the_gneech: (Default)
Taken with my phone and scrunched down for the web.

Judiciary Square Metro Station, just off the train, just queuing to get up to the street. XD
Judiciary Square Metro Station, Women's March 2017

Portapotty lines on the National Mall. XD John Kerry walked by to unending cheers while we were in line, but I didn't get my phone out in time to get a good picture.
National Mall crowds, Women's March 2017

National Mall displays. Women's rights were a major theme, as to be expected, but things like the emoluments clause of the Constitution and environmentalism were also common threads.
National Mall protest displays, Women's March 2017

Scaffold camping. My impression was that the scaffolding was left over from the previous day's inauguration ceremonies and these people just climbed up on it for visibility.
Protestors on a scaffold, National Mall, Women's March 2017

Waiting for the march to start. There were more than twice as many attendees as projected, so the march got a late start as police and organizers split it up into effectively two marches. So there was a lot of milling around while that happened. You can see the National Museum of the American Indian in the background.
National Mall crowds, Women's March 2017

Wonder Woman signs were a recurring motif. I heard there were Supergirl signs too, but other than one cape I didn't see them.
Wonder Woman and women's rights are a natural combination. National Mall, Women's March 2017

Beginning to march. Going north on 3rd St, facing the Mall here. We were a little confused, as the march was scheduled to go down Jefferson, but all became clear in just a few minutes.
National Mall, Women's March 2017

"Holy crap, we're marching down Pennsylvania Avenue!" You can't really make it out in this shot, but those stands that were so empty during the inauguration? Not empty on Saturday.
Pennsylvania Avenue, Women's March 2017

Here's a zoom-in on the last shot to give a better view of the stand. All along the route these were well-populated by march supporters.
Well-populated grandstands, Women's March 2017

Pennsylvania Avenue, facing the Capitol Building. The marchers just keep on coming.
Pennsylvania Avenue, Women's March 2017

7th and Penn, still marching.
7th and Pennsylvania Avenue, Women's March 2017

14th Street, the march stops because the Ellipse is full. Facing south between Penn and F.
14th Street, Women's March 2017

The march was theoretically supposed to go to the Ellipse (a large public area across the street from the White House), but Laurie's knee was giving out at this stage, and it was just too crowded to get any closer, so we decided it was time to start making our way home at this point. We ended up walking to the McPherson Square Metro Station because we couldn't get into Metro Center from above, and riding the Silver Line to reconnect with the Red Line home. Fortunately, WMATA was in excellent form, and we actually managed to get on the next train, despite Metro Center being packed to capacity.

I have many and varied thoughts about the march, but I am glad I went, and I'm grateful to all the organizers, the millions of other people who marched worldwide, and to Laurie for getting us involved in the first place.

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Cramer Crap)
So, the first week of the rest of my life has not gone anywhere near like what I expected. In fact, it's largely been a giant not-so-hot mess, triggered mostly by the government shutdown.

I was prepared for a certain amount of stress, around the issue of the house not moving. I was not prepared for the House republicans to shove a potato into the tailpipe of the car of state in what I can only see as a seditious attempt to thwart what is the by-the-book established law of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. "Obamacare"). The unbelievable gall of those self-same republicans to then claim that "Obama isn't willing to negotiate" and that "they didn't want the shutdown" is disgusting. There's lying, and then there's just being insulting.

You don't negotiate with someone trying to burn down your house. The best summary I've seen of things so far goes like this:

"We want to burn down your house."

"No."

"Can we burn down the garage?"

"No."

"How about just the attic?"

"No."

"Well let's talk about the parts of your house we can burn down."

"No."

"YOU'RE NOT COMPROMISING!"


The shutdown is being orchestrated by a small handful of zealots who don't care who they hurt (and from their press, apparently don't believe they're actually hurting people) to score points. They're doing this, of course, because they cannot get Obamacare by any legitimate means. All 500 babillion attempts they made to strike the law were non-starters. With the entire appratchik of Fox News, right-wing radio pundits, and the old media smear machine, they can't seem to convince the country that "poor people being able to get healthcare" is a bad thing.

Here's where we get to how this impacts [livejournal.com profile] lythandra and me specifically: the contractor where she works (and I did until Monday) cannot bill 90% of its clients during the shutdown. This comes on the heel of one government agency already not paying the company millions of dollars it legally owes because apparently the contract officer is barking mad and just doesn't want to.

So, when the shutdown happened, the contractor said, "Unpaid leave for everypony! YOU get unpaid leave, and YOU get unpaid leave..."

So where we had been expecting our income to get halved, it instead got obliterated completely. :P

We are hopeful that if and when the rest of congress comes to its senses and fixes the mess, the contractor will get up to speed and pay Laurie what it owes her. But there's no guarantee of that.

So on Wednesday, while going on a walk for a little exercise and to relieve some stress, Laurie and I came upon a couple in the park, who were joined by a Herndon policeman, all of whom were attempting to rescue three kittens from a tree (with a fourth kitten on the ground nearby). This was not an easily-climbable tree (as the man of the couple discovered, getting a fractured elbow in the process), and the kittens were quite high up (roughly 8' and 16', respectively)... but there was no sign of any mother. The cop managed to get the lowest kitten down, and Laurie and I volunteered to take the kittens back to our house and return with a ladder to get the other two.

The woman of the couple had apparently been out performing her profession of part-time dog-walker when the kitten on the ground had basically come running to her meowing in distress, and led her to the tree with the others. That a kitten would approach a person leading a dog shows you the level of desperation the poor kitties had reached.

We put the first two kittens (provisionally named Sweetie and Inky) into the library, which we had already set up as a cat quarantine zone for showing the house, then returned to the park as quickly as we could with a ladder. The cop, being the youngest and fittest of the bunch, climbed up the ladder, with me close behind to hold things steady and act as kitten-catcher, and retrieved the other two (which for lack of better names were called Fluffy and Other-Inky). We then gave our contact info to the couple and brought the other two kittens home.



Unfortunately, we discovered after the fact that the kittens all had a quite severe flea infestation, especially Fluffy, whose long hair gave the little bastards lots of hiding places. So we were up until the Whee! hours on Wednesday night transferring the kittens to the downstairs bathroom (no rug) and shampooing the heck out of them. I will never forget the sight of swarms of fleas climbing all over the kittens' faces to escape drowning as we submerged their bodies into the warm water of the sink. :( It was horrifying.

So yesterday we took the kittens to our local vet (fortunately just a few blocks away) where they got thorough examinations, claws trimmed, and flea-removal treatment. Upon hearing that the kittens were rescues, the vet office very kindly charged us for a "new litter examination" (even though the kittens are probably about 8 weeks old) instead of charging us examinations for each individual cat as they normally would. It turns out that one of the black cats is female, but the other three are all males. So their names have been provisionally been altered to Fluffs, Sweetums (or Sweets), Inkyboy, and Inkygirl.

Today we need to flea-bomb the library just to make sure, so we can move the kittens back up there. (It's a much homier space than the downstairs bathroom.) We also need to start looking into working with Fancy Cats or someone similar to find good homes.

I also need to actually do some, y'know, writing, Laurie and I both need to do some job-hunting (sigh), and I've got to call my mom and sister about getting mom's assisted living arrangements made. It's already Friday, and I have accomplished precious little in my plans. Cripes, how did I ever live with a full-time job? And how am I gonna keep living without one?

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Writing)

As I transition from hobbyist to pro in the writerly field, it occurs to me that I should have a few more beta readers. I currently have a small-but-dedicated pool of folks who I toss writing fragments, ideas, or even whole stories at for feedback, approval, or general tearing-apartness, and while they do a fine job, I would still like to have a few more different perspectives on things. My projects are going to get larger in scope and (hopefully) require more rigorous editing, so a few more eyes on it would be welcome.

The requirements are:

  • A LiveJournal account. I put my beta-reader posts on my LJ, locked to a custom list, so you’ll have to have an account to see them.
  • The ability to articulate specifically what you like or don’t like about an idea or piece of writing. Neither “It rules!” nor “It sucks!” are particularly useful bits of feedback, while “I couldn’t make out who was supposed to be speaking each line in the interchange between Alex and Susan…” is. Also, while I’m not looking for people to just savage everything I write, the ability to be (gently) ruthless in the search of quality is a big plus.
  • You actually check LJ from time to time. ;) Since the posts are closed, there won’t be Twitter announcements or the like for them.

The benefits are:

…uh…

You get to see the messy, unfinished part of my work? And listen to me ramble about the process, even more than I already do here?

Okay, yeah, it’s kind of a hard sell. But there are folks who like that sort of thing. ;)

Seriously tho, if you’re interested, please shoot me an e-mail at thegneech@gmail.com or leave a comment in my LiveJournal.

Suicide Prevention Walk

This Saturday (September 28th), Mrs. Gneech and I will both be participating in the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention fundraising walk at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. If you’d like to help out or join in, please check out my fundraising goal page for details. This is the first time I’ve done one of these, but having lost a friend to suicide, it’s a cause I’d really like to help with. Big thanks to everyone involved!

That’s all for now! Keep being awesome, everyone. :)

-The Gneech

Originally published at gneech.com. You can comment here or there.

April 2025

S M T W T F S
  1 2345
6789 101112
13141516171819
20 212223242526
27282930   

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Aug. 6th, 2025 12:27 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios