techSanctuary

Simon and I are peacefully spooned and sleeping in. (He is the cuddliest of the cats. Felix never really got the hang of sitting on people in a relaxed and painless way, and Angus is still too full of the energy of youth to chill out properly.)

The baby kicks Simon. Simon raises his head for a moment, puzzled, then settles back to sleep.

The baby kicks him again. He raises his head and looks around, then settles.

The baby gives him one more good kick. He starts out of his doze and gives me a bewildered look, as if to say, Woman, what have you been eating?

We have (probably) less than a month to go...I wonder how the guys are going to react to having a new and mysteriously preferred contender for lap time.

Hey, dumbass. Before you try to use my debit card number to buy a large item from a company I've never heard of, how about making sure there's enough money in my account to cover it? And the international purchase fee and the overdraft fee and the account fee? If you hadn't overdrawn me, this might have gone unnoticed for DAYS. But I see red numbers and I flip the hell out.

Also, before you try to use my debit card number? Please go die in a fire. Thank you.

There's only one line into the office of the California Secretary of State? REALLY?

(busy signal)

(busy signal)

(busy signal)

Traditional hand-crafting is dying out in England, and there doesn't seem to be any sort of system in place to preserve it.

At first I thought: how, in this day and age of hobbyists, recreationists, and greater ease in pursuing obscure crafts than ever before, is this happening?

The hobbyists and recreationists mostly aren't pursuing those obscurities as careers, is the answer. And the Internet may make more information more available to more people than ever in human history, but how many of those people (like me) keep "meaning" to take up some kind of craft and never find the time, or don't have access to a community or teachers, or think it's simply too much trouble? Out of those who surmount all those obstacles, how many would be willing to try doing it for a living, with the field endangered as it is, with no promise of fame or fortune and no guarantee of job security?

It's dismaying that apprenticeship is not being used to preserve this, and other skills. Are interns the new apprentices? Aren't there a lot of jobs out there that can't be learned through theory and instruction alone? There's got to be some way that people are learning to run machinery and make things and maintain physical systems. Maybe they're just not called "apprentices" anymore, but going through the same process.

The cynical side of me worries that when civilization collapses, no one will know how to hand-turn bowls or make barrels or scissors!