The state of New Hampshire just went to court to defend one of the first laws prohibiting the use of prescription-writing data to market drugs to doctors. The plaintiffs, healthcare market research companies, argue that the law is a First Amendment violation. (Given New Hampshire's fierce love of freedom, that's gotta hurt.) But it's an interesting and potentially landmark case [...]
If you read the first part of this story you know that I've had a rocky relationship with brassieres. (And I haven't even told you about the time my bra snapped a button on my backless dress, causing my entire halter top to flip into my lap...at the ballet.) Underneath it all, though, I know things can be different. When my sister Becky told me that her new bra was a bastion of support and comfort, well, I wanted that too. I hit up Google Maps and started hunting for custom-fitted bra stores in glassland.
My family is obsessive, no doubt about it. When we find something that works, we evangelize it with a missionary zeal, converting as many as possible to..whatever. Skin cremes, irons, mobile phones, cat toys, development environments, gardening tools--you name it, we've probably got it on a pedestal. So I wasn't really surprised when my sister extolled the virtues of European custom-fitted bras.
On one of the online communities I frequent, an Arizona lady said she was coming to glassland for a week and asked about appropriate clothing. What followed defined a rarely mentioned northwestern US trait: Chronic inability to feel cold.
Stopped by Peet's Coffee today for some beans. Coffee beans. Despite my location I'm not particularly into coffee. I tend to regard it as a wake-up drug and mild stimulant (and lately, a source of warmth). Basing my choice on taste is about as intelligent as choosing one brand of digitalis for its superior nose. And, as many of my coffee fanatic friends point out, it's doubtful that I could distinguish the finest Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee from mud, given my heavy reliance on cream and Splenda to make any coffee palatable.
I decided to see if I could do one of the most basic operations--putting a foot on a piece--during the slumping process. So I chose Bullseye's square glass bowl, a fairly deep slumping mold, built a foot at the bottom of it, and slumped a blank over it. Didn't work. The bowl looks exactly the way I anticipated...but it cracked on three of four corners. Drat.
That about sums up 2006. Wacky. (warning--long-winded post ahead. sorry about that) This year has had more ups and downs than an escalator. On the whole, I'd say it was an up year but with some serious, life changing downs. Here's my version of the year in review, not necessarily in order of importance: A huge up was also a [...]
Turns out FreddieMac doesn't always play well with my other digital children. I got Freddie back in October and things had been going pretty well...except in the area of wireless. When I'm not traveling or visiting friends and family, Freddie stays on the desk, where she's been turning wireless networking into Russian roulette. My Verizon FIOS connection uses an Actiontec [...]
So the HVAC guys were just here for a second day, and the new furnace (a Carrier Infinity 96) is almost installed (almost). It's bigger, noisier (well, sometimes) than the old one, but here's the deal: It works. It's also smarter than the old furnace (which, after all, was a whole 27 years old). We no longer call its thermostat [...]
Molten glass will respond to minute changes in temperature (that's how glassblowing works), to the atmosphere and to the presence of other substances. That’s why melting glass together doesn’t always deliver the same color as stacking the glasses cold. Red plus white may just equal black.
