Posts by Amy Gale
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(This has weighed on my mind somewhat because on Saturday I have to sit the general GRE)
Sending good wishes in your direction. You'll do great!
[Well, I mean, I cried after mine, but because of how much was riding on it not because it was hard.]
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I think all good TV now must be targeted at some sort of geek market.
It perpetually amazes me that The Big Bang Theory has enough of an audience to survive. Seems like it's directly targeted at me and my bestest friends. What is everyone else supposed to be seeing in it?
Also: I love Glee OMG. So. Much.
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Snort! Very funny Amy - just had R's parents staying from the East Coast and that dynamic is so true for so many family relationships.
Hah, I haven't even mentioned the bit about how by the time we got to Buffalo I was threatening to stop the car and put them out by the side of the road unless they started behaving. (Sadly this was interpreted as a potential bonus that would facilitate the viewing of canal boats and so forth.)
Oh, but I love 'em, I do.
In related news, apparently land crossings are now eligible for the visa waiver pre-certification thingo. Good news for border crossers, not to mention their offspring.
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The crunch came, of course, at the border. All three of us, including the two US citizens had to go into the customs office and wait for me to be processed.
Yeah, that was a seriously unwelcome surprise last time my parents came to visit and I went to pick them up from Toronto. I mean, really. If I was going to be smuggling workers, I'd pick 'em younger and fitter. And a bit less aware of my weak points.
Me, I miss the Air Tahiti Nui JFK->PPT->AKL run. Can't understand why it wasn't the most popular route evah.
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So is it that nobody understood what I meant, or just that nobody who said anything understood what I meant?
I'm going to go and eat worms. In my affordable Golden Bay bach. To which my trip will include driving SH60 along a completely unpopulated coast to Motueka. Without meeting any tourists on the wrong side of the road.
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Note to self, do not make days-gone-by cracks about Nelson on internet.
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Nelson. What do I win?
A ticket to the Wearable Art show with cake afterwards at Chez Eelco?
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Eh? That's like putting fluoride -- another dialectic in NZ...thought that one died out in the 60s everywhere else -- only into people's water that have a history of tooth decay.
I live in an American town that doesn't fluoridate its water. Have you actually been "everywhere else"? Have you been anywhere else?
And why would you fluoridate a population's water if they already had strong teeth? Just for the sake of showing them who's boss?
What works is putting it into all bread. At least that's what those up themselves scientific folks try to make us think through their socialist mind control, Leighton.
When a global adulteration of the food supply is proposed - even a benign, reversible one - it should be done openly. The arguments on both sides should be available for people to evaluate. Otherwise you get a government that does whatever they want and a population that is not aware that folate is necessary and maybe they should look into an alternative source if they don't eat wheat.
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Feels like I'm really an outlier when I admit that actually I think a high school reunion might be quite interesting. (Not interesting enough to make a NZ trip specially, though. Perhaps if they all just magically turned up at my house.)
It's true that it's easy enough to find people you want to find, but part of high school reunions for the people I know in the US seems to be a softening of feeling toward the people you didn't want to find. Even the start of a friendship, sometimes. People do change.
Even without a reunion, I find that the (increasingly!) distant perspective makes it much easier to realize that even the mean girls must have had their own worries - something my mother did in fact try to explain to me, but which I never really believed. Probably no more than one or two of one's classmates were actually sociopaths. And they're probably in prison now, not running round going to reunions.
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Oh, sure, the insurers in the US are total fuckers. But don't think that NZ doesn't have delays in treating cancer patients. Flights to Australia for chemo ring any bells?
Really? That's TERRIBLE and shouldn't happen.
At the same time, I'd give excellent odds that a flight to Australia + accommodation + chemo costs is still easier on the wallet than out-of-pocket chemo costs for an insured American. It's sick all round.
(The private cost of procedure X in NZ is often lower than the out-of-pocket cost of X for an insured American. Probably the same for other countries too. This is one of the things that make me extra-mad about Americans who tell stories about how their old granny suffered on a waiting list under universal medial care. Why didn't you just send her a bit of money to go private, you unbelievable asshole?)