My mom says, she’d rather avoid death, so she chooses taxes. I am not sure it works that way, but in any case, when you’re dirtpoor whitetrash, you get money back so doing taxes is like filling out a form for free cash. So yeah, my taxes are done and filed. Just waiting for them to hit the bank.

I have a three-stage list.
1. Have-to’s – Bills, Bras, Britches. Getting Spike fixed.
2. Needs – some storage units, backup food (people, cat and chicken), Kumoricon tickets, hosting fees.
3. Kinda needs, mostly wants – laptop, camera, Kumo lodging.

I’m pretty sure it will all work out – if the DOE doesn’t take the whole damned thing for my outstanding student loan, like they did last year.

One thing that came up in January that caused some friction was a special vote thing. A couple of measures were proposed that would do a number of things, including raising taxes for people making a shitload of money, and reduces income tax on unemployment payments.

There was a lot more to it, and most of the “no” people had good points…but the thing that made me a “yes” was that it puts money back into schools. See, I have a theory. Fewer school days = stupider kids = less qualified workers = crappier, continually declining economy.

Contrariwise, More school days = smarter = qualified = improving economy. In the short term, it might well suck. People talk of job loss and loss of our kicker check, but what the hell do I care? The kicker is based on what you pay into it, which I don’t make enough to pay much into. And I already don’t have a job, what are you going to do, make me more unemployed?

I know – it’s sort of a selfish way to think, but is there a problem with wanting the future to be better, rather than bouncing from crisis to crisis? I’m not saying this will fix it, but at least it’s something.

Anyway. Here’s a picture of a cute kitten to make everything better. Hopefully, in a week or so, I’ll be able to take pictures of her (and the rest of them) on a real camera, but for now, fuzzy cellphone camera will have to do.

There was some exciting news on the technology front today.

Normally, I don’t get excited about Apple products, or most of the new shinies that are put out – mostly because I know they are beyond my financial range, or just plain not useful to me.

But this. This could be something. No, I won’t buy it. But I can see a future where I will buy something similar…something that looks more like this:

For as long as I’ve known of its existence, I’ve believed that I belonged in Star Trek. Not on the show, but IN that world. Unfortunately, it has yet to be an available destination for me. But this, this could get me just a little closer.

I thank whatever cosmic forces caused geeks to believe in Star Trek as a viable future, and I dearly hope we continue progress in this direction.

While reading an article this morning, I had a profound thought.

If we would, as a people, stop and think before implementing rampant change (or legislating un-change), we would be in a much better world.

I think we all know the story of the Henny Penny, right? We’ve had it turned into Chicken Little, but the main concept is the same. The main character sees something, takes it out context and draws conclusions that are obviously not based on actual facts or events – only a superficial knowledge is there. Like reading a headline and assuming that you know what the story is about. Or, reading a blog title and assuming that you know what the post is about.

The danger, of course, is having your head snapped off by a fox.

Ok, actually it’s taking courses of action based on incomplete information, which could be entirely and tragically the incorrect way to go. You see it all the time in religious and political circles – people who can quote scripture but have never read the bible, people who listen to a radio station announcer yelling about something but never bother to check the facts.

I remember reading in the forward of a book once, the author made a comment to the effect that one source of information was worse than none. Without counterpoint, contrast, discussion…well, you just don’t learn enough about it to have an informed opinion. But that doesn’t stop us, does it?

And that, I’m pretty sure, is how stupid laws are passed, ridiculous protests are staged, and it is what will surely be the downfall of human civilization. It’s probably what really killed the dinosaurs.

How does one really go about finding a sibling that’s been adopted out? Like, almost 40 years ago?

In around 1970, my mom gave up a baby boy for adoption. It was what happened back then, to families like theirs. It was a scandal, right?

A few years back, Mom asked me to help her with figuring out how to locate the child. She’d written it off for ages, with the thinking, “why would he want to know me?”, but she was feeling better about it and was ready to look.

We got all the information we could together, but it wasn’t much. We contacted the place of birth, and the organization that assisted with the adoption, and registered with them.

Nothing ever came up. It’s been 7 years almost, and nothing has come up. Because of the ways the privacy laws work, there doesn’t seem to be much more that we can do. If the child (child, he’s almost 40!) registers with them as well, they are supposed to contact us, but what if he doesn’t have the information to do so? What if he wants to find her, but just isn’t able to? On the other hand, what if he doesn’t? We don’t know that either.

I guess all we can hope for is that someday soon, there will be one single online clearing house registry for all adoptions. Right now, there are so many I don’t even know which one to start with.

Here, I’ll put out what we do know, so that maybe if he ever googles it, he might find us:

Birth date was January, 1970 in Portland, Oregon. Birthname was probably Michael Earle. Birth mother Karen. White Shield, Waverly and Trillium were the involved organizations.

Any takers?

I’ve had this feeling before. My nature generally makes me a giver – I like to feed people, do things for people, help people out. But there comes a time when there is nothing left to give. I am not Denny’s, there is no bottomless cup here. When nothing is put in, I have nothing to give out.

There are a lot of things that are contributing to this feeling, mostly household related and probably mostly things I could bring up and dispell – but I have this naïve idea that other people can just see when things are unbalanced.

Like…notice that you haven’t put any money into paying the bills in a couple months, and yet there are still lights and heat and water and cable. Like, notice that food magically appears on the stove but you only cook once a week or so. Like, although you eat, and don’t usually cook, the dishes magically get cleaned without your participation. Floors get mopped. Counters wiped down. Hell, dogs walked.

And I sit here feeling bad about it. Like I shouldn’t expect anything, because that’s what I’ve been made to fear: expecting things from people leads to disappointment and resentment. And to be honest, it’s taken months to get me to this point. But I think I’ve finally come to the conclusion that it’s not going to change on its own, and I’m going to have to take action. Which I hate, because then the resentment will be towards me, because I have it so much better. This means that my prescription is cheap enough to still take it, and I get more unemployment – even though that money has to spread out for myself and my kid. Being more down-and-out than anyone else is like a badge of honor. I hate it – he wallows in it. The worse things get, the worse he can feel, and the more justified in his constant negativity.

This did lead me to a thought, though. I think we should be able to get prescriptions for other people, if those other people are making use unhappy. It’s a sort of preventative medicine, see? Think it’ll fly?

So, I’m about empty. I had considered baking tonight, to have something fun to do. But the thought of having to share the product of my work once again, for less than no return, has pretty much talked me out of it.