they think they're kidding? Gregoire isn't a progressive by any stretch of the imagination. As a disclaimer, i did vote for her, but that's because i have a tendancy to vote for any female candidates who appear to be even moderately qualified as long as they're not far-right zealots, compounded by the facts that i think Dino Rossi is both a liar and a crook (not that most politicians aren't, but he strikes me as an especially sleazy and corrupt snake-oil type), and the Libertarian candidate (Ruth Bennett) was both unqualified and ran on a really freaky platform.

If Gregoire had run a good campaign, she wouldn't be in this position. Instead, her campaign could be summarized by "I'm a female version of Gary Locke lite." And as a result, she's now grasping at straws, hoping to find 43 more votes which missed getting counted the first two times than get found for her opponent.

In other news, i'm working at both organizing my life somewhat and simplifying it. Life is migrating into a Day-Timer now, and i'm cutting back on committments. I've stopped- as of last night- doing the WetSpot database and website. The deal is that the person who does the site gets free admission to events each month (excepting a very limited number of special things), but i haven't made any for four months, aren't likely to make any in the foreseeable future; and have reached a point with the frustration factor of getting less than complete information about some of the things which need to go on the site that it's not something into which i'm going to invest volunteer time any more.

I'm also cutting back on the amount of slack i cut people. I've had it up to my eyeballs with having plans or tentative arrangements with people to do things, only to have them not show up or fail to finish planning them. Consider this a public warning: if we've had discussions about doing something to the point of having arrived at a date and time and you blow me off, unless there's a damn good reason, i'm not going to extend another offer, because i'm no longer willing to go out of my way to schedule things for people who don't value my time enough to follow through with their committments. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but i'm sick of having people bail at the last minute or flake right out, and they can just go and fuck right off or find other people to stand up. That'll just make more time for the people who deserve it.

(no subject)

damashita and i had a fun exercise tonight.

We picked up a little box of old National Geographic maps from someone on freecycle who was giving them away. One of the maps was a full world map, obviously many years old, but without a date.

With a half-hour's worth of searching Wikipedia, mainly on sub-Saharan African nations, we pinpointed the year the map was created to 1960-61. Egypt was referred to as the U.A.R., but Syria wasn't- which was the final piece of data- others had pinned it to between 1959 and 1966. Anyway, a great bit of fun and tracing some countries whose names have changed- who here could have placed Basutoland or Bechuanaland (other than possibly greenfizzpops, who has geographical proximity) on a contemporary map?