plumtreeblossom and I are here in New York. Our hotel (which we got on Priceline) is excellent. We're staying at Gild Hall (NB spelling) in the Financial District. The room is just really pleasant and comfy, and the staff are friendly and relaxed and very helpful. It was a really good deal.

Our bus ride down was nice (despite me running very late and almost making us miss the bus). The bus wasn't full, and it was didn't smell bad, and it got us here in very good time, so it was a pretty good Fung Wah experience.

(I basically skimmed LJ on the bus because my net connectivity wasn't very good, by the way, so feel free to call my attention to anything you particularly want me to see.)

We had a very good dinner (actually it was breakfast for me since I hadn't managed to get food before getting to the station in Boston, and the bus didn't stop on the way) at a Sichuan place right next to the bus drop-off. I had particularly good General Tso's and dun dun noodles, and our fried pork dumplings were quite possibly the best I've had; I usually like them steamed but I'm glad plumtreeblossom wanted them fried.

Then we made our way to the hotel, which took a bit of wandering around because Google Maps had a confused idea of the street numbers, and checked in and unloaded. On our way from the subway to the hotel we had discovered that there's a small branch of the Strand in the neighbourhood, so we spent a couple hours there. (I picked up a book on the history of the English language, I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang, on which the nearly eponymous movie is based, and a book about the prehistoric origins of language, as well as a few post cards. We both got Strand messenger bags to carry our haul away in.

Then we stopped in at an Irish pub around the corner from the hotel. We were a bit underdressed; I wasn't even wearing a tie. The place was very nice, with very traditional décor, and the bartender was friendly, but things shut down very early. At 9 when we got there, there were three or four other clumps of people; by 10 when we left there was only one, and the staff was cleaning tables and putting stuff away. At 10pm on a Friday night. We felt like we were back in Boston! I guess the place caters to the after-work crowd.

(After close to twenty years in Boston, it feels weird to be someplace where people are cheering the Yankees.)

Anyway, delightful trip so far!

So a few months ago I read Stiff: The Curious History of Human Cadavers, by the smart, funny, and irreverent Mary Roach. I loved it.

Today, on my way home from dropping plumtreeblossom off at her house, I overheard on NPR that Mary Roach had a new book out about the science of sex. It’s called Bonk.

You can bet I placed an order as soon as I got home.

Aargh. I recently tried to get in touch with my doctor about getting a referral for a sleep study, to discover she is no longer practicing (or if she is, not through Fenway, and I don’t have a way of getting in touch with her).

cathijosephine had previously given me a glowing recommendation for her doctor, Kevin Kapila, who also works with Fenway. He sounded perfect for me in a number of ways. Tragically, I just discovered from his office that he’s no longer seeing new patients. (cathijosephine, if you want to ask about that next time you see him, in case his receptionist is more certain he’s not taking new patients than he is, I’d be delighted.)

So, looks like I’m in the market for a new doctor. Any recommendations? Here are my preference, in approximate order of importance. Note that only the top few are absolutely essential.

• Is taking new patients. :-(
• Takes Blue Cross (is there anybody who doesn’t?)
• In reasonable walking distance either from my house near Quincy Center or from Northeastern University (or T-accessible on a lunch hour from the latter).
• Can get me a sleep-study referral quickly.
• Will share information with me, take things I say seriously, and generally not talk down to me.
• Is comfortable with queer, poly, kinky patients.
• Will want to take his/her time with me when we have appointments.
• Is email-accessible, and willing to do quick simple followup things via email or the phone.
• Can make appointments for relatively urgent stuff in a timely fashion.
• Takes a relatively holistic approach to his/her patients’ health. (For instance, my previous PCP wanted to know about emotional stresses in my life in case they were affecting my health.)
• Is affiliated with Fenway Community Health. (I’m assuming this would make the transition go more smoothly.)
• Is willing to give me advice and not write me off if I don’t take it. (For instance, I’m not going to give up salt or red meat, or stop going out in the sun without sunscreen, even though I know those things might be better for me. I’m happy to hear that they would be better for me, but then I don’t want to fight about it.

I’ve meant to post this for a while. The mortgage broker I used to buy my new house in Quincy, John Briggs of First Capital Mortgage Group, is absolutely fantastic, and if you need a mortgage you should definitely contact him. ( His contact info and some more detail. )

(I heard of him because he was cathijosephine’s mortgage broker.)

I was also very pleased with ( my home inspector ).

Howdy. Here are a few links I’ve seen in other people’s journals through which you can donate to organizations helping with disaster relief after the devastating tsunami in south and southeast Asia:

• Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). They’re who I’m about to donate to. (Thanks to derien for the mention.)
• American Friends Service Committee, as recommended by bubblebabble.
• And Amazon currently have a button to donate to the American Red Cross on their front page. I personally don’t like Amazon as a company, and have very mild pricklies about the Red Cross, but I didn’t want to leave that link out.
• Edit: Wex and simonbillenness suggest Oxfam America; see their comments below. simonbillenness works for them. If I’d thought of them earlier I might have given to them instead of MSF, or split my contribution.
• Edit: keyne points to the American Institute of Philanthropy’s article “The Best Way to Assist in Providing Emergency Relief in Southeast Asia”, which lists and rates charitable organizations helping with the relief effort.

If people have links to donate to other organizations that they strongly recommend, please comment with links (and I may edit this post to include them).

In case I don’t have all your contact information, here’s a form where you can give it to me. Obviously, you don’t need to answer a question if either (1) you don’t want me to contact you that way, or (2) you’re sure I already have correct, current information on how to contact you that way. This poll is an adjunct to the one in this post where I ask how you prefer to be contacted. ( What’s your contact information? )

Once upon a time, email was the best and almost only way I communicated with anybody. This was before mobile phones were common and before spam existed, during and shortly after college. Most of my friends preferred email, too, and I got out of the habit of using the phone. But email seems not to be as overwhelmingly good a communication medium these days, for a number of reasons. So I’m realizing I no longer know the best ways to contact my friends, and I thought I’d fix that.

Behind the cut is a poll asking you how you do and don’t like to be contacted. I’d be very grateful if my friends would fill out the poll. (If you don’t want to fill out the poll or you don’t have a LiveJournal account, feel free to send me email telling me how you prefer to be contacted.)

Because it occurred to me that this would be just as useful for other people as for me, the poll results are publically visible. However, I have not asked for any actual contact information (phone numbers, IRC networks/channels, etc.). I’ll ask for them in a separate poll whose results are only visible to me (and of course you don’t need to respond if you’re certain I have your contact information.)

( How do/don’t you like to be contacted? )

Somebody recently asked me the name of the hot tub place in Allston, which I didn't know off the top of my head. I hope that somebody is somebody who reads my journal, because I have no idea who it was, and I can't find the mail. (I asked them to drop me a note to remind me to look it up.)

In case you're reading this, the answer (thanks to Bearpaw) is

Um, I think it was either "Body Mechanics" or "Tubs & Rubs". It was one and they changed it to the other, I forget.

(and I've discovered that it's now Body Mechanics).

Hmmm... How many people who read my journal would be interested in an outing there? There are enough people with hot tubs in our circle that I'm not sure of the appeal, but on the other hand, calling people up and saying "hey, can I come soak in your hot tub" is a little inappropriate.

I really miss the hot tub we had at the place on Mission Hill. I think I will finally feel entirely settled in here in this house if/when we get a hot tub.

Stalin is reputed to have said, "People who vote do not matter. People who count votes matter."

Slashdot had a thread today titled "E-voting Patches Skew Election?" (here's a link with lots of comments, and here's a link with just the more highly rated comments). This is a topic I've heard a bit about before, but it's not getting nearly as much press as it needs. Basically, the electronic voting machines being widely introduced around the country (1) are extremely insecure, as reported by security researchers in academia who stumbled across the code, (2) seem to be designed in a way that specifically makes tampering easy to do and hard to detect (as I understand it, votes are stored in two duplicate Microsoft Access databases; all the spot-checking that can be done on-site is done against one of the databases, but the final tally is done against the other database; if any argument has been made for why it's useful to have two separate databases that are supposed to contain the same data, I haven't read it), (3) provide no audit trail, and (4) are manufactured by Diebold, a company with strong Republican ties and whose CEO is a high-level Republican fundraiser. So, it would be easy for the results to be altered, there is no way the public would be able to tell if the results were altered, and the people with access to the machines have some incentive to alter the results.

Maybe we need some election observers from Zimbabwe or Cuba or Azerbaijan to help guarantee a free and fair election in this country.