Status report

I mentioned yesterday the gleeful swimming activity with Kitten. Much fun to watch, as I played catch-up on work I didn’t get done on Wednesday.

After all that was over, we then spent half the day shopping. Some Hawaiian shirts for me (since the boss informed us this meeting all next week is “ultra-casual”). Another swim suit for Kitten (she’s a 4 now, and trending out of it; she’ll easily be a 5 by the summer). Some sports sandals for me (off to Dizzyland today). A cordless mouse for Jim & Ginger. A wireless router that I can hook to their DSL line and get broadband off of my own notebook. Little things like that.

Anyway, we did enough walking, and little enough snacking, that I was able to indulge in some BBQ steak and Jim’s cottage fries (Made with Real Bacon Fat! Accept No Substitutes!) without blowing the diet.

Always enjoy reading the LA Times when we’re out here, for the volume if not the coverage. Ran across a news tidbit about my alma mater, Pomona College, being wracked with protests after a racial incident. Of course, some folks thought it might be a hoax …

Students said two theories are floating around campus. One is that whoever vandalized the professor’s car was working with an off-campus hate group. The other is that students interested in promoting a discussion of racism staged the incident to provoke an outcry.
“It’s Machiavellian, but we don’t want to be stupid about it,” said McDonald.
But Lindsey Wollschlager, 21, a Pomona history major from Cannon Falls, Minn., dismissed the idea of a hoax. She said that for someone to raise the possibility was “so sick. They are in denial. People don’t want to accept that a well-educated, liberal community can have hate.”

Of course, it now turns out that it was a hoax, put together by the alleged vicim.

Allow me to say that I find such fear-mongering, whether for self-aggrandizement or simply to “make a point,” to be as despicable as the sort of hateful events that such hoaxes are meant to simulate, both because of the manipulating of emotions that takes place (just was a hate crime is also supposed to engender), but because it acts as a Cry Wolf event for other, legitimate victims. I hope they fire the ass of the professor involved.

Aside from that, things are going well. More (maybe) later …