Amy's LJ Space

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DilbertDailyStrip/~3/SPlVodXiwAk/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-12-22/

Pattern: www.woollywormhead.com/meret/

Needles: #8 DPNs

Yarn: Malabrigo in Tuareg (I love this stuff). Less than one skein.

Mods: I knit the extra repeat for the extra-slouchy version. Also did one inch of stockinette, then one inch of twisted rib (I don't know why I chose twisted rather than regular, but I like it) for the beginning.

Notes: Loved the pattern. Easy to knit and great results post-blocking. I blocked this one over a dinner plate, and it worked perfectly. Made the medium size. And it matches my February Lady Sweater and my fingerless mittens perfectly. Took me two football games to finish the knitting (not all of both games, but some of each).

I don't know what's going on with my hair in this picture. Yikes.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DilbertDailyStrip/~3/s0Mk7LmO7Yo/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-12-21/

I was munching on a carrot in my cab, number two on the Manuka rank. Reading Further Tales of the City and just chilling.

So I was surprised when a passenger opened the door and got in. "What about him?" I asked, indicating the cab ahead.

"I didn't want to wake him up," she said, and gave me a destination on the further side of the city, an easy forty dollar fare.

I take the position that if a cabbie is asleep on a rank - especially at five in the afternoon - then he's too weary to drive safely.

Sleep management is an important part of a cabbie's life. The average rate per hour is so low that if a cabbie wants to make serious money, he's got to drive serious hours. In theory, I drive a thirteen hour shift each weeknight, and other drivers, especially those who own their own cabs, will drive even longer hours to make the money needed both to pay the huge costs of operating a cab and make some sort of living.

While a cabbie's shift isn't continuous driving, and it's a sight more interesting than the highway driving of long-haul truckers, it's still a long time to be awake and alert. A good cabbie, even if he's not actually driving, will be waiting for somebody to walk up and get in, or for the chime of an incoming radio job. He'll be watching the stats screen to work out where the work patterns are flowing best, and he'll be cleaning the windows or shaking out the floormats when there's nothing else to do.

Or he'll be chatting to other drivers, reading a book, doing the crossword puzzle, listening to the cricket... There's a lot of idle time in a cabbie's life.

What he shouldn't be doing is sleeping. Other cabbies will take his passengers, he'll miss out on radio jobs, he'll lose income.

In an ideal world, a cabbie gets eight hours of good, solid sleep, drives his twelve hour shift, and has four hours left over for recreation. Not much of a life, but, as I always tell the passengers, "It beats working!"

In the real world, it's hard to get a solid chunk of uninterrupted sleep, especially for a night cabbie like myself. There's the unavoidable noise and activity of the rest of the family waking up and going to work or school. There are traffic noises, horns honking, construction vehicles rumbling. There are phone calls. In summer it's hot, and there's always the problem of too much light seeping around the curtains.

I'm lucky if I get three hours of sleep in a row. I'll take a nap in the early afternoon before starting work at three, but somewhere around midnight, I'll be running down. With the last planes landed at the airport and streets full of cabbies competing over the last few fares, it's an ideal time for me to take a nap before joining the die-hard taxidrivers serving the empty city. There's always work around at two in the morning on a weeknight. You might have to drive a bit further to pick up a passenger, but in a city the size of Canberra with a floating population of students and parliamentary staffers and public servants staying a few nights for a course or a convention, there's always someone in the wee hours who needs to go somewhere.

I don't pump myself full of energy drinks or pills to stay awake. I know other cabbies do, and I've tried some of those pills many years ago, but it's an artificial alertness, and while the body stays awake, hands gripping the steering wheel, the mind goes off in strange directions. I know that everyone expects cabbies to be a little bit crazy, but I don't want artificial assistance in that direction.

But I can't drive when I'm tired. I start making mistakes. I'll give out the wrong change, I'll take an inefficient route, I'll miss out on fares. And, worst of all, I'll drive in an unsafe fashion. There are only so many traffic lights you can misjudge, only so many Stop signs you can roll through, only so many Give Way signs you can ignore.

Or I'll begin to microsleep.

When that happens, I'll stop work and take a nap immediately. I usually stop well before I get to that point, but sometimes when the flow of work on a busy night doesn't give a natural break, I'll find myself whipping down the Monaro Highway, long and straight down to the far suburbs of Tuggeranong, with eyes that don't want to stay open.

I've got my own private map of quiet little corners of the city. Dark and deserted at midnight. Parks, sporting fields, carparks. What I need is something off the streets, not too much light or noise. I'm lucky in that Canberra has many such places. In fact there are four excellent carparks right in the middle of the Parliamentary Triangle in Federation Mall that are dark and deserted. Telopea Park and Haig Park have some good spots. But there's always somewhere.

I park the car facing my best exit route, I lock the doors, turn off as many lights and displays as I can, crank the seat right back and zonk off. Even a five or ten minute powernap is good, but sometimes I'll doze for an hour. I don't set any alarm, because I figure that I'll wake when I feel rested.

Usually what happens is that I get woken up by an incoming radio job after fifteen or twenty minutes. I can ignore it if I want, but generally I take the job and get back to work, good to go for those last few hours before I hand the car over to the day driver at four in the morning.

An alternative strategy, one my wife prefers, is that on a slow night I finish early. Like most other night cabbies. Trouble is that if every cabbie did that, then there would be no taxis on the streets to cope with the small demand at that time, let alone the unexpected load of a delayed flight or a late bus or a big function going late. There are always people to be shifted around the city and it is at these times that I feel most useful, saving people a long wait or a long walk. And making myself a few quid getting them home safely and comfortably.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DilbertDailyStrip/~3/Yx80VOVgpGI/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-12-20/

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DilbertDailyStrip/~3/sQ3HF7W12vk/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-12-19/

I've put in a couple of hours of work already. Still a couple more to do. But I also baked this sourdough chocolate cake. The kids licked the beater and the wooden spoon I used and proclaimed it "the best chocolate cake ever". We'll see. It does have incredibly sweet icing. Six (six!) cups of confectioner's sugar, a stick and a half of butter, AND a half cup of buttermilk. Ye gods, I was afraid to lick the spoon, fearing I'd gain two pounds just from that.

The cake is for a celebration with my dad's side of the family tomorrow. I'm also making florafloraflora's fantastic sweet potatoes. My dad said he doesn't really care for sweet potatoes, but I promised him he'd love these. I mean, how can you resist sweet potatoes with cilantro, garlic, and black pepper? Yum.

Got my grandma Jeannette Walls's new novel for Christmas. I hope she'll loan it to me when she finishes it. I loooooved The Glass Castle, so I'm betting this one is excellent too. And since it's sort of about her grandma, I thought mine would appreciate it.

Gotta go now. Still haven't done enough paid work yet, need to feed the kids, and it's music lesson day today too, so we'll have to go into town (still can't quite get used to saying that...it's a whole 10-15 miles in, but enough that it's not just like running down the street any more the way it used to be, so we have to plan a little better than we used to). But it's a beautiful day, sunny and about 50 degrees, so it'll be nice to get out in it for a while. I've started knitting this beret too. I'll take it with me to lessons and work on it then. I need something I can knit up quickly, and a hat seemed just the thing. And I had enough of the gorgeous teal Malabrigo I used on my February Lady Sweater left over to make this beret. I hope it looks half as good on me as it does in the pattern photo. I'll be making the "extra slouchy" version. Pictures when I finish.

The newspaper published an adaptation of my journal entry the other day with a link to live journal for the the partial list of books Hanff ordered from the gang at 84 Charing Cross Rd. The list is in my journal entry of December 5 so anyone looking for it can either scroll back or simply click here. And thanks for stopping by!

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http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-12-18/

I'm into Book the Third of Armistead Maupin's amazing "Tales of the City" series. And loving it.
The technique he uses is a familiar one, intended to keep the readers returning: keep on foreshadowing something exciting coming up. He delivers - eventually - but in the meantime something else has appeared on the horizon.
And he doesn't always spell out what's happening. A few times in More Tales, he just sketches out the details of something, such as the brothel scene, leaving the reader to wonder just exactly what it is being described. Tantalism is the name of the game.
But. But sometimes he delivers. A plot twist so ridiculous, so outrageous, so bizarre that the reader puts up with all the hints and half-truths.
Well, when I finished More Tales of the City ", I was in awe of the final plot twist Maupin delivered. A bizarre cult involving Episcopalians. Quite implausible, literally over the top, taboo and disgusting. And a poke in the eye at a wider group who must have been strong critics of the series and the lifestyle(s) portrayed.
I began thinking about a novel I've contemplated for a while, and finally I came up with something. Something different. A really bizarre, outrageous, implausible, disgusting situation. Totally over the top. It hooked in well with the locations, it could be spun out to a natural climax, and it could be milked for later effect next year in Boston.
So, it was with a shiver of delight that about halfway through Further Tales of the City I realised that Maupin had come up with the EXACT same plot that I'd thought of all by myself.
I won't bore my readers with the ridiculous details.
Not just yet, anyway.
Once I finish The Monster that Ate Constitution Avenue, I'll get stuck into my third Ann Ounce tale. I've got a lot of writing ahead, and I'm enjoying the process.

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http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-12-17/

I'm getting serious about blogging. I really am. A few days ago I installed a couple of freebie download themes. I especially liked the Lifestyle theme used by Caitlin Firedragon in her Roamingtales blog but the freebie download wasn't working for me, and fiddling around didn't help. I know I've got a background in computer programming, but I'm just not the techie guy I once thought I was.

So I reverted to the Magazine theme published by the same people - big plug for StudioPress here - and although it worked fine, the appearance in shades of black and grey wasn't doing it for me. I liked Lifestyle better.

Bit the bullet and bought it from the site, painlessly through PayPal, downloaded it, uploaded it to my site, and when it was activated, Viola! It works fine, it looks good, and as soon as I've finished this post I'll get the Featured Content Manager working, I guess. Needs a little tidying up, because I've been importing blogs from here and there, but I'll get around to that.

Big plus is that by buying the theme, I'm also buying support and tutorials and future upgrades. So I'll be able to customise my blog, get it running the way I want.

And then start working on adding content, building a community, monetising the site. These journal posts will be in the minority. LiveJournal will remain my blog of choice for personal journal activities, which my LJ friends will be pleased to hear, I make no doubt.

I'm wondering, however, if I'm going to be too diffuse. I want this site to include

• my taxi blog - which I've rather let slide in recent months


• my online serial novel, which is proving very difficult to update on a daily basis, but I'm making steady progress


• my travel journal, aimed more at articles than flight logs


• my BookCrossing activities and collection of book reviews


• various jokes and funnies

I'm keen on all of the above, but I don't want to have separate blogs for each of them. I think that having them all on one site will present me as a person with multiple interests, and that there will be a degree of crossover.

I'll try it for a few months, see how it goes and then decide if I need another crisis in my blogging life.

Oh yeah. The test site is here.

http://sierraclub.typepad.com/compass/2009/12/presidents-push-for-energy-efficiency.html

President Obama addressed a group of small business, labor and industry leaders at a Home Depot in Alexandria, Virginia, yesterday morning to highlight the importance of providing consumers with incentives to invest in energy efficiency.

While negotiators craft an international climate deal in Copenhagen and Congress considers jobs legislation, this home retrofit initiative could move quickly to create jobs while addressing the 20% of U.S. global warming pollution that comes from our homes. It seems like an easy - potentially, sexy?- step to address major economic and environmental challenges.

"Here's what’s sexy about it." said President Obama. "Saving money."

In summary: "most of this stuff is going to pay for itself."

It's an opportunity for households to immediately capture the benefits of clean energy investments and to create clean energy jobs for struggling communities.

Five participants joined the President at a roundtable discussion before the President's speech, including 23-year-old DC resident Stephon Burgess. Trained by the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA), Stephon now works full time for Ardently Green, a local home performance contractor focused on making existing homes more energy efficient. WeatherizeDC, a non-profit, has helped raise demand in DC for energy efficiency upgrades despite a lack of incentives for consumers (see Will Byrne's update at Huffington Post).

Investing in energy efficiency is the fastest, easiest, cheapest and safest thing we can do to address global warming pollution and put Americans back to work while saving families money. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act aggressively increased funding for clean energy, with Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants for cities and towns and an expanded Weatherization Assistance Program for low-income households.

The challenge is to demonstrate the immediate benefits of a program like that the President is proposing while securing long-term economic and environmental benefits for our communities.

They're not cowboy boots, but they were *considerably* less expensive, and they keep my feet clean and dry. I like them very much. It's hard to take a picture of your own feet, you know? There are other lame photographic attempts on Flickr.

In completely unrelated news, I mentioned to Lady Z yesterday that I think I'm going crazy. I "remembered" the Muppets' Swedish Chef singing 'O Holy Night', but try as I might, I can find nothing on YouTube or Google to suggest that ever actually happened. Why would I dream up such a thing? And how do I get it out of my head now that it's there?

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DilbertDailyStrip/~3/tIPdPpS8vp0/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-12-16/

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman

Coming of age in the 60's in the south -- that's the task of twelve-year-old CeeCee, who is thrown from life with a mentally damaged mother in the north into the world of Savannah Georgia. CeeCee's life has been far from perfect: her mother spirals deeper and deeper into her own psychosis, and her father, unable to cope with the reality of his life at home, has left, visiting only on rare occasions. That CeeCee's mother loves her dearly is clear, but Hoffman has also been able to paint a portrait of a woman fighting her own demons of mental illness. CeeCee's beautiful, damaged mother remains locked in her memories of 1951 and winning a beauty pageant back home in Georgia. Though her home life is chaotic, CeeCee finds some stability in a deep friendship with a neighbor. When CeeCee's mom dies in an accident, the girl is uprooted from Ohio and sent to live with her great aunt Tallulah (aka Tootie) amidst the live oaks and magnolias of Savannah.

The world CeeCee finds herself in is one of women: Aunt Tootie, Oletta Jones who can cook like nobody's business and knows how to dole out words of wisdom, too. There are the eccentric neighbors, the Gardening Society, and friends of Oletta, for a different slice of life. The women around her shape her world, help her to learn and grow. These are women of different ages, races and social standing, but they all are fierce in protecting their independence, and about finding the passion in life, whatever it might be for each individual. She also has to face her fears that her mother's illness might be hereditary, and every twelve-year-old girl's worry: "Will I make friends at my new school?"

This was a debut novel for Beth Hoffman. I've come to expect certain things from novels of this genre and this met all of them: gentleness, a bit of conflict, a hint of danger, a wise woman of African American descent (this one had several) who can help the heroine move forward in her life, resolution and new beginnings. There were portions that rang true, portions that missed the mark with me, but on the whole, it was a gentle, affirming read. (One of my dearest friends had a mother who became prey to her own demons of bi-polar disorder and manic-depression, and because of my familiarity with this through her, I found Hoffman's descriptions of Camille pretty accurate.)

I'd like to say thank you to LibraryThing and Pamela Dorman Books for selecting me for this advanced reader copy. I'm always quite happy to read about my beloved South, where, despite all our flaws, we do have a certain way of grace and charm when we approach life. This book arrived yesterday and I read it today while home with the flu. Saving bookczuk, it seems, too.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DilbertDailyStrip/~3/IehJ1tkRRyE/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-12-15/

Second book in the Tales of the City series. Armistead Maupin is hitting his stride with this one. He spins his little plots, teasing the reader along, sucking them in, until somehow, we’re edging ourselves along a catwalk high above a startled crowd and the horrific secret is revealed.
This book sparkles like the waters of the Bay or the beaches of Acapulco. Romance aboard the Love Boat, lovers and spouses reunited, deaths and disasters.
There’s a wheelchair and a whip encountered along the way. And every step of the path involves Armistead having fun with the reader.
He’s got a skilled touch with dialogue. We’re teasing the straight couple at breakfast. We’re as catty as can be with the A-Gays. We’re janing with the sexagenarians of the Pinus Club. And we’re hooting with laughter every time a chapter closes.
It must have been sheer torture for the readers of this serial novel, having to wait for a new day and a new edition of the Chronicle. Me, I can turn to the next page to see what happens next, but the original readership must have been lining up at midnight to satisfy themselves with the early edition.
I loved it. I loved the first book, I loved this one, I’m loving the third in the series, abandoned for a moment to write this review.
And I loved the inspiration. As the ridiculous plot unfolded, the solution to the mystery of my next novel sprang into my head. For four years, I’ve wondered what Ann Ounce was doing in Texas. Now I know. Now I know how Memphis and San Francisco tie into the tale. Dear reader, you’ll have to wait a while for my early edition. And read it one chapter at a time.
But you’ll hoot with laughter.
In the meantime, join me in consuming these delicious snippets of San Francisco’s behind the scenes under the covers up the shady lanes hidden tales of the city.

More Tales of the City (Showtime Tie-In Edition)

http://sierraclub.typepad.com/compass/2009/12/landmark-epa-ruling-on-asarco.html

By: Sarah Lerner, Media Assistant

What a difference a new Administration makes. When Bush was still in office in 2005, the American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO), the biggest copper conglomerate, was able to evade hefty environmental fines by declaring bankruptcy. But just last Thursday, the EPA served some delayed justice with a ruling that declared that ASARCO must pay $1.79 Billion to fund environmental cleanup and restoration. Normally, EPA rulings of this nature hand down lower fines than the total cleanup costs, which gives corporations less incentive to operate in an earth friendly way. However, EPA's ruling on Thursday is the largest environmental settlement for hazardous waste cleanup in history. The money will be funneled to more than 80 ASARCO sites in 19 states across the country. This bodes especially well for parents, as copper exposure affects kids in the harshest ways. Research has found that it can cause learning disabilities, behavioral problems and nerve damage in young children. 

This settlement sends a strong message to pollutant offenders like ASARCO. The next step is for agencies to enforce environmental regulations before companies are in deep financial holes. This strategy has a two-fold effect: it would keep corporations honest and deincentivize continuing to use Chapter 11 as an escape plan. 

http://sierraclub.typepad.com/compass/2009/12/sunny-times-for-florida-rail.html

Transportation emits one-third of US global warming pollution and is the fastest growing sector.  The Sierra Club's Green Transportation Campaign aims to reduce transportation emissions with stringent standards for our cars, clean fuels, and supporting transportation choices that will help us reduce how much we drive.  States are moving forward on all fronts, including showing strong support for passenger rail, which can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide convenient transportation choices to more people. 

The following is a post from Dave Cullen of the Sierra Club Florida Chapter highlighting a tremendous victory for passenger rail in Florida. In short, Florida has demonstrated a commitment to making rail an option for residents.  --Ann Mesnikoff

Passenger Rail Passes!
by Dave Cullen

A special session of the Florida State Legislature ended Dec. 8th with the passage of HB 1B, a bill supported by Sierra Club Florida, approving the $432 million purchase of 61.5 miles of railroad track from freight operator CSX. The purchased rail will serve passengers on Sun Rail in Central Florida. The bill also shored up funding for Tri Rail which serves the Miami to Palm Beach corridor. 

HB 1B is Florida's down payment on a vision for passenger rail in the state that will link bullet trains from Tampa to Miami and connect local rail systems around the state.  

Passenger rail systems often use existing freight tracks because the right of way is already established, the rails are in place, and the tracks go between important geographic locations such as major cities.  The Tri Rail system in South Florida was also made possible by the purchase of CSX track and now connects all three south Florida airports.

Sun Rail, which was considered in the past two legislative sessions, will run parallel to Interstate 4 in central Florida and will eventually serve passengers from DeLand to Poinciana.  Beginning ridership is expected to be about 4,300 per day, rising to 7,400 per day by 2030.  During peak hours it may carry as many passengers as one lane of Interstate 4, a major Florida interstate highway.

A shrinking window of opportunity spurred Florida to make this commitment to rail in the special session.  US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood visited the state in October and made it clear that Florida's chances of receiving up to $2.5 billion in federal High Speed Rail stimulus funding depended on a tangible commitment to an integrated rail system. 

Phase I of this Florida bill will be the construction of 12 stations between DeBary and Orlando (31 miles) and Phase II will be 5 additional stations extending north to DeLand and south to Poinciana.  Fares are expected to be $2.50 within the same county and an additional dollar to cross county lines.

The bill also provides an additional $13-15 million a year for operations, maintenance and dispatch for Tri Rail, which accommodates 15,000 riders/day.  Tri Rail will also receive an additional $17-27 million needed for work program commitments and operating assistance. 

Sun Rail will start in 2011 just as FDOT starts a major reconstruction project on Interstate 4.  It shouldn't take long for people to abandon the traffic jam for rail!