Blackmoor Vituperative

I just spent too much time pulling my hair out trying to figure out how to get Google Docs to paste spaces and keep them spaces, rather than turning the spaces into tabs. I couldn’t find a way to prevent it, so here is what I did.

1. Paste my text into a text editor, such as Notepad++.
2. In the text editor, find & replace every instance of a space ” ” with a character that does not already exist in the text, nor in the document you intend to paste that text into. In my case, I used a tilde “~”.
3. Copy this modified text, and paste it into Google Docs.
4. In Google Docs, find & replace every instance of the placeholder character with a space ” “.

Is it ridiculous that you need to do this to keep Google Docs from corrupting what you are pasting? Yes. Yes, it is.

I don’t interpret the election results the way anyone else does. When given the choice between two virtually identical candidates and three other very distinct candidates, 98% of the country voted for the two virtually identical candidates, and the votes for those two candidates got split almost exactly in half. To me, that says that a) 98% of the country approves of our current domestic and foreign policies, and b) that the two major parties are very good at choosing candidates that appeal to nearly everyone, to the extent that choosing between them may as well be a coin toss.

I find the chest-thumping of the winners and the hand-wringing of the losers surreal. Half of the country wanted a Pepsi, and a very tiny fraction less than that wanted Coke. This means that Coke is no longer relevant, can no longer be seriously considered as a soft drink, should be removed from grocery store shelves and relegated to local convenience stores, and so on? This means that people who want Pepsi are morally and dietetically inferior (or superior) to people who’d rather drink Coke? It’s the end of the world and/or the beginning of a new era because a very tiny fraction of the population prefers one brand of carbonated brown sugar-water over another brand of carbonated brown sugar-water?

It all just seems a wild overreaction to a very tiny difference in preference between two extremely similar things.

By the way, that great-smelling soap that everyone was drooling over at the Halloween party is from Lady Scrubbins. You can order it on the Lady Scrubbins web site.

P.S. If you enter the coupon code “SIXFER” you can buy six bars for $25.

P.P.S. Here is a link to their Facebook page.

Another Halloween has come and gone, and the Blackmoor Halloween Party has gone with it. In our opinion, this year’s party was a great success, and possibly the best Halloween party we’ve ever hosted. At least, we think so. We hope that the people who came enjoyed themselves, as well. We love Halloween (we got married on it!), and have always thought of it as “our” holiday (although I guess everyone does), and we love sharing the festivities with people.

We don’t get to see any of our old friends as often as we’d like, and it was great seeing so many of our best and oldest friends. We are touched and grateful that our friends were willing to drive two, three, or even more hours to join us. It was also wonderful to spend some time with one of our new neighbors, and a few of our newest friends.

And now: photos! Not of everyone, alas, but I got almost everyone at least once.

P.S. I just counted the kids in our photos from Halloween night — 50 trick or treaters! That’s outstanding!