Then I woke up, and soon I’m going to go to Home Depot to get the ONE compost tumbler available in the entire valley. Harumph.

I wasn’t very close to her — we lost touch after high school –  so I hesitate to say something that will upset anyone. Yet I’ve been sitting here for an hour since I found out, trying to remember how I’ve rationalized others’ deaths in order to understand this one. But that’s what’s bothering me: rationalizing is like putting round pegs in square holes and thinking that as long as the pegs don’t fall out, they must fit; in short, it often makes sense just to the person twisting logic to fit the situation.

Maybe it’s just me, but every time a friend or relative dies, the choice between faith and reason becomes all the more clear. And I just don’t think I can choose faith anymore. I quit believing in miracles a long time ago, and now I don’t really see the point of loving a god who does nothing.

Blonde No. 1: You really need to touch up your roots.

Blonde No. 2: Well, I’m thinking of going back to my original color.

Blonde No 3: Ugh. Who would want brown hair? I mean, especially in the winter?

Me: glare.

Let me briefly recap what happened between my last post and now: My sister-in-law had her baby (as did my sister-in-law’s sister-in-law), and then BAM! Every woman in the world announced she was pregnant. Except me. And Lucy.

Speaking of babies, the big news is that (1) I have a new niece! And sorry, world, but my nieces are pretty much the cutest nieces of all the nieces. Although those Grable progeny are looking alright. Also, (2) I have full-time work lined up next quarter, and (3) I’m keeping busy with freelance jobs this quarter. So I’m making at least enough dollars to buy dog food, which fuels our local poop factory.

And now, having been working on freelance jobs, lesson planning, teaching, and more freelancing all day, I’m going to bedfordshire.

Thus far, I’m fleshing out the different political ideologies and their economic counterparts (e.g. fascist, totalitarian, communist, socialist, libertarian, and anarchist states, as well as republics, democracies, social democracies, and juntas). It’s been fun to learn and re-learn what a lot of these mean, but it’s slow-going!

The basic premise of the game is that you have to create a wealthy state with a happy populace; so, a capitalistic democracy might become wealthy, but its happiness index would be difficult because of the class oppression capitalism necessarily creates; likewise, a fascist state might depend on patriotism and nationalism with fiercely loyal citizens, but it might have a difficult time creating wealth and prosperity. The mechanics have yet to be designed, but suffice it to say, it’s looking complicated.

Obviously this is very early on, and I’m going to have to combine or limit the number of similar states (republic, democracy, social democracy are somewhat closely related, as are totalitarian, fascist, and junta states, as are libertarian and anarchist states, as are socialist and communist…there’s a whole huge spectrum). But what I’m working on right now are the Wild Rhetorical Cards! Since rhetoric and the careful use of language is at the base of much political force, these essentially wild cards you play to either help yourself or hurt your opponent, particularly when it comes to wielding influence over others, be they other players or your populace.

For example, you might play the John-McCain-inspired Maverick card to do something that would ordinarily piss someone off, but allows you to get away with it just this once; perhaps there could be an Argentinian Love Affair card you could play on an opponent to undermine his or her regime’s popularity; the Lose Your Voice card means you lose control of influencing anyone.

I’ve considered the following, but am not sure exactly how they’d be used yet:

Conservative Blowhard
Loony Liberal
Debate (you win or lose based on the roll of the dice)
Ann Coulter/Maureen Dowd Mudfight (sorry, couldn’t resist…)
Freedom, which lets you do something invoking “freedom,” like ease restrictions or declare a war (?)

I know it probably sounds pretty sketchy at this point, but if you happen to make sense of this rambling and feel inspired, your suggestions for Wild Rhetorical Cards are more than welcome.

matt: sure, but can we swing by the craft store first?

chelsey: you killed my butternut squash. prepare to meet my shovel as it swings at your head.

matt: I’m so sorry! I thought it was that inedible hybrid thing that produced squash-colored rocks! I’ll ask you first, the next time I use the shovel as a machete.

brother: you mean subjective? or selective? subjective means–

me: I HAVE A MASTER’S DEGREE IN ENGLISH i know what subjective means

[later, the niece has been picking parsley from the flowerbeds and giving it to everyone. i take a bite of mine]

bro: you know she washed that parsley in the pool

me: shrug

bro: where the dogs drink. I HAVE A MEDICAL DEGREE AND I’M NOT EATING IT

POR QUE?! [insert hand-wringing here]

That’s what moving to the new blog is like, albeit less expensive and I don’t have to sit for hours in a cramped cattle compartment that hurtles through space at hundreds of miles an hour with children kicking the seat behind me.

Erm. Anyway.

I’ve encountered the following bugs, many of which are still unfixed:

• No bulleted or numbered lists of any kind. For example, this list should be bulleted, but it’s not. (The Husband says this is fixable. However, he has also taken to texting me from his iPhone WHILE SITTING NEXT TO ME, so things are a little tense right now.)
• No quick-edit tag at the bottom of each post. (The Husband says this is fixable, but when I texted him back and asked how, he replied *yawn* BRB, pushed my feet off his lap and went to bed.)
• Uploading photos has yet to be successful, partially because of size and partially because now there’s an extra step: no more uploading straight from the folder, they have to be in a separate folder (I think on the server?) before I can upload them. (Or maybe that has something to do with thumbnails? I don’t know because The Husband doesn’t write in complete iPhone-texted sentences.)
• Importing the posts directly from Blogger to my own server-hosted blog wreaked havoc, with all the less-than/greater-than brackets getting stripped (these: <>), which meant no formatting, no links, no pictures, no videos, nothin’. The fix for this was to import from Blogger to a Wordpress.com-hosted blog, and then export the WP.com blog to my hard drive and import it to my server…but the server apparently has a maximum upload capability that needs to be upped before that happens.

So that’s where things are. We’ll return to our regularly scheduled life when I’ve properly bribed our server admin.