wake-up call

Around the week before Break, so two weeks ago, my alarm clock died. This was a shame, because it had two alarms, time zones, and a thermometer. Oh, and because it woke me up. Thankfully it failed while setting it, not while it was supposed to wake me. So I switched on over to the only other thing I had: my cellphone. I set two alarms, 7 and 7:30, and like when someone calls me, it first vibrates for a while - a *very* irritating sound - then rings.

This morning, I snoozed the 7 am, then shut it off. Then it went off again, so I flipped the phone open and hunted for which key does the snooze thing again, then realized the screen said a phone number. It was actually a call. Wrong number in the end. :-P Went back to sleep till the next ring.

$$$

I better get my frickin' money back from United. I think I owe the Feds $1k in taxes. I have no clue why, I've always been within a hundred or two before, usually refunded.

<Shock and horror>

I am officially rescinding any tolerance I had for fundamentalist Islam. I heard about this on NPR this afternoon - an Afgan man is on trial for converting away from Islam (to Christianity, but that part's irrelevant) 16 years ago. It's his own family that turned him in. The legally required sentence under sharia law is death.

The article doesn't say but NPR did, that after statements from Bush, the prosecutor wants to allow the defendant to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, in which case he will not get the death penalty.

ETA: I got a better link (hooray BBC!) from q10.

Composting Card Offers

If you've ever tossed a credit card application in the trash, even after tearing it up, read this (it's 3 pages long), and be scared. I shred, and then toss the shreds in my worm bin.

Crossposted to Modern-Science. Found by the_xtina.

Not so svelte

My well-manicured nails from Friday are starting to scuff today. Even chipping at the ends. They're bright orange, to match the skirt I wore at the wedding: flowers of bright orange, pink, and white, shirt was light pink and bright pink, and jacket was flowers in dark blue, light blue, and white - I was the most garish thing present, and I'm proud of it! The nails clashed beautifully with yesterday's eggplant purple knit blouse. *grin*

Looking back on it now, people wore darker colors than I was expecting. It was a nearly-spring wedding, in the warm Southwest, I wasn't expecting to see winter-in-New-York-City-colored clothes. It's true: people in NYC wear black to weddings.

Colors

My scrape/bruise from the escalator incident is starting to itch. That's a good thing, means it's in the healing phase, but it's distracting. The day it had the most (gruesome) colors was actually the day of the wedding, and on said day I wore a skirt with a frilly hem at the level of the bruise. I'm guessing the bright colors in my outfit distracted from the bright colors on my leg. Only orange was missing from the ROYGBV.

At the airport, I found myself nervous on the three-stories-tall escalator down to claim my rental car. When I returned it, I went with the elevator instead.

The Skeptic's Annotated Bible

Stumbled upon as the first hit to 1 Kings reference, my new fascination is The Skeptic's Annotated Bible - and Koran, and Book of Mormon. These editions are the full text of the KJV edition (and I presume other appropriately authoritative editions of the others), with margin annotations on where things are self-contradictory, plagiarized, sexist, scientifically inaccurate, funny, or downright mean. A number of the annotations are more personal interpretations of the webmaster than scholarly comments, but still interesting. I'm looking through the Koran version, as I've read sections of both the Bible and Books of Mormon.