Joss Whedon's endorsement of Mitt Romney

Please vote!

As we mentioned last week, Girl Museum has been accepted to compete for the GOOD Maker Challenge to Empower Women and Girls, a $2500 grant that's voted on by the public--which means your vote will help us win! Voting is open from today until November 2nd. You can only vote once, so please spread the word and ask your friends, neighbors, and your classmates and/or workmates to do the same. We can't win without your support!

To vote for Celebrate Girlhood: The Exhibition, visit Girl Museum's project page and click “Vote for this Idea.” If you need to register, please remember to validate your email address (you’ll receive instructions after you vote) so your vote gets counted. You’ll see a notification at the top of the screen once your vote has been successfully counted (you'll also see this notification on later page visits to confirm that you've voted).

As always, thank you for your support!

Help Girl Museum win $2500

GOOD news! Girl Museum has been accepted to compete for the GOOD Maker Challenge to Empower Women and Girls. If we win, we'll be awarded $2500 to create Celebrate Girlhood: The Exhibition. The grant would allow us to produce the resources needed to directly work with girls worldwide to create this on-going exhibition.

But we need your help to win. GOOD Maker grants are voted on by the public, so the only way we can win is with your help and your vote. This grant would go a long way in helping Girl Museum to fulfil our mission of celebrating and empowering girls worldwide, so please, vote for us, and ask your friends, your neighbors, and your classmates and/or workmates to do the same. We need your support!

Voting is from from October 18th until November 2nd, 2012. Our GOOD Maker page is here for more information and voting.

With your support, Girl Museum is always open and always free.

Frustration abounds

So I should be writing about my trip, with nearly missed flights and nosy US Border Patrol agents, a beautiful wedding, and fabulous friends, but I'm not. I should write about my new job, or buying archery equipment, but I'm not. I'm cranky, so I'll write about that.

Upstairs has been stomping and banging and yelling and playing the radio too loud, generally pushing me toward a lengthy jail sentence. Graze, which is a really cool "food through the post" thing, screwed up and didn't send us the two boxes I ordered for delivery today. So instead of trying to send them for tomorrow (or even Friday) they cancelled the order--but as an apology, they're giving us a free box. Too bad I didn't get the two boxes I actually needed for today. I'll see what Adam has to say, but I'll probably be contacting them to point out that I ordered two boxes because I had a plan for them, and now I have to make other plans, so please give me a second credit.

LoveFilm, in their infinite wisdom, decided to send us a disc from Lexx. Unlike Netflix, where you can choose the order you want to see movies in, LoveFilm only allows prioritization. I can rank a title as a high, medium, or low, priority, but I can't say that I want to see Batman Begins next, followed by Battlestar Galactica. Or whatever. Because LoveFilm only seems to have 1 copy of the fourth season of OZ (the HBO prison show, not an L. Frank Baum reinterpretation), we keep getting stuff off our medium priority list, so they sent us Lexx. That would be fine, except they didn't send us the first disc of the series. They sent the last. This is in direct disregard of their own rules, which say they'll send discs in series order (Netflix did this to me a lot with Andromeda. Needless to say, that also pissed me off). So it looks like I'll be contacting them and complaining, especially as they're beginning to throttle our service again and we're no longer getting discs in a timely manner.

We're also being screwed by our energy provider, who wants to raise our direct debit by over half because their website has only allowed me to submit a meter reading once (I've been trying for months and it's always given me a "sorry, try again later" message) and they never send out a meter-reader. As such, we've been on an "estimated" reading for about a year, and now they want to screw us with that. Fixed direct debit my ass. "Fixed" means you don't change the rate after two months.

Lastly, someone sold our phone number all over. We're on the TPS (Telephone Preference Service), which is the stupidly named equivalent of the US's Do Not Call list. Before we changed phone numbers, we got called left, right, and center for a previous owner of the number, even with multiple requests to the same people to stop calling because she doesn't have the number anymore. With the new number we were blessedly free of such things (the previous people had registered it to the TPS as well). Then suddenly, we started getting called by a "Windows Technical Support" scam that claims to be operating under Microsoft. We got loads of these with the old number, but for the last several months we've been blessedly free of such calls. But now they're back again, so I'm having to unplug the phone before going to bed so we're not brutally awakened at 7:55am by someone wanting us to either take a survey (which Adam may have successfully dealt with today but I haven't been able to because they're so slow on picking up the line when I answer) or wanting to sell us "tech support."

I should be a happier person, but I've been able to get absolutely nothing done today because of upstairs (who have been at it for over 9 hours now), then being screwed by various companies to which I give money, but do not have to. The one bright bit of news, however, is that Adam and I are finally--almost--the proud owners of Starfarers of Catan, which is an incredibly hard to find game by Klaus Teuber and Mayfair Games. It's out of print and it generally goes for about $150 on eBay, which is far more than I'm willing to pay. But Adam and I managed to snag a copy for $50 plus shipping. Well, almost. We actually bought Die Sternenfahrer Von Cataan. Thankfully, the owner threw in the English translation booklet as well. My German is limited to say the least, but is more than Adam has, who is only capable of ordering a beer. Admittedly, that is a necessary skill, but I can also swear, which is also a useful skill.

2012 Reading List: September

SEPTEMBER

42. Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins, (Book 2 of The Hunger Games)
41. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins (Book 1 of The Hunger Games)
40. *Search the Shadows, by Barbara Michaels (sure I've read this before, but I don't remember it. Barbara Michaels and Elizabeth Peters are both pen names--and very different styles--of Barbara Mertz)
39. *The Laughter of Dead Kings, by Elizabeth Peters

38. Dark Matter: A Ghost Story, by Michelle Paver (for reading group)

AUGUST

37. The Age of Ra, by James Lovegrove (Book 1 of the Pantheon Trilogy)

36. Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse, by Max Brallier (an adult "choose-your-own-adventure")

35.  The Alchemyst: The Secrets of The Immortal Nicholas Flamel, by Michael Scott (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel Series #1)

34.  The Walking Dead Volume 6: This Sorrowful Life, by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn (graphic novel)

33.  The Walking Dead Volume 5: The Best Defense, by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn (graphic novel)

32.  The Pull of the Moon, by Diane Janes (for reading group)

JULY

31.  The Antelope Wife, by Louise Erdrich

30.  The Unseen, by Katherine Webb

29.  Mr. Monk on the Road, by Lee Goldberg (Mr. Monk Series #11) (these are original storylines, not novelizations of TV episodes)

28.  Snuff, by Terry Pratchett (Discworld #39)

JUNE

27.  Thanksgiving, by Janet Evanovich

26.  Hero at Large, by Janet Evanovich

25.  The Twisted Tale of Stormy Gale, by Christine Bell (Stormy Gale #1)

24.  Spying in High Heels, by Gemma Halliday (High Heels Mysteries #1)

MAY

23.  *Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank

22.  Divorced, Desperate and Delicious, by Christie Craig (Divorced and Desperate Series?)

21.  The Walking Dead Volume 4: The Heart's Desire, by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn (graphic novel)

20.  The Walking Dead Volume 3: Safety Behind Bars, by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn (graphic novel)

19.  Assassin's Quest, by Robin Hobb (The Farseer Trilogy Book #3)

18.  The Walking Dead Volume 2: Miles Behind Us, by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn (graphic novel)

17.  Futurama Adventures, by Matt Groening et. al. (compliation of five Futurama comic books)

APRIL

16.  The Walking Dead Volume 1: Days Gone Bye, by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore (graphic novel)

15.  Serenity: Better Days 1-3, by Joss Whedon, Brett Matthews, Will Conrad and Adam Hughes (comic book "mini series")

14.  The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party, by Alexander McCall Smith (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Series #12)

13.  Royal Assassin, by Robin Hobb (The Farseer Trilogy Book #2)

12.  The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe

MARCH

11.  Moon Over Soho, by Ben Aaronovitch (Peter Grant Series #2)

10.  Assassin's Apprentice, by Robin Hobb (The Farseer Trilogy Book #1)

9.  Obsidian Butterfly, by Laurell K. Hamilton (Anita Blake #9)

FEBRUARY

8.  Blue Moon, by Laurell K. Hamilton (Anita Blake #8)

7.  *Night Train to Memphis, by Elizabeth Peters (Vicky Bliss #5)

6.  *Trojan Gold, by Elizabeth Peters (Vicky Bliss #4)

5.  Burnt Offerings, by Laurell K. Hamilton (Anita Blake #7)

JANUARY

4.  The Crimson Petal and the White, by Michel Faber

3.  Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter, by A. E. Moorat (pen name of Andrew Holmes, it appears)

2.  *A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

1.  Heat Rises, by "Richard Castle" (Nikki Heat Series #3) (Best guess at ghostwriter: Tom Straw)