What made you smile today?

The Taz - the leftist, alternative Berlin daily - once put their entire back catalogue - something like twenty years of newspaper articles - on CD-Rom - and you got it for free with their anniversary issue. Bleedin amazing.

Surprising tho, once you got it, how you're never actually going to sit behind your computer and read all through it all.

I also have some CD-R's with what looked like ten years of archived newspaper articles from the Hungarian left-wing daily Nepszabadsag - which they also put out for a handful of dollars. It's still back in Holland tho, and I never (yet!) got to learn enough Hungarian to read the paper, like I'd planned to...

My thinking, Walter, is that that was the gift the baggage boy was talking about. I had heard about it before. It contains, if memory serves, not only all the stories and articles and cartoons, but even the ads from back when The New Yorker was at its peak. Sadly, in my opinion, it has been dumbed down in the last decade or so and no longer has the cachet it once enjoyed.

We finally received our Christmas gift from my cousin. A 75.00 giftcard to Pier I. Yay!
She's always late with her gifts but she does make up for it.

Faith In The System:
A year or so ago some guy broke into my store. A passerby noticed this and called the police on her/his cell phone. The first officer to respond, a rookie, went in on his own, without waiting for backup. Not a smart move, and he got additional training, I hear. The store is a labyrinth and the cop chased the robber around until the guy dove through a 12" x 18" window to escape. He left behind quite a bit of hair and blood. It cost me $100 to replace the window glass and I forgot about it.
Friday a detective came in to report that they had caught a guy further along in his career and that, through DNA, he was going to be charged with being the culprit here. He denied it at first but then, faced with the DNA evidence, he confessed.
It is tempting these days, whether we are liberals or conservatives, to be cynical about the government from the local through to the national level; here in the US or wherever you may be.
I am impressed that our $100 break-in didn't get filed under F for Forget About It.
(not exactly a "What Made You Smile" story; but in a way it did make me smile)

Its Friday and I have 2 hours of work left to go before my
weekend starts YAY!!

Hoping Bachelet will win in today's Chilean elections...

Nimh's last post made me smile. He is, without a doubt, the biggest political junkie I have ever encountered. I wanted to use the phrase "penultimate" political junkie, but when I checked my old dictionary, the word didn't quite mean what I thought it meant. It may still be right, but a day without going to the dictionary at least once is a day wasted.

Sitting around a table,eating,with my three closest friends

Odd. For two or three weeks now, I mean, overall, in general anyway, I've been feeling both reclusive and kinda contentedly happy. Thats an unusual combination for me. I feel reclusive often enough, but thats usually cause I'm not feeling too well. And I feel contentedly happy like kinda now often enough, but mostly thatd be because 'things are going well', ie, had a coupla nice evenings out, was with nice people, whatever. But now, I dont really feel like going out at all except for a nice cuppa tea with a paper - I'm meeting 'Susannah' for the second time tomorrow but only cause both times she called, otherwise I even called a friend off one Saturday night - basically, just fine by myself thank you. Or something. Dunno, odd.

I sense a change in the air tho, worried about it...

a friend, a crush from highschool that i kept in touch with all these years is postponing his vacation (last time he had any vacation was last january) - actually, chopping three days out of his vacation, so that we can meet up over the weekend. he's even willing to drive to vienna just to pick me up (it's an hour from home, i can just jump on a train like every weekend, but no...). makes me feel sheepish, but it's awfully nice of him. he said not to even mention it once, because he doesn't like submissive women without self-respect (he was kidding...). ahhhh, life....so good.

Well! No wonder you're more cheerful today!

Passing Ticomaya in the post count

Walking along 5th Avenue on a crisp winter morning...feeling the way you can feel only when you are in New York..

oh, super G is in new york! howdy, stranger? long time no see.

I smiled today because I wanted to smile. I like smiling, its good for me.

seeing Onyxelle here

seeing the first pictures in print that i took with my digital camera.
will have to learn how to compensate for snow - it turned blue ! hbg

Did you print them yourself?

Ditto for onyxelle. Where've you been girl?

no, i took them to the photostore. i think it might get pretty expensive buying all the paper and ink if i want to do my own printing ? i,m just experimenting right now - trying to learn what all the "little" buttons and levers are for . hbg

I heard from A... she's angry at me (and for good reason) but nebber mind that ... she went to Spain to try her luck there, big risk, a friend gave or lent her the money for the ticket, she only speaks a handful of Spanish ... and now she forwarded me a bit of chat log with her friend ...



Yaaaayyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!

<runs around dancing and cheering>

I'm so proud of her. She's bloody fantastic.

Oh, the log also says what her job is. She's gonna be playing with small children, 2-5 year olds. Language games. Isnt that cool?


Heee.... <giggles, endeared> (she sweet...)

<biggest imaginable smile>