Focus, instead, upon honing your ability to cope with the normal, easily anticipated, eternal complications of your work. Calluses defend what no glove could protect.

It Has Always Been Thus. We yearn for liberation, expecting the good guys to ride in on foaming horses or the eleventh hour benefactor to magically appear. Fortunate synchronicity when it occurs. No evidence of bad luck when it does not.

The game of Three Card Monty is not a game of skill for anyone but the one inviting you to play. They've learned to tickle your switches. Can you recognize when someone is tickling yours?

Crash is mostly sociable. He seems pleased whenever either one of us returns, but also crying plaintively as if mourning. I've taken to offering a few kitty treats when I return, which, I know!, encourages infantile behavior. I scratch heads and switch out their water bowl for some cold water from the filter pitcher from the fridge. I don't expect them to drink the musty tap water here either.

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Carry Your Own Water, Cook Your Own Food refers to more than toting and frying. It relates to a self-sufficiency, responsible for its own sustenance, not dependent upon servants, slaves, or supplicants to tend to basic needs. Slip over here for more ...

If only every map-maker was this thoughtful. It seems to me that every map suffers from the same shortcoming as Prague's. Whether it's a hastily-drawn scribble intended to guide someone to the neighborhood deli or some laminated intended-to-be permanent portrait of a city's streets, it's wrong, and wrong in some indefinable but none-the-less situationally significant aspect. The value of each incorrect projection ultimately depends upon the perspective of the user, not the accuracy of the map.

And there's no better perspective for any map user than the one reminding themselves that the guide they are following is wrong in some indefinable way. This to avoid over-dependence and to help each remain open to accepting the unavoidable misunderstandings encountered when following any map. Slip over here for more ...