A few minor changes to the links page: I removed the seemingly moribund nowhere near, and added a link to Pete Bevin's blog. Click on the link a couple of times so that thingo shows up in his access logs. Then he'll come over here and read this. Hi Pete!

I'm still writing writing writing my dissertation, and I'm happy to say that it's going reasonably well.

As for miracles, I have two to report, both concerning water. The first is a weeping Madonna statue. This one is totally fictional, and it comes from Carl Hiaasen's book Lucky You, which I'm reading slowly when I have a free moment. My brother got me and Nath started on Hiaasen with Sick Puppy, and we've read many of his books since then. They're quite funny. One note: they tend to be stocked in the Mystery and Detective section of the bookstore, so don't expect to see them in general fiction.

The other miracle concerns our Brita pitcher. We have what appears to be a perfectly normal Brita water filter/pitcher thingy, except many of you know that it has always poured very slowly. We figured we got a bad model year or something, and pored over the poor pouring problem for a long time. Today, after replacing the filter (which we do regularly), we noticed that the Brita has inexplicably begun to work properly! This is a wonderful turn of events, but will also require some adjustment -- we're so used to it pouring slowly that I'm sure we'll overflow many glasses. In any case, it's a miracle! Maybe I should check the discarded filter for the face of Jesus.

I just received an announcement from an acquaintance telling me that he is now a she. She asked a group of people to please start using her new name now that it (the sex change) is official.

Why am I writing this down? Is it because I'm shocked and dismayed? No, not particularly. I wish nothing but the best for people who know with such certainty who they want to be. Is it because I delight in perversion, kinkiness, and fringe culture, and want to relate this tawdry tale? Well, whatever my delights, they aren't relevant here; as far as I'm concerned, sexual reassignment is a corrective measure that realigns an individual's body with their body image. Nothing tawdry about that.

No, the real reason I wanted to mention this story is that it's the second such announcement I've received in three days. I got a very similar email from a different formerly male acquaintance a few days ago.

The sudden acceleration in the emergence of transsexuals in my life certainly gives me pause. Is this a new trend I didn't read about in the latest magazines? Something I missed by not watching enough television? I suddenly feel so unhip (okay, the feeling isn't really that sudden). Most importantly, if this is a trend, who's next? News comes in threes, so surely I can expect at least one more announcement in the next few days. Who will it be? Will it be me? Am I transsexual? I don't think so, but apparently it's more common in my peer group than I would have guessed. Or maybe I'm just succumbing to peer pressure. Rest assured: if I become a woman, I'll do it for my own personal reasons, not because someone said I should.

Anyway, expect continued sporadicity in the coming weeks. Some of you know that I did in fact pass my PhD defense earlier this week. That leaves the writing of the dissertation, which normally would be nearly done at this point but in my case is not. So for a little while longer my writing efforts will be focused on the dissertation and not thingo. But I'll be sure to post an announcement if any big life changes happen. I'm talking about the baby coming, not a sex change, you doofus.

The title of this post betrays the fact that again, I don't have any particular point upon which to hold forth. I wanted to check in so that thingo does not remain, as Doug so eloquently put it in a different context, moribund.

I was away at conferences for about ten days, and it was pretty grueling. A week in San Antonio, followed by three days in Baltimore. Both places were hot and humid, certainly a depressing contrast to the beautiful weather in the northwest. San Antonio has the Riverwalk, its new pride and joy, and it's really quite pleasant as long as you're not trying to shoulder your way through the throngs of wall-to-wall, slow-moving, and somewhat vapid tourists. I don't know what Baltimore has, because I spent all my time on the campus of Towson University, an experience that I don't recommend to anyone. The Glen Towers residence hall seems designed to bludgeon freshmen into empty resignation, stripping them of mental, spiritual, and physical health. The residence towers represent the height of post World War II European construction, stultifying concrete grids of prefabricated apartment modules. The cafeteria establishes a new low for the worst crimes of institutional dining. I imagine the only thing that saves the students who spend a year there is that they are buoyed by the excitement of moving away from their parents' homes. Lots of trees and high-speed internet connections were the high points, I guess. And excellent laundry machines. Oh, and the conference was pretty good too.

Now that I'm back, I'm once again in a blackout period, so expect very little posting here at thingo central. But stay tuned for more updates down the road.