The good sushi in Rockville wasn't from Taipei-Tokyo Cafe, was it?? Ohmigod, it's one of the things I miss most about Maryland. After my friends, of course. Yeah, after my friends. *whistles* I lived in Germantown and Gaithersburg before moving to LA -- they're just north of Rockville.

We miss you Susan. Heather and I walk past your apartment and sigh wistfully. We're moving into our new place next week (starting tomorrow, we think), and we can't wait to have you over to see it. Have fun. Be researchy. There's wine and sushi waiting for you on this coast...

Well, parental support is a good thing.

Yay! That's completely awesome news. Yay for Karen! (And for lucky Strange Horizons!)

(I am now officially past my exclamation point quota for the year.)

Why, that's smashing. Top drawer, and all that.

Very cool news -- Karen sounds like a perfect fit! Congrats all 'round.

I am sorry to hear about the street cleaning. Somerville is coping with big cuts in state aid by dramatically increasing their ticketing revenue on street cleaning days this year. Towing is way up.

That Chicago comment reminds me of an illustration in "How to Colonize the Galaxy in 8 Easy Steps". It was a side-by-side comparison of a slime mold and an aerial view of a modern city. It was difficult to tell which was what without reading the caption.

I guess it makes me feel uncomfortable to classify urban growth as "natural" without mentioning that it's also "unconscious". That is, it proceeds in a largely unplanned fashion, with no anticipation of the long-term consequences.

So let me get this straight: Susan just traded one vaguely malevolent female landlord for another?

One of my friends insists that there's no midwest, that it's just little city islands linked by highway, like the florida keys.

I am reminded of a book we read in my historiography class in college, "Nature's Metropolis." It was about Chicago, and how its growth can be seen as no less natural than a forest (which, when you consider that there's something like less than 5% old growth forests around anymore, is a valid point). it's a very interesting book, and I'm always reminded of it when I think about the naturalness of towns and roads and houses and such.

Finding those PhD surveys sounds like looking down in a stream and seeing a shiny yellow bumpy rock bouncing along. Okay, maybe it's very specific gold, valuable only for your particular purposes, but still. How did you discover them?

Caviar comes from a virgin sturgeon! Virgin sturgeon is a very good fish! No good sturgeon wants to be a virgin -- that's why caviar's a very rare dish!

uh, yeah.

Edited by author 06-06-2003 07:40 PM
Not biology -- gastronomy! I'm talking about caviar. That sturgeon isn't big enough to be a beluga (unless it's a baby -- sing it with me! "Baby beluga..."), but it might be one of the other kinds of sturgeon that caviar comes from...

You could fit a lot of eggs into nine feet of fish. What? Don't try to confuse me with biology. I'm not a scientist!

That's a sturgeon, man. It's all about the eggs.