Today is Lori's birthday. It must be awfully handy to have a twin sister. "Hey, did you know it's Alli's birthday today?"---and woe unto him who cannot do the math. Happy birthday to both of them :) [1:47 pm in girl meets web]

Why does my health insurance card not have a plan name on it? Why does my insurance company's website not explain how I can figure out which plan I'm on? Why do bored receptionists at doctor's offices need my name, date of birth, address, home phone, and work phone before they can tell me they have an appointment open? Why do they scold me for not telling them I have a painful ear infection, when that's what I was saying when they interrupted me to get that very vital information about the day on which I was born? Why is it so fucking hard to just find a doctor already when you need one, not in three weeks, but now? [12:30 pm in girl meets web]

Lesson learned: Tylenol-3 with codeine, Claritin, and amoxicillin do not mix with standard-issue weekend revelry, and people who are smarter than I am will refrain from pushing their luck where that sort of thing is concerned. I haven't felt as bad as I felt on Saturday night in years, and that's in both the physical sense and the was-I-really-that-stupid? sense. I did, however, have an awful lot of fun before everything turned into a chemical-induced nightmare straight out of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It was Miki's birthday Saturday, which was celebrated in high style, plus we had Kim and her man David (who's SO stealth, he doesn't even have a website) visiting from New York. When we were there a couple of weeks back, Kim and David (along with Roe and Jesse) were in no small way responsible for making our trip a very good one indeed, so it was a pleasure to return the favor. ---It may appear that the Eastern North America Webgeek Exchange Program is limited to the cities of Washington and New York, but I'm pleased to report that persons residing in Providence and Toronto are also eligible to be shown around D.C., and taught to sneer at cars bearing diplomat plates.) [7:24 pm in girl meets web]

I stand corrected. He's still pretty stealth, though. [1:53 pm in found links]

Tax day. I ran the math a while back, saw how much I owed, and vowed to write the check out at the last possible minute. Then I forgot all about it. Meaning that I will be writing the check out at the last possible minute. Every year, April 15 makes me a hell of a lot more resentful and cash-greedy than a good liberal would be. Note to self: things could be worse; the Titanic sank ninety years ago today. [1:25 pm in girl meets web]

A rush-job of an office move was completed over the weekend, and now my desk is six feet to the right and twenty feet above where it used to be. This, it turns out, is just enough of a shift to see the very tippy-top of the Washington Monument from my chair. I suppose I haven't lived here long enough to be jaded about that sort of thing yet. Last night's last-minute tax-filing adventure took me on a rare late-night visit to downtown, where the main post office is a few short blocks and one killer view away from the Capitol building; as traffic honked and crawled through the dark in the general direction of some poor guy scurrying about in the median with a box full of procrastinated returns, I sat in my car and looked at the floodlit, imposing dome, and thought again of how fortunate I am to be here, in a city I fell in love with at a time when I never dreamed that it might be possible I'd someday come to stay. [4:40 pm in girl meets web]

Josh has a website now, which means that he's graduated from honorary DC blogger status to actual DC blogger status. Just don't ask him, "Did Lori help you with that?" ... it's never a good idea to insult a lawyer's intelligence. Congratulations, Josh, on your assimilation :) [6:11 pm in found links]

I finally broke down and bought a CD-ROM burner a couple of weeks back. Hadn't done it before because my old computer wouldn't have been able to hang, even if there were any expansion bays left. For the last two weeks I procrastinated installing the new drive, because it was an internal, meaning I'd have to crack the case, and that sort of thing scares me. Then last night I had a dream. I dreamed that I went to go buy some sort of part for installing the CD burner, but when I opened up the box, it was a full case and motherboard. The case was made of some sort of translucent plastic that had been molded with pink swoopy decorations and glitter---paging Dr. Freud---the thing looked for all the world like some sort of Barbie's First Computer Chassis. I woke up thinking To hell with that, and today I installed my new burner. With nary a problem, I might add. I'll sleep better tonight. [9:11 pm in girl meets web]

Four years ago today, I registered sapphireblue.com, and bade forever adieu to clumsy tildes and borrowed subdomains. Happy birthday, little website: you're an artless, stunted, conflicted, and derivative shambles, but too you are my very own to love. [3:55 pm in girl meets web]

I'd like to take a moment to express my gratitude for and admiration of the anti-globalization protesters who visited Washington last weekend, to air their grievances and to exercise their First Amendment rights. Specifically, the ones who exercised their rights by spray-painting onto the sidewalks of my city stunningly nuanced arguments for their cause, such as "OUR STREETS" and "FUCK BUSH". How glorious a utopia would our Earth be, if only more of us would vandalize common areas in this fashion? Truly, my idealistic brothers, my visionary sisters, you lead the way to a brighter future. Some people might see your actions as mere public nuisance, but not I. I recognize that you're striking a fearsome blow for the proletariat---nay, for all mankind---by such defacement of public property. I see how considerate you are to be out there fighting for the job security of the underpaid manual laborers who are outside even now, laboring amidst the car exhaust fumes to scrub your inspirational words from the concrete, to clean the messes you left behind when you went home to your flyover states to show all your friends photos taken on foreign-made cameras of the weekend you thumbed your nose at the oppression of faceless corporate behemoths. And I am certain that when those gentlemen retire to their homes tonight, their aching backs and wizened, chemical-stained fingers will serve as happy reminders that you fearless and brave warriors against global capitalism are truly their brightest hope for a brand-new day. Good work, kids. Good work. [2:55 pm in political]

If ours was, in fact, the Ideal World, Verisign would be out of business. But Verisign is still alive and---scratch 'well', a company so incompetent as Verisign can't possibly be called "well." So I urge you to avoid doing business with Verisign. Of any kind, really, but especially, especially, don't register your domains with Verisign. Network Solutions is owned by Verisign, but this isn't 1997 anymore, there are a whole bunch of other companies that will register your domain. Who won't fuck you over like Verisign will. (Wanna play along at home? See Dean Allen's call to arms.) [11:53 am in tech/biz]

The following quotation is not anything like appropriate to the mindset of a person about to embark upon nine days of laziness in the form of vacation, but I came across it in my reading today and it struck me as profound enough to note for future meditation: "The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves." ---Logan Pearsall Smith. [5:30 pm in girl meets web]

How did this happen? Or, how did this happen without my noticing? The San Diego Zoo had a baby panda in summer of 1999, which means I can't say I've been to visit every panda in the United States anymore. (In addition to D.C.'s two and San Diego's three, Atlanta has two.) Time for a trip to sunny California? [1:51 pm in found links]