Them's the breaks.

Something to file either under "making the best of a less than ideal situation" or "I am exactly where I need to be/I need to be exactly where I am"... being unable to get the next chapter of Tales of MU posted when I felt I was ready to and wanted to left me with most of a day to look at it and think about it, and I realized a couple of things.

I've had a scheme in mind for a while of how to make working ahead work for me, and I have yet to put it into practice... but this chapter, which was a good longish one, was as good a chance as any. Second is that while it can be satisfying to introduce a conflict/situation and have it resolved by the end of the same post, it doesn't really play to the strengths of my chosen format.

So for the second time in a row, I broke the chapter up. This time the break involved more material that's already written on both sides of the break (rather than being forced to find a stopping point, as I did last week). This means I'm most of one update ahead... I say "most of" because with extra time to sit on the next chapter before I post it, there will be opportunities to rework it for the better.

A small personal victory: while I felt guilty about breaking in a different place than where I'd planned to last time, this time I simply feel a sense of satisfaction at having arrived at a sensible decision.

I'm going to wrap this post up. We're still in the car for another hour or two, and spots of network connectivity come and go rather quickly around these parts.

Sad thing, happy thing.

Sad thing: My collar (Jack's, really) is lost somewhere between here and Tupelo. It was old when he put it on me four months ago, and we both knew it was going to wear out sooner rather than later. I'd hoped to be able to use what was left of it as a bracelet or something, but it seems it came undone unnoticed, probably when I was getting out of the car at a rest stop (the shoulder belt had a tendency to catch on it). It was a source of great comfort to me, to be able to feel it around my neck. I'm feeling sort of lonely and anxious without it.

Happy thing: I'm now in the same time zone as Jack, even if I'm still a thousand miles away from him.

Judging by the numbers.

Three women have sat on the Supreme Court in its entire history. Two of them are serving on the nine-person body right now. Another one is about to be nominated. Anybody want to start the countdown until people start complaining about "affirmative action" because of two women being nominated/appointed (hopefully) in a row? You know it's going to happen... or rather, is probably already happening.

Never mind that women make up roughly half the population, and never mind that our government is meant to be representative of We The People.

And of course, nobody blinks when two men are appointed to the same body in a row, or if a succession of men hold a top-level leadership position. That's not suspect. It's just... normal. Business as usual. A succession of men isn't even seen as a pattern. If a series of left-handed men, or red haired men, or men of any one particular non-white race/ethnicity were appointed to the Supreme Court one after another, it would be remarked on with varying degrees of seriousness.

"Man" is the unremarked and unremarkable assumed default... especially for leadership positions, but for humans in general. Iconographically speaking, we're expected to let a generic male figure stand in for humanity as a whole if needs be. An icon that is female is expected to stand for women.

But... I'm borrowing trouble. Grousing about complaints that I fully anticipate but haven't yet heard. That's never a good thing. Instead, I'll just congratulate Elana Kagan. I'll have to do some reading before I know if I'm in favor of her confirmation or not, but this was my first reaction and I had to get it off my chest.