thanksgiving

I am impatient for Tuesday to come.

It has been too long since I have seen chemicallace, too long since she was anything other than a voice on the phone.

Last time I saw her we got to enjoy tropical warmth and explore the ocean. (We blew kisses to each other underwater.) We chased parrotfish with a Parrothead and drove to the southernmost point of the United States.

But now I'm looking forward to a wintery New England thanksgiving, something I have never experienced. I've gone to great lengths to avoid New England in winter ever since moving to mild, gentle Seattle (where it snows once a year and the temperature rarely gets below 45)... but now I have someone to curl up with in front of the fire at night, someone whose cheeks I can kiss warm in the freezing cloudless brightness of the day.

(And this time we're going to see the aquarium!)

Allyson has been under a tremendous amount of stress. I've finally gotten over being sick. We need a few easy days together. I hope to help her relax in the days to come.

This'll also be the first time I've ever spent a holiday with my SO's parents, so it'll be interesting. I get along fine with her parents, though, so I'm not too worried.

writers' block is the bane of my existence

Ganked from boingboing, this is a good list of ways to defeat writers' block, specially tailored for those of us with more bandwidth than self-discipline.

http://www.43folders.com/2004/11/hack_your_way_o_1.html

.sg

Am I the only one who is absolutely scared shitless by Singapore? Those guys are throwing vast amounts of money at research we can't even touch because between the Greens and the Christian right it's been legislated into oblivion. They're an economic powerhouse, they're setting up an honest-to-gods Stephenson-style extraterritorial franchise in China, and they treat you like a drug addict if they catch you with chewing gum. (If they catch you with actual drugs, they just kill you.) A nation that has "mandatory mixers" (falling birth rates prompted the government to require people to go on a certain number of dates per year -- and did I mention that they segregate the blue collar group from the white?) and all the newspapers are state run. They put a bunch of economists on trial for treason for revealing the national GDP, which is a state secret there!

We're turning into a police state. They already are -- but their economy and technology are booming. Are we shiftless lowlife Americans in trouble?