Happy hour @ The Reef, etc.

Man, people are prolific posters Monday afternoon through Tuesday morning--at least 100 entries between 1700 and 1000.

Took Metro into DC, walked to Christine's building, waited there for her, then waited for antikate and Erika to arrive, then walked toward The Reef in Adams Morgan. Along the way, they were accosted by a stylish young man offering Free Haircare And Spa Treatment to Just Ten Women Today and he only had Three Flyers Left, except it later came to light that the deal, while good, wasn't Free, but instead Sixty Dollars Payable Right Now for Three Hundred Dollars Worth of Services At Any Time. Unsurprisingly, they passed on Such A Deal. We continued the hike to The Reef, then up to the roof, then whiled away a couple hours with several other friends (including Aaron, Faye, Stef, Bill, and a handful of forgotten names), tasty food and drink, and only a spattering of rain.

On the way out, C&I stopped in the main room of The Reef, replete with a saltwater aquarium between each pair of booths and a couple more in the middle of the floor--plenty of gorgeous fish, anemones, and shrimp. (Those are, in fact, why they chose the Reef as the location of their bi-weekly happy hour. :)

Come morning, we whipped up a tasty breakfast of ham and egg sandwiches and coffee, and I made it back to the Springfield Metro -just- in time to have to pay for parking. (They start charging at 09, I left at 0905.) Stopped at Petsmart on the way home, picked up three dozen crickets, some superworms, and a treat/food for Lucy, then visited their little severe macaw and chatted with the bird/specialty guy for a while before heading home.

Nathan's home today--apparently his sore throat yesterday progressed into something more incapacitating. Boy's sick a lot more often than I am, that's for sure.

Olympic Bacchanalia, and another attack on gay rights

From michaelduff: Let the Games Begin.
At the Albertville winter Olympics, condom machines in the athletes’ village had to be refilled every two hours. And in Sydney the organisers’ original order of 70,000 condoms went so fast that they had to order 20,000 more.
And sex is only one part of the debauchery! Delightful. :)

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In heavier news:

H.R. 3313 would prevent federal courts from ruling on challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a bill passed in 1996 which allows states to deny recognition to same-sex couples legally married in other states. That's to say, "[Anti-gay-rights advocates in Congress] are now pushing a bill that would prevent same-sex couples from going to federal court to challenge laws that discriminate against them. The House is about to vote on this bill."

Text of the bill is available from http://thomas.loc.gov, search on HR3313.

..the fuck? "Let's place the laws we create above review by any court"? Contact your Representative, folks. Apparently the rout on the Federal Marriage Amendment last week wasn't clear enough. I just called Rep. Tom Davis's office, explained to the receptionist that I was a constituent and where I lived, and asked Davis to "Vote NO on the Marriage Protection Act - H.R. 3313," as suggested by the email I received from MoveOn.org.

QC!

Questionable Content is a delightful comic, that I think the following people, at least, would enjoy:
antikate, baranoouji, beracjade, blistex, deusinnomen, elf, idoru, jazzfish, jude, sylvie, vampirekat, weeping_angel, xviragox

Humor reminiscent of Scary Go Round/Bobbins and Sam & Fuzzy, pokes fun at goths and indie kids. Start at the beginning, both to get backstory and to avoid starting in the middle of guest strips. :)

Link correction, job search steps

All those folks to whom I recommended Questionable Content earlier: The address is questionablecontent.net, not .com.

Filled out and faxed the application paperwork to Mickey at ADIC; hopefully that'll bear fruit soon. :) (Did you know that FedEx bought Kinko's within the past year? I hadn't realized.)

Also, emailed Dr. Gehman @ NAVSEA re: USAjobs.com submission, at mom's suggestion. (Since outside paper resumes are no good there and all applying must be done through the website, she figures that the interested internal parties might be able to fetch it directly now.)

(Also, filed for four weeks' worth of unemployment, since I hadn't yet done that and I've been called by the VA Employment Office at least once suggesting I do so. Might as well--free money, after all, assuming I'm job-searching to their standards. :)