Enormous icy geysers called cryovolcanoes on Saturn’s moon Enceladus feed one of Saturn’s rings and hint at a subsurface ocean — a possible abode for life (perhaps even cephalopods). The image, like so many others of the Saturnian system, comes from the Cassini-Huygens probe.
I’m really not sure I approve of how fast this year is going so far. I mean, March already? And the last week and a half positively flew, despite the fact I expected them to drag on and on, as much as I’d been afraid of this rotation. And now there’s only two days left. And while the last day will be extremely painful (4 of the 7 students on the rotation will be absent….which leaves 3 of us to handle at least 6 cases, plus take an exam that I’ve heard horror stories about), it’s still just two days. And what the actual cake. Where is all this time going???
Could time please just slow down a bit. 2015 is coming WAY too fast.
recorded for fischoff this evenign on the mics hte cleveland quarrtet used – the actual physical same objects mics!! – and now I’m done with all my stressful stuff for a little while until my recital april 9 and it’s just waiting and i’m so incredibly drunk and it’s amazing
this morning: paaaaaainnnnnn
drinking’s bad for you, kids
excuse me while I go vomit
In other news: the home button on my iPod has ceased functioning. Which is highly annoying. I can work around it via the accessibility options, although the downside of the work around is I have a giant ghost home button taking up space on my screen. Grrrrr
Portland Jazz Festival was way fun! Also way exhausting because I’d gotten about two hours of sleep before leaving but that was my fault so hey. After we played we saw a guy who left the stage with the phrase “saxophonistically yours” which kinda made my week.
Oh, yeah, right… it’s March! Wow!
Me and the band went to a big benefit last night. It was a benefit to raise money for kids who were into music, but couldn’t afford the instruments to play music. The band should have raised over $4,0000.00 then.
Wow, that’s great, Catwings!
Four thousand. The band isn’t that big…
I’m on spring break! And to celebrate my computer’s decided it hates me and won’t even charge let alone turn on, so. *growls at everything*
Congrats, ZNZ!
Just spent THIRTY MINUTES scraping a sheet of solid ice off all but the two passenger windows of my car (clearly wind was blowing while it was freezing raining last night). In 5 degree weather.
I’m still thawing out my thighs and face and toes.
I mean, 5 degrees is fine if you’re dressed for it (lots and lots of layers) and hats and scarf and really thick warm gloves (not itty bitty cotton almost as thin as a pair of jeans gloves) and a thick warm coat on top of all those layers, and snow pants. And winter boots with thick warm socks and not sneakers.
And suffice to say I was NOT bundled up that warm to scrape my car.
Also I miss studded tires. Driving in ice and snow with out studs? Still terrifies the heck out of me. Which I realize all y’all who live anywhere that gets snow and ice are probably all “no big” to driving without studs on snow and ice, but…..I am so so so not use to it. And my car gets horrible traction.
You sure you don’t want to move to Wisconsin?
I hear you. It’s not nearly that cold down here, but the temperature fell fast today, and I wasn’t even wearing long sleeves. So of courstony mother chose today of all days to almost forget to pick me up from orchestra. I was left waiting in ferocious wind. For half an hour. In a t-shirt.
I really wish I could say that this was the only time this had happened.
Bad decisions I have made tonight:
1) Piercing my own ears: ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch do not do this.
2) Registering for six AP classes plus journalism and assorted other timesucks next year.
One of these decisions was more irresponsible and stupid than the other.
Please explain the second one to my friend. He’s trying to do the same exact thing. I keep telling him he’ll be overworked, but noooo, he keeps insisting on it. He knows it’s stupid, but… ugh.
Dear AL’s friend,
Don’t do it. You may think it’ll boost your resume. You may think it’ll make up for lousy grades in the past or a lack of community service hours. You may think it’ll help you get into college. These things are probably true. However, you’ll become so sleep-deprived that you can no longer write properly, your social life will deteriorate as you singlemindedly focus on percentages and test scores, you’ll find yourself sobbing over math problems at one in the morning, and worst of all, you’ll be buying into the idea that you’re supposed to have to hurt yourself to be successful. You will be part of a system that sucks the life out of thousands of teenagers yearly. You will encourage that system.
It’s not too late to back out and be a reasonable person with spare time and joy in your life.
Sincerely,
Choklit Orange
Hear, hear! I’m not at all convinced that the “Ender’s Game” approach to education will result in happier, more successful people or a stronger society.
Right?? We’re learning a huge amount, but we- those of us in the arena, so to speak- aren’t necessarily going to retain all or even most of what we’ve learned. And among my social circles (which I realize are limited and pretty much just the stressed-out AP students) there’s a layer of fierce competition under all our interactions. We’re sometimes happy when our friends do badly on a test, or get a slightly worse grade in a class, because it lowers the bar and will theoretically make our transcripts look good in comparison.
So that can’t be good for us as people, in the long run. There’s also a lot of very tenuous self-esteem; we feel good about ourselves when we’re excelling in literally every capacity, and since that’s usually not true of anyone, we tend to feel either guilty or angry most of the time.
I kind of wish the idea that we can’t be good at everything, rather than the idea that you can do anything you want (academically), were more ingrained among high school students. I’d be happier taking a lower-level math class knowing that it was better-matched to my mathematical abilities than flailing about and barely scraping an A in one I know I’m not really qualified for. But I’d feel guilty about not taking the most advanced one I can, because I somehow do still believe that there’s no reason I can’t do well in something as long as I try really hard (despite plenty of evidence to the contrary). I don’t know if that’s a problem with me, personally, or a byproduct of this system, but it’s certainly prevalent among people I know.
tl;dr this turned into another school-related rant and I apologize.
No kidding. I thought college applications were bad enough for the “do things so it looks good, not because I love them” attitude, and then I found out about my boyfriend’s little sister having to think about things like that for high school applications.
If, as an 8th grader, you have to think about whether quitting soccer during applications season would show insufficient dedication, or whether helping the other teams from your school with preparation for your debate competition would help them get recognition that should have been yours for application purposes, you’re doing it wrong.
She finds out her decisions today, actually. I hope all the stress has been worth it.
Unfortunately, I’m now even more convinced that the system is broken. His sister got rejected from all the high schools she’s heard from so far, even though her advisor told her that she was one of the top students coming out of her school in the past five years, and though every sign from the schools was positive. Yet all of her friends have gotten in somewhere. While that’s disappointing on its own, what’s worse is that the most probable reason is that her family is relatively poor and she would need a lot of financial aid. Sure, there could be other reasons besides money, but she’s one of the strongest academically and she didn’t even get wait listed. It seems really unfair and ridiculous to me.
Went to Chinatown with my Food Anthro class, the dim sum was delicious, I think I liked the shrimp dumplings the best.
Food Anthro sounds like just the best class.
It does sound like fun. I’m trying to find time to read a book called Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History, by Rachel Laudan. She happens to be an acquaintance through a grad school classmate. I’m excited about the book, since I really enjoy her thoughts about food (and other things). She brings a rich mix of science, history, and anthropology to the table (couldn’t resist the pun, sorry) that is often missing elsewhere. Her most recent blog post is about the joys of SPAM.
Kai–Okay! I’ll keep that in mind, should I get an opportunity to take one.
Rebecca, I’ll look up Rachel Laudan’s stuff; she sounds cool! I think you may also be interested in a book called something like A History of the World in Six Glasses.
It’s fun, but there’s a lot of readings to do.
Anthro major here that SUPER WANTS TO TAKE THAT CLASS.
If you throw a pie at someone it’s called “pieing”, but can cake be verbed similarly or is it different because “caking” is already an adjectival swear word? I’m wondering because in a roleplay I’m in I smashed a cake (the food) into someone’s face, and I almost described the act elsewhere as “I caked a guy in the face” but I thought that sounded bad.
It’s weird also because “cake” is already a verb – “His boots were caked with mud.”
Did the food stem from the verb, or did the verb stem from the food?
Like, did they get the name of the word from the pastry? Because I know they made cakes many many (thousands) years ago. And they might have called it “Cake”, just in a different language, I think.
Is is because cakes (the pastry) are layered? Would it be like saying “His boots are layered in mud”? Although that doesn’t sound right….
Great, now I’m all confused.
I just looked it up, and the food came first, but it only meant a flat, round loaf of bread until the 15th century. It comes from the Old Norse word kaka, which came from the West Germanic word kokon. Cake started being used as a verb in the 1600s because of the food. It refers to forming/becoming formed in a compact mass, like cake, so it’s like saying, “His boots have a compact mass of mud,” except it’s way less awkward-sounding.
The West German word “kokon,” eh? Sounds like cake and MB are more deeply connected than previously thought.
And if cake comes from “kaka”, then using it as a swear word kind of makes sense, since “caca” is a word some Italians say to mean “poop”.
It definitely sounds wrong to me, but the people you’re roleplaying with probably don’t have those associations, although I guess how often they’ve read you use “cake” to swear. I still wouldn’t use it, though, partly because of what Lizzie said and partly because “cake” just isn’t used that way–“I doughnuted a guy in the face” would also sound odd to me. Pie works because pie is special.
*I guess it depends on how often they’ve read you use “cake” to swear.
Could I suggest the altenative verb “to gateau”? It’s somewhat effete, but it does evoke an aura of 18th century fencing.
That’s “fencing” as in sophisiticated swordplay, not rustic hurdles for controlling sheep.
I had to look “gateau” up in a dictionary to understand this particular choice – it seems I had some serious misconceptions about the nature of foodstuffs thus described. I rather like that use of the term, yes.
(And fencing, as in swordplay, is one of the only athletic activities I truly enjoy. So that is quite a pleasant aura to evoke.)
Okay, so, I’ve been told by a friend that I should share my imagination with people.
There is a popular media that I am a huge fan of. Such a huge fan of, that I love to create (But, unfortunately, rarely write down.) scenes and stories of myself with the main character of the series (Who I have dubbed my brother). You probably know that much, and you know all my Wingcat, ice, water, cake… so I don’t have to repeat myself.
But, you might not know that I have an account on a website where I can write some fan fictions and upload them to the internet. And they have a huge variety of categories to choose from (From Super Mario to Gunsmoke) to write stories for.
They have the media I have dubbed as my “Second World”, and I mentioned earlier that a friend of mine would like to see most of what I think of as a story on that website. But I’m not sure if the internet is ready for my imagination.
Also, a lot of it is emotional and tragic, and I am kind of bad at writing those things out. Not for lack of words I actually have a wide vocabulary, I don’t know what it is. I guess I’m just sensitive like that.
What do you guys think? Is the internet ready for my imagination, or should I keep this world to myself?
People on some fanfiction sites can be harsh to people your age (which is something I don’t approve of at all–yes, in ten years time anyone who writes regularly will improve, but every snob has themself improved over time and has no right to be rude to someone who now stands where they stood ten years ago) but I would say go for it, especially is you can set up some sort of settings controlling who can and can’t see your writing.
Kai’s right– young authors often get really harsh criticism. A lot of fanfiction sites don’t have the ability to control who can read your work. (On the one I use you can restrict viewing just to people with accounts, but I’m not sure if that’s what you’d want.) The best thing might be to start a password-protected blog.
But, yeah, go for it! It’s always great to share your writing with other people.
I’d agree that people can be harsh on fanfiction sites– the problem with a wide age range is that you’ve got kids your age writing alongside college-age and older fans. A lot of people can be harsh towards the younger demographic.
And of course, it’s fine to have an other world in your head. I know I do- mine is silly and self indulgent. I don’t post it anywhere. It stays in my head. But it’s there.
But I’d say to go for it, if you feel ready and have the drive to share it with your friends and others. Remember that editing and beta reading can be your friends when it comes to fanfic. You’d be surprised what a few rounds of polishing up your words can do.
I’m just wondering if I could let you guys see what you think about my writings before I upload it to the fan fiction site…. Just curious, because I trust you guys, and your judgement.
We’d be glad to read your work and give feedback.
…I guess I’ll see you on the writing thread….
Oh, um… I can’t seem to find the writing thread.
Here?
https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=13036
You know what? Let’s start a new one.
I just want to let you know I see your story has been posted, and I will get to it once I’ve finished today’s rigmarole.
I made a cake today! Which isn’t something I’d done before, so I’m very proud of myself. Mmmm, cake.
What kind was it?
Lemon! With cream cheese frosting.
I love lemon cakes….
Happy memory of the day: one time Dodec, Penguini, Vendy, Roo, and Dan came to visit me and while we were hanging out in a coffee shop a guy came up to us and said we had the best collective hair. (All of us but Vendy had some sort of weird or striking haircut and it was great.)
I like to think of it as: you came to visit me.
♥
We all visited each other. ♥
Somehow my mom didn’t remember to tell me until today that my brother P. is going to a wrestling tournament in AUSTRIA tomorrow? I’m so happy for him and it’s really great (he’s always talked about how he wishes he could visit another country), I just feel so out-of-the-loop…
When its nearly 70 degrees outside, is 80 a reasonable temperature for a thermostat? Actually, when is 80 degrees ever a reasonable temperature for a thermostat? At least as long as it’s colder outside.
And yet. And yet. Somehow my roommates think that this is the perfect temperature for the dorm to be at. God, when there’s snow on the ground outside I should never be so hot inside that I’m sweating and overheated. If it’s cold put on another sweater! And when it’s 60-70 degrees out? Perfect weather! You don’t need the heat at all! Graaah!
We’ve been having a passive battle over the thermostat since the beginning of the semester. I turn it down, and it gets turned up again. It got better once I closed the vent in my room, so it’s not stifling there anymore, but I still have to go into the common areas.
My sympathies.
Awesome! I just hope he brought an umbrella.
My goodness, I think I may have found a typo on a Metropolitan Museum of Art website…
Where?
Man, has everyone else’s life been as busy as mine has been lately? Spring semester is vicious.
So let’s see. In a little over two weeks I’ll be flying to Italy, so I’ve been getting ready for that. I went to the bank yesterday to sign up for a temporary checking account for that, and to get some euros. (I also applied for a credit card.) Going to the bank always makes me feel all grown-up and adultlike. It’s only just starting to hit me that I’m really going to Italy–this whole time it’s felt hypothetical, like it was just something that I thought about but wasn’t actually doing. But no, I’m actually going to be in Italy. Apparently when we’re in Rome we’ll get to have Mass at St. Peter’s, at the tomb of John Paul II, which is apparently the most difficult altar in the whole place to book. Father was also talking about a possible dinner in Orvieto–instead of finding our own dinner that night, we might be able to go to this place out in the country that grows their own food and have a four-course dinner there. That would be amazing.
I’ve also been working on my seminary application. Getting my FBI background check is more difficult than I had imagined–there’s not many places that will do fingerprinting, and they require a bunch of paperwork for it. Hopefully I’ll be able to go home this weekend and get my birth certificate for that. I also still have to write some thank-you notes for the priests that wrote me letters of recommendation. I should do that tomorrow….
And of course school has been busy. I had my Roman history midterm this morning, which went decently. I hope my professor is able to read my handwriting, because I think the essays I wrote weren’t too bad. I’m really enjoying my (highly disorganized and haphazard) Latin class. The professor swears that we’re going to stick to just one author now, just one document, and we’re really gonna knuckle down with it…but of course he still brings us something new to look at every couple of days. I’ve learned a lot, though, and for the first time I’ve been able to see what actually goes on in classical academia. Cross-referencing manuscripts, chasing down citations, reading stuff that no one has ever read before, it’s pretty cool. Medieval Latin is still weird, though, especially when the person who wrote it wasn’t that great at it and was thinking mostly in Czech.
I found my new favorite ginger beer recently, too. The brand is “Cock ‘n Bull”. I like it a lot more than Reed’s Extra Ginger Brew.
And then Lent starts tomorrow. Man, time flies. It feels like it was just Christmas.
Congrats on being able to go to Italy, I really enjoyed my trip there in High School! The Bay of Naples area was the most beautiful area, at least I thought so, and seeing Pompeii was just amazing. Oh, and if you have the time and desire to do so, you can walk from one side of Vatican City to another in two hours and tell everybody you walked across a whole country in two hours.
Good luck with your application and your studies!
Agreed, it does feel like it was just Christmas. Orthodox and Catholic Easter are the same day this year, at least. *looks up* Good, no awkwardness explaining why my family is celebrating later than everyone else I know.
I haven’t been on in forever! RECAP OF MAJOR LIFE EVENTS TO ENSUE
1. Successfully did not fail any of my classes somehow.
2. Got cast as Rolf in The Sound of Music (!) and opened the show Friday. Wow. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?
3. Asked someone to prom! Yayyyyyyy.
4. Had much relationship angst and problems and bad stuff. Meh. But HEY I ASKED SOMEONE TO PROM
5. Actually, I can’t think of anything else that’s happened in the past several months that doesn’t involve buying CDs.
ANYWAY THAT IS MY LIFE
I’d say your life ROCKS.
I have epileptic guinea pigs.
Every time we turn our backs on them, they’re kicking their bedding halfway across the room.
So I mentioned that I liked the Smithsonian cover story about Michael Rockefeller, so of course I went to the Amazon page for the book it was excerpted from and watched the book trailer, and then I found an unrelated documentary about the disappearance that had been released in 2010, so I watched the trailer for that, and then I watched the old “In Search Of…” episode about it… But, you see, I like to do my computer stuff in the Common Room, and I really hope the other girls on my floor who came in and out didn’t see me watching all of those videos full of skulls and cannibals or else they might worry about me…
Um
I think I might possibly be agender?
I’m a bit confused because I’ve never really understood what gender is. I know it’s not “biological sex” or stereotypical gender roles or gender presentation, but that… isn’t a very clear definition. But… people just feel this… thing and they label it? And it’s a major part of who they are and can hugely affect how they live their lives? For a while, I thought I didn’t get it because I was cisgender and couldn’t separate what I felt from what society told me to feel, but… I think most/a lot of cis people do seem to feel like it’s really important to them including when they know it isn’t one of those things I said it isn’t (?).
We’re doing this thing for English on people who’ve influenced us in specific ways, and one of them is gender, and just… don’t understand what this is supposed to be even mean. I don’t have problems being treated as female, but it doesn’t… influence my life choices? I can’t point to someone and say they helped influence how I express being female, because I don’t, at least as far as I know. I do and wear plenty of things that are female-coded, but it’s because I like them. When I heard people talking about trying to make an outfit more feminine and such, then until some months ago when I started educating myself, I thought it was because of misguided stereotypes, but I’m realizing that there might be motivations that are totally alien to me.
Can people here with genders actually point to people of the same gender and say, “This person influenced how I am this gender?” Because some other people were confused about this part (the teacher was absent all week and could not help), so it’s possible it was just a really bad assignment. I’m absolutely not being rhetorical.
And… if anybody could describe what having a gender feels like, that would be really nice, but given how little information I could find, I’m guessing it’s pretty difficult.
Although… most people, after doing sufficient reading, are able to understand this thing, apparently, and, like, relate, but it… doesn’t feel like it has anything to do with me.
I’m not sure that I can help you that much here, since I haven’t really considered gender that much- I’m a straight female and google tells me I’m cisgender. But I’ll give it a shot.
To be honest, I think that I mostly want to look “pretty/nice”, and that includes a feminine aspect for me. I don’t really worry about an outfit being “feminine” or not (if it’s from the women’s section, it counts as feminine enough for me).
The only time when I consciously wanted to look feminine was probably going out, since I’d aim to look sexy. Now, I’ll just wear more flattering clothing around my boyfriend. Not because I feel the need to be more feminine, but I want to flaunt my figure (and the expression on his face when I pull off a (slightly frumpy) sweatshirt I wore to uni and am wearing something that shows (surprise!) I have boobs is always pricelessly over-appreciative).
I’ve never really picked apart my behavior to see how feminine it is. Of course, manners- like clothes- depend on the occasion, and I know the more “formal manners” I learned for balls and the like are very feminine. Day-to-day I don’t really know or care- I think I’m fairly blunt for a girl and I don’t have a problem with showing anger (not in the sense of Hulk-smash!, but if someone/something pisses me off, I’ll tell them directly).
I think my mother strongly modeled female behavior for me, in the way that she taught me manners (which doubtlessly had female overtones). But both she and my father always empathized that my girl-ness had nothing to do with my life/career choices- I grew up with toy cars/legos as well as barbies and I never felt like I was supposed to favor one over the other, and I always considered being an engineer/architect and a mom. I did always understand that girls and boys were expected to act differently but it didn’t really affect me much until I hit my teens.
Due to German having different male/female plurals/word endings, I also feel addressed when someone uses male forms of certain words. For example, female college student(s) would be “Studentin/Studentinnen”, male of college student(s) would be “Student/Studenten”. I feel equally addressed by pretty much all four and if someone were to refer to me with male pronouns, I honestly wouldn’t mind. One of my professors gender-swapped all the nouns and examples in his lecture, which was a bit jarring for the first class, but after about two hours, I doubt anyone even noticed.
So, to recap…
1) Gender isn’t very important to me as I’ve always been cis.
2) I present as female, but I don’t really spend much time worrying about specifically looking feminine.
3) I don’t really care about word forms or pronouns. I know what I am. However, I’m obviously on the receiving end of a lot of cis privilege- it’s jarring how differently people treat me when I wear make-up and dress more flatteringly, and I think many would treat me less nicely if I looked even more unkempt/less conventionally pretty.
4) I do care to look (female) sexy in some situations, which (for me) is very feminine. But *cis privilege* I feel like I already **am** (and appear) very female whatever I wear- I’m just drawing attention to it.
5) I think my mother strongly influenced how I act/dress according to my gender: both parents pushed for me to ignore traditional gender roles.
I hope some of that helped!
It is definitely not required to have influences on your gender. If you feel you are one gender or another, that’s what you are.
Answering your question, I’ve never felt that anyone has had any influence on my female-ness. I’m female, and I don’t really care how I express it or even if I express it. For some reason, subconsciously, being female means a lot to me; like, I have a preference for female characters over male characters even though they are exactly the same. That sounds a little absurd, but I think it’s because it’s easier for me to see myself in a female character than a male character.
Just to be clear though: being feminine is not required to be female.
Aargh, I’m realizing I’m being really serious in tone here, but it’s hard to describe. I just know I’m female; there’s nobody that had any influence on that. But it doesn’t matter in how I express myself. I’m just me.
“Can people here with genders actually point to people of the same gender and say, “This person influenced how I am this gender?—
I can’t. Gender is something you are born with, not something you are influenced into.
For example: I don’t think anyone would choose to be transgender, given the incredible stigma trans* people have to face in our society (do you know how many trans* women are murdered every year? It haunts me.) And yet, transgender people exist.
“[…] it’s possible it was just a really bad assignment.”
I’d say your assessment is correct.
I’m with other people that it’s a weird assignment. I also don’t think you have to strongly feel your gender to be a gender.
Thinking about your other question about whether other people have influenced how I am female, the example that pops into my mind is that I especially notice strong female characters and people because I am aware of the stereotype and I like counterexamples to it. I’ve noticed this specifically in my perception of myself as a woman in science, where sometimes I define myself in opposition to the stereotype. Recently when I was having doubts about whether I was any good at lab, I looked up a bunch of female scientists to counteract any stereotype threat. So I guess that is one way that other people influence how I feel my gender.
word of the day: flabellum
Thank you for teaching me a new word!
I might use this as a song title! (Since I’m terrible at titles, I use word generators.)
Shouldn’t the title have something to do with the subject of the song?
no rule that you can’t write songs about liturgical fans and / or corals
Of course not, I just took the comment to mean that AL already had a song but not a title, and that it would be a remarkable coincidence if out of all the possible topics for songs, the pre-written but untitled song just happened to be about either of those.
In the spirit of maintaining safe practices on Museblog, I wish to remind anyone with a bandsaw to check your thrust bearings regularly. I have just had to replace mine. They were jammed, grooved, and blue from excess heat.
What is new in my life?
Well, my semester started and it’s crazy busy but my classes sound fun and seem a lot less hard than last semester.
I didn’t get to take a extra course I wanted this semester. Which means I’m taking “only” the recommended 30 credits this semester (instead of the 45ish last term). Eh. I still wish my grades were higher, but considering that only about 40 of our original ~200 classmates have managed the “recommended” curriculum (and probably only ten of us will graduate on time), I feel pretty accomplished. Enders game style education seems a frighteningly accurate description.
I’ve also decided to try and cultivate a social life again, and it’s starting to look good. And my boyfriend and I got back together. We still need to talk about some stuff, but right now I’m just glad it worked out and there are no hard feelings.
And the weather is finally getting warmer! Please, spring, please!
There was a fandom which shall remain nameless which I was in very fiercely for a thankfully short period of time. During that time, I made some jokes about the main character of the fandom as part of a crossover thing (the jokes themselves were about the character himself and did not actually require any sort of crossover) that I showed two people and never explained the jokes for.
So for various reasons I ended up looking in on the fandom a few hours ago and apparently the jokes I made ended up being a) actual things and b) cannon.
…What the cake just happened?
Now you know how I feel when people say things like “What the cake just happened?”
(Actually, I haven’t been able to find the exact moment at which we started using “cake” as a euphemistic epithet on the blog. I do know that POSOC described writing fanfiction as “so caking hard” in March 2008, and we had an interesting discussion about it in 2010. I’ll keep looking as time permits.)
Ha! Found it!
Wow, I thought it had been around from the very beginning of Museblog!
So “cake” is only a few weeks older on MB than I am? Wow, I thought it went back farther than that.
I clearly haven’t changed much.
Not fundamentally.
I would consider this a good thing – it means you’ve always been flammy.
You were writing brilliantly when I was still in my Dork Age, even though I think we’re about the same age.
You had a Dork Age?
Remember that list of 51 things wrong with my early writing? That was my Dork Age.
I have no recollection of this. I also have no recollection of reading anything from you that wasn’t stellar. *shrugs*
Any pun which may or may not be present was unintentional and unnoticed until I was about to hit the comment button the first time.
Some of my earlier stuff, like the story about the HPB in the V2 rocket and the story where Kokonilly and I look for a stolen Star Wars prop at the Franklin Institute were solidly average, good in some places, and even great in a few, but I can’t remember a time POSOC’s stories on here were not consistently at least very good and very often great.
Thank you! That’s a wonderful compliment coming from you. Even if true, it only means that you are improving faster than I am…
Just look at Muse Schism and at Mostly Harmless: Destination Moon, they were written around the same time, but Schism is much better.
I am flattered.
Schism is laughably embarrassing to me now, to be honest (I couldn’t write distinct character voices, I thought “Good Lord” was close to cursing, I put no thought into the infrastructure of the world I was writing about, I put Beijing in the wrong place). But I had tremendous fun writing it and that always makes things more fun to read.
But you admit it is better than Mostly Harmless: Destination Moon?
Ignore the accidental squid…..I was trying to follow the link on my iPod and accidentally hit the squid instead
There’s a song. I can’t remember the name, or the band who did it. But it’s going through my head, and I can only remember some of the lyrics.
Google the lyrics you remember? Using quotation marks when you know exact phrases really helps.
By the way, I’ve found the song – while following Bibli’s advice. It was “Monster” by Meg & Dia. It’s still a good song, just as I remember it.
What is the weirdest sentence you have written or said recently? For me yesterday, it was: “I am the Vice President of the United States, my words are backed by nuclear weapons, give me my son’s bones.” , which was notable for not being part of any sort of role-playing, just a story I was telling someone.
For me;
“Gravy Grandma’s riding in her hat basket… because she wants all the ice cream…. What?!”
I talk and ramble a lot while I’m playing video games. This just happened to be one of the things that my mouth just happened to say.
“I am indifferent to repairing a tree.”
“The storks gave the boy that started it a dead baby as revenge!”
I was talking about Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Storks.”
The first really extremely important part of my story begins in chapter five.
Argh, I can’t see much of anything.
It felt so good to go outside, and take off my jacket!
COSMOS 2014 tonight, woo!
Watching it now!
Ugh, commercials. I’d forgotten about them.
Oh, well, gives you a chance to peek at the blog.
Isn’t that the point of commercials?
True, but on many shows there’s no need to wait for them.
Well, that’s certainly true.
National Geographic Channel is at least having classy commercials that mention space and science.
I watched it too! SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERSSPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERSSPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS I liked the sunglasses part when he talked about the Big Bang.
And it was good. Dr. Tyson can indeed do it well.
I got to meet Emily Graslie on Friday!
Man, so you know what’s really awesome? The arts. Hot dang. It’s been a long time since I realized I tended to gravitate towards the “arts” rather than “sciences” end of the spectrum that clearly doesn’t exist, but lately I’ve been really all up ons with it.
Last Saturday I miraculously had the day off of work, so I decided to go to the art museum on campus. I hadn’t been there in a while and they rotate their exhibits a lot, so just about everything was something I hadn’t seen before. Their featured exhibit was a “books” exhibit–beautiful typography, letterpress, printmaking, books that folded out accordion-style so they stretched across the room. I really enjoyed examining the prints because for the first time in my life I was able to look at a piece of art and understand the process behind it, what the artist did and how they got their results.
They were also featuring a lot of American painters from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, kind of tracking the shift from realism to abstraction. I really loved a Robert Henri painting of a Bastille Day celebration, and I spent a full 20 minutes looking at a Bierstadt landscape. I’m a big Bierstadt fan. I have to say I’m becoming quite a fan of Henri as well after looking at his portraiture on Google Images.
What else? I’m taking a little break from Proust right now to finish up The Brothers Karamazov. My Kindle says I’ve got 6% left to read, so I should finish that tonight or tomorrow. This morning at Mass I was for some reason really struck by the beauty of the Latin in today’s tract (Psalms 90:1-7,11-16). I’ve been feeling a lot more comfortable with Latin the past couple months–I’m reaching the point where I can just read it straight through without needing to translate, unless it’s fairly convoluted. This is more or less the closest thing to “fluency” you can have in dead languages, so it feels good to be at this stage of learning.
This afternoon I went, rather unexpectedly, to a symphony concert featuring my former piano teacher. It was a “family event” kind of thing, with Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals as the main attraction, and so they brought in various animals from the zoo to show all the kids in the audience. Porcupines, tortoises, a cockatoo, a macaw, a chicken. The symphony played a number of short animal-themed pieces before ending with the Saint-Saëns. It was really a weird experience to see my piano teacher again. She taught me for most of my life–from first grade through the end of high school. I’ve been to her apartment a few times, she’s been to our house a few times. She carpooled with my dad and me when I had a competition up in Minnesota. She was just such a huge part of my life for nearly all of my formative years, and I haven’t seen her since I’ve been in college. I think I probably learned so much from her that it’s all been internalized and I don’t even realize what she passed on to me. I still don’t understand exactly what emotions went through my head as I watched her play. It’s weird–I’ve seen her play piano so much that it seems like her hands, her forearms, her body language at the keyboard are more familiar than her face or her voice. Not that the latter are at all unfamiliar. I was just surprised by how, I don’t know, physical my impression was this afternoon. I wish I could’ve talked to her after the concert, but that just wasn’t possible. Maybe I should meet her for lunch sometime, I’m sure she’d love to know what I’ve been doing the past couple years. I’m sure I’d love to know that too, come to think of it….
The concert also reminded me how much I love classical music. My sister and I both played music growing up, so I just kind of grew up surrounded by it. It’s something I didn’t even take notice of, like eating breakfast or speaking English. Putting on a shirt and tie and playing Scarlatti or Poulenc in a concert hall or an art gallery was just second nature. But after stepping away from it entirely for a year, and dipping my toe back in only with the organ, the most solitary of instruments, I kind of came back to it this afternoon with fresh eyes and I realized that wow, this has been a huge part of who I am. It always seemed like it was other people that were big into classical music and fawned over symphony schedules and discussed composers. But really, that’s who I am, too. It really is a part of me.
Harrum. Harroo. I’m in an odd mood, but not a bad one. Inspired by the concert, I messed around on the piano for a while tonight, just kind of haphazardly playing through old repertoire (and adding/fixing fingerings, of course). For some reason the rest of my family, each of them individually, were extremely happy to hear me stumbling through the music. I’m not entirely sure why–the music was neither interesting nor remotely well played–but I have an inkling. If it distracted my dad from his “our finances are terrible and it’s everyone’s fault but mine” rampage for a while, then it’s fine. I wish I had time to practice piano while I’m at college, but I can barely find time to practice organ, the instrument I’m actually studying. Maybe this summer. Maybe we’ll even get my piano tuned; it’s pretty horrid at the moment.
I hope you’ve all been well. I’d like to think that I’ve been busy becoming a better person. I hope that’s the case. If it isn’t, well, I’ve had fun doing it and that’s good too.
It’s so good to hear from you, Piggy. I like hearing about what you’re up to.
citymusic starts today… the rehearsal schedule is kind of insane – I think tomorrow we have seven hours of rehearsal – but I really need the money so I’m doing it anyway. I just really hope my arms hold up: on top of all the normal overuse stuff, I fell last week and fortunately didn’t hurt myself badly, but I can still feel it in my shoulders / triceps / back. A bit scared.
So it’s beautiful and sunny and in the 70s today (a change from the cold weather, although it’s suppose to snow on wednesday again).
The rotation I’m currently on at school, we had a 2 hour lunchbreak today, which I decided to enjoy by spending the 2 hours outside at the picnic table enjoying the rare, beautiful weather (it’s usually either too cold or way way way way too bloody hot in this state–very little in between).
My left arm is now a lovely shade of red, as is much of my face. Because apparently, 2 hours is way too long for me to sit in the sun. Helllloooo, sunburn.
Things I have now that I didn’t have this time yesterday: a floral hatbox; a best of Queen album to listen to during the inevitable Good Omens rereads.
I am so satisfied with my life and choices, you don’t even know.
Got to hang out in Brown University’s Planetary Sciences department today, they had three doors covered in mission decals!
Wait. Kai, you’re at Brown right now? Because I go here and we should Kokon tomorrow if you’re still around.
No, sadly, it was just for a day, I’m back in New York now. We’re traveling around and looking at Grad Schools.
Aww. Well, if you’re here again, let me know.
(Also I will take this opportunity to remind anyone that might be touring colleges that you should come Kokon with me)
First acceptance letter today! It’s WUSTL (Washington University in St. Louis). Hooray!
Now to wait for the other colleges’ replies. Yale, my dream school, posts decisions on March 27th (which is, coincidentially, my birthday).
*flails like a cuttlefish*
Congrats! WUSTL notifies very early, which is great!
Congratulations, that’s awesome!
Did you really end up writing your essay about being a space squid?
Congratulations!! I have a good friend at WashU and she loves it there. Also, it just feels amazing to know you’re going to college at least somewhere.
Congrats!
Thank you all~
I wrote the Yale supplement essay and one of the UC-required essays on being a giant space squid, but I haven’t heard from any of those colleges.
I also just found out that Yale, Berkeley and UPenn are each posting decisions on March 27th. I’m starting to wonder how this birthday will turn out…
UC was the second college I head from so expect that soon!
Congrats!!!
((Also, i feel the need to note you share a birthday with James Potter))
Is it a bad thing when you space out for long periods of time when you listen to music?
I don’t think so…I think that’s rather normal, actually.
Life is finally settling down again….if you can call midterms settling down. At least they’re predictable.
Groundhog was married last week Sunday and the wedding was wonderful! Highlights: Groundhog’s Arwen style dress and elven circlet; the lightsaber arch for Groundhog and her husband to go through when entering the dance floor; and a two on one fight between Groundhog’s friends, two with lightsabers and one defending with 11’s sonic screwdriver. Much fun was had by all.
After spending the week and home and skyping into classes, I am now back at school for my midterms. Had statistics yesterday and I think I did alright. All that’s left now is a science test, Renaissance Drama midterm, and a paper for the Renaissance Drama class. I LOVE HAMLET!!!!! And the fact that we’ve been watching clips in class from the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of it (featuring Patrick Stewart and David Tennant) is just awesome.
It sounds like the Best Wedding Ever (excluding mine, of course). Love, joy, and pies to them both!
Could we could post pictures?
Once The Fuzzy Trekkie (which is how I shall refer to my husband from now on) and I get through the disk the photographer gave us, sure!
Congratulations to Groundhog! It sounded like an amazing wedding
Indeed, we did see an MBer get married, and it was exactly as expected.
Wait. Were multiple MBers in attendance at this wedding? Cool!
I think KaiYves was using the word “see” metaphorically. As far as I know, Groundhog and Kittymine were the only MBers there (though I’d be happy to hear otherwise).
Yes, I meant it metaphorically, again referring to the statement someone made earlier that “we might see an MBer get married sometime in the next few years”.
Right now I am in a computer lab directly in between my ex-girlfriend and two girls whose dad effectively stole thousands of dollars from my family. This is odd.
I know what you’re thinking, but trust me, impromptu flamethrowers don’t have that kind of range.
Stay calm, they aren’t responsible for anything their dad did.
I wish that were true. Anyway, nothing actually happened. It was just odd. Like a lot of my life at the moment.
My sympathies.
Hello! Just a quick update in case anyone’s interested in what I’ve been up to. I know I’ve been horribly slack at posting lately, but this term has been absolutely mad busy!
I just got a letter from the Royal Northern College of Music saying I’ve been awarded an entrance scholarship (of £2000) for next year. I already knew I had a place, but this was totally unexpected!
On Saturday I played in a concert at St John’s Smith Square in London with the school orchestra, and aside from leading the orchestral stuff, I was also a soloist at one point in the programme, with Mozart’s fourth concerto. I think it went pretty well, it was a great venue, and the audience reception was fantastic. My parents flew over from Hong Kong, and my aunt, uncle and grandfather were also there, along with several friends of my parents. It was nice to spend the weekend with my family again!
Last week I also participated in chamber music competition against other schools in the region. I found out today that my quartet (playing Beethoven’s 4th quartet) got through to the finals’ concert in London, and my piano trio (Beethoven piano trio no. 3) to the runners-up concert, both next week, so that’s exciting!
Next week I’ve also got to participate in the national finals of a debate competition in French; our team (of two) won the regional round last term, and now we’ll be up against nine other schools from around the country. To me it doesn’t really matter if we win or not, though my teacher might disagree with me there.
What else, hmm…Easter holidays start in two and a bit weeks’ time, and I’ll be able to go home back to Hong Kong for that, which will be fun! I’ll have a lot of revision to do for exams though, unfortunately. I have the impression that I’ve been slightly neglecting my academic studies with all these music things going on, so over Easter I’ll have to sit down and re-learn all the course material, I think.
Once this term ends and all this madness has a chance to die down a bit, I promise I’ll become more active again! I have been lurking from time to time and it’s always super interesting to see what sorts of things are happening with all of you!
Is there anyone out there who can draw or photoshop especially well?
Because, I’ve had this idea in my head for a long, long time, but I can’t draw it, nor do I currently know of anyone who could draw it for me.
It’s of the physical form of insanity. It’s like, a dragon thing, with eyes that are dry and cracked in places (Six eyes, a few are separated by torn skin). The teeth each have faces on them, some have faces merging together, making mixtures of emotions (From pure joy, to painful fear). And it’s body is long and snakelike, with metal scales, like armor. It’s skin is like this, purple and green color.
Around it are ghosts, most missing body parts. Gore everywhere. But, it’s all inside of this… head. The head is surrounding it, it’s like we’re looking into it.
Yeah, I doubt anyone but me would devote a few hours of their time to create this….
Did I mention that the thing has a brain in it’s teeth?
I think it’s kind of dangerous to depict “insanity” like this. Mental illness is a disease, but portraying it the way you’ve described reduces the humanity of those suffering from it.
Yeah, I realize that now… sorry….
Although, I was targeting more on mental illnesses caused by drugs. Does it matter at all?
I am not sure it really matters why someone is sick. I think it’s important to remember that even if mentally ill people have made destructive choices in the past (and almost all of them haven’t — I know plenty of people who have mental health troubles but aren’t taking illegal drugs), they are still people and deserve to be treated with basic respect.
I’m sure you didn’t intend to imply any of this, and I really appreciate you taking the time to think about it — of course, I accept your apology, although I’m not sure it was necessary for you to apologize.
(P.S. I do think a dragon eating a brain is pretty metal and pretty awesome.)
Okay, so this is probably very obvious and I’m just blanking on it, but is there a special name for a doctor who works in remote places? Like what Omayra Torres was supposed to be “City of the Beasts”?
Wearing a style of clothing you haven’t worn in years and being surprised when people recognize you even though that’s completely irrational.
Guilty as charged.
If you had a week or two to spend in Los Angeles, what would you do with it?
I’m almost certain I want to go back home for the summer, since for all I know it could be the last summer I will. I’m exploring various internships and jobs there. I’ve got this idea, though, that I could come back here little early, catch up with my boyfriend who I won’t have seen in two and half months, and do something in the city while he’s doing his summer classes. Two and a half months will be plenty of time at home, I kind of want to plan something independent, I’ve got some money saved up to make it happen, and LA would be a good place to go since I have to fly back here anyways for school. The question is that something. Learn something? Job shadow someone? Volunteer? Take on a project? Be a tourist?
Try to find an internship or volunteer position! It is good experience.
Do internships exist for such short durations? Most that I’ve seen seem to be all summer. Volunteering could be cool, though.
How long are you going to be there? I’ve had one for a month and a half before.
The idea is maybe just two weeks in August. I’m definitely trying to find an internship at home, so this is just for the very end of summer if I do end up coming back to southern California early.
I’d send an email to places that interest you to see what they have available.
I would go see Endeavour at the California Science Center. Repeatedly.
My boyfriend and I did that literally the first Saturday we were together in person.
I have an Endeavor sweatshirt from the CSC and it’s wonderful.
Clearly you found a catch.
I really did, especially on the space front. He’s an astrophysics major and got *so* adorably excited about Endeavor.
Happy Half Tau Day, everyone!
The hype is real for GoT season four. And I’ve been browsing some general asoiaf discussions and gleefully over-analyzing grrm’s blog posts. It’s fun to think that maybe, maybe twow will be released this year, but at the same time I know it’s not.
But it might! Nobody but grrm knows how far along it is!
Hi everyone, happy Pi(e) day! I’ve been away from the blog for a while (3 years … ahaha), getting into about 10 more fandoms (good) and getting sucked into social justice arguments like the Hot Topics thread but a hundred times more toxic (bad). After deleting my accounts from said communities for fear of my parents, I felt like dropping by the blog.
“MuseBlog: Taking in Prodigals Who Are Tired of Toxicity Since 2005.”
Welcome back, R*S!
Thank you, Robert. Other sites are fun, but MB is home. <3
If you log in to your MuseBlog account, you’ll discover that you’ve acquired some lovely new powers.
Welcome back, Rainbow*Storm!
Hi! It’s good to see you again! I completely agree with what you said; I love the rest of the Internet, but it’s nowhere near the same. I’m glad you’re back.
I know what you mean about toxicity. I’ve gotten rid of a lot of internalized prejudice over the past few months reading stuff on the Internet and became way more aware of things I didn’t even notice before, but I’m trying to just avoid people who clearly don’t know what they’re talking about, and I’m afraid to say anything in some places if I’m not absolutely sure that I know what I’m talking about. On the Internet, anyway. You can’t just avoid people real life, unfortunately.
Wow, 10 more fandoms? You’re in more than 10 fandoms? I could never do that. I’m in about… 7- or 8ish? That’s actually way more than I thought, but my level of interest in each fluctuates, and I don’t actually write or draw for them; I just spend lots and lots of time looking at what other people make. I might end up writing essays on Revolutionary Girl Utena eventually, but not until summer, at least. I have way too much work.
I have more than ten fandoms….
Oh–I somehow forgot Night Vale, despite going to see it in person yesterday, so that’s about 9. Huh. I thought I was more limited.
Of course, now I’m having difficulty remembering everything I was counting before, so apparently, I’m not very dedicated to some of these.
Wow, you saw Night Vale live? How was it?
It was amazing. The musical guest was Eliza Rickman, who was fantastic, and she sang 2 songs at the beginning in addition to the weather, and it was so cool to get to see Cecil act in person, and the plotline even incorporated the theater we were in so that we were part of it and could pretend it was happening to us–and we got to hear Carlos’ actual voice, even though he wasn’t there in person–and it was just splendid overall.
If anyone here gets the chance to go to a live show, then it’s definitely something I would recommend.
Deleting accounts because of parents? I can sympathize. I deleted to take an impromptu Lenten hiatus from a certain site (not the one I know we’re both thinking of, a different one) because my mom decided to follow me, and I follow/interact with many people who a)enjoy hentai b)support gay rights c)cuss a lot.
Anyway, yeah, social justice arguments on those types of sites really suck sometimes, because after a while, you’re not sure what’s even real anymore, and if you have an opinion because you believe in it or because you’ve been pressured into it… ugh.
Anyway, welcome back! It’s nice to see a familiar face. (Metaphorically, of course. I never… actually… watched Supernatural.)
It’s so great to see you again, Rainbow*Storm! Happy Pi Day!
Welcome back, Rainbow. I’ve just recently come back myself, but I’ve missed you!
Glad to have you back, Rainbow*Storm! I hope Space Exploration is still one of the fandoms you’re in.
Just noticed that the top of this thread says, “Saturn’s moon, Enceladus”. I miss Enc. I miss a lot of people who used to post here.
Happy Pi Day, everyone! I went to my school’s Pi Party today, and won third place in a pi-memorization contest.
In addition, I blew things up in chemistry, and took water samples in a creek in AP Environmental. Both were very fun. I was the only person in my Environmental class to have rainboots, so I got to wade in the water and the mud.
In English class, we watched an animated movie adaptation of the comic book Persepolis. The book is extremely good. I highly recommend it. It’s by Marjane Satrapi.
In addition, I listened to two stories about science and set up a peer-editing agreement with a girl from school, so we can polish up our NaNoWriMo novels.
I’d say it’s been a good day. A Muserly day.
So I’m taking this random survey type thingy on the internet, that has statistical comments underneath the breakdown of results.
One of the questions was what general age range are you. Beneath the breakdown of the responses of participants, it says” Grandparents are much less likely to answer 18 – 24.”
And then: “How frequently do you travel out of town on business?” “People who answer Never are less likely to be employed.”
Wait, you think? You really think that people who never travel out of town on business, are less likely to be employed…let’s think about that….no kidding.
“Do you have children in college?” “People who answer No are less likely to have children.”
Um. Yeah. That’s not all that surprising, y’know? I mean, if I don’t have kids, odds are they’re not in college. You probably have far more young people taking this quiz than older people. So the general population taking this survey are less likely to have kids, so yeah….nto surprising that if they dont have kids in college it’s because THEY DON’T HAVE KIDS.
“Which cable news network do you watch the most for national news?” “People who watch Fox News more than other networks are 1/4 as likely to answer None, do not watch TV news.”
Ummmm, captain obvious, much? Of course people who watch Fox News (or any news network) the most, are not likely to answer that they don’t watch TV news….
” People who prefer cats over dogs are much more likely to answer I own one or more cats.” Really, you think?
But… I don’t have time to get super into Les Mis again…
So on Thursday everything was crazy because I was supposed to go to the dentist, but when we got to his office, he wasn’t there because the trains were running slow because of the Brooklyn building collapse, so we had to call him, and then negotiate another appointment at his other office on Washington Square Park, and then rush over there, and spend the longest time trying to find a park, and then actually come in early, but he wasn’t there yet, so we waited, and then finally he arrived and cleaned my teeth and said they looked great… Phew.
So then, even though we’d both given up on it, my mom said there was still time for us to go to the Met. And we went in and went to the Hall of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, and saw the special exhibit on the history of the collection, which was pretty cool, and then this Aztec statue that I remembered seeing on another visit when I was way younger, and then the South American gold masks that I always think are so awesome. And then I totally did not go to the Oceania section and stand in front of the bis(j) poles and get emotional. Totally not.
I’ve finally seen Frozen and am just about the happiest person in the world right now.
Let it go, let it go!
Can’t hold it back anymore!
Let it go! Let it go! Turn away and slam the door!
I don’t care what they’re going to say!
Let the storm rage on!
The cold never bothered me anyway!
got made fun of by a grammy award winner for having my mouth stuffed full of pizza.
sometimes my life is pretty cool.
Okay, odd question, but–does anyone have any experience/tips/advice in re going to concerts by oneself? I can do restaurants, I can do movies, but going to a concert solo is not something I’ve ever done. Really, I’ve only been to two non-classical concerts in my life, and one of those was with my parents. There’s an artist that’s coming to my hometown (the day after I get back from Italy…) that I’d like to go see, and tickets are twenty bucks, but I don’t have anyone to go with. What does an introvert do at a concert without a friend (or psychoactive substances excepting caffeine) to hide behind?
Breathe? Meditate? Practice being in the moment? Study people? Talk with strangers? Listen to the music?
Bring something to read during breaks. Or use your smartphone and check your email repeatedly.
I agree.
Enjoy the music and being at the concert, and look comfortable with being there alone.
what kind of concert? my answer would depend a lot on this. is it seated? is it large/a lot of people? outdoor/indoor?
I’ve gone to a couple concerts on my own, some small ones on campus and others for bigger bands in Cleveland.
most of my worries with concerts alone is centered around being small/female/in one instance having to walk 2 blocks back to a hotel down a street that along the way had 4 halfway homes and multiple dark alleyways. which is maybe not gonna be as much of a concern for you, but! if any of those are I can provide advice there too.
if you have a smartphone, using it for email/internet can work, or I like to have an ebook available I can read even if there’s no internet.
Hold on: you go to a concert and take along books and browsers for entertainment? *must be missing something*
I imagine it’s the “stepping outside for a smoke” for non-smokers, or for killing time before the show starts.
*I* take a phone to look busy with between sets/bands (local venue usually has 4 bands, with 15-30 min between them) to avoid getting hit on by large drunk guys for being one of the very few unaccompanied females at metal shows. When I go with friends or to less generally rowdy concerts there’s no need for one.
I’m gonna reiterate the eating thing, because I have found that if I bring food and look, like, seriously into my sandwich, people don’t bother me. (I’m cultivating a number of unattractive habits to use in these situations.)
It’s an indie pop/art rock band playing in an indoor auditorium, capacity 1400. I don’t believe there’s seating, but I haven’t been there so I’m not sure. Not the best part of town but I’m somewhat familiar with the area and I have practice looking angry and walking purposefully.
Eat.
Well it turns out that all this hubbub isn’t going to be so immediately applicable: I remembered that I do have a friend I can invite to a concert. I hadn’t talked to him in a while but he’s the person I went with to the other non-classical concert, and when I was hanging out with him regularly I considered him a pretty close friend. Anyway, he said sure and told me to text him tomorrow to remind him to buy tickets. I’m looking forward to catching up with him. He transferred to a different university last summer and I haven’t hung out with him since then. Also, in regards to Jadestone’s solo concert worries, the dude is into weightlifting and strongman competitions and whatnot and he could pick me up with one arm. Walking to my car in the middle of the night will be a little less stressful with him.
I’m gonna be horribly jetlagged but I’ll just have to deal with that. I should probably write myself a reminder just in case, y’know, going to another country for a week and a half makes the concert slip my mind. Haha, it seems like I’m trying to fit as many experiences as I can into my last semester of college.
I’m seeing R&R comments on the Comments page, but I don’t think R&P comments are showing up, although it’s possible I just haven’t seen them. Are other people having this experience?
Never mind; I saw AL’s comment there. I was just not checking enough to have notice the Rants and Plaints comments there.
Everyone is always complimenting me! Every time I show someone a story I wrote, they’re like, “Oh, that’s very good writing! You’re a great writer!” or if I show them something I drew, they’re like, “Oh, wow! You’re an amazing artist! You draw so well!”
Everything I do, I get praised for it. I even got praised for something I didn’t do once!
I can’t be that perfect! Jesus, I’m not God!
Also, I make it a good point to tell them to be very honest, and to inform me of anything I should change or fix, and that I really respect someone who can give good constructive criticism without fear of hurting my feelings. But, they’re still praising everything I do without hesitation.
Why?! I’m not that awesome!
enjoy it while it lasts.
Family members tend to be like that, some friends, too. Dads in particular can never give useful reviews. (Or my Dad at least. He thinks I’m the President of MENSA and I walk on water.)
It’s really, really hard to get honest feedback on stuff like that. I don’t know how, honestly. You might try finding someone else who writes, and offering to trade critiques with them.
Or if you can’t get anybody willing to talk about the weaknesses, you might try asking people what they liked best. Knowing your strengths is better than nothing.
(This is all very practical advice which totally ignores the issue. I have no idea how to solve the problem of overly complimentary relatives.)
40 hours of rehearsal and concerts in one week is way too much.
My sympathies.
So I’m re-watching the hilarious screenwriters’ commentary for Night at the Museum, which is just as funny as I remember it being, but I’d forgotten just how many factual errors they make, mispronouncing “Dendur”, one guy not believing the story of the Aswan High Dam salvage project and thinking it’s a story the museum made up (although now that I’ve taken The Contested Past and read “The Rape of the Nile”, I fully understand the sentiment behind the comment that “everything in every museum in the world that’s from Egypt was stolen”, even though in the case of the Temple, it’s wrong, because it WAS a gift), conflating the American Museum of Natural History’s Hall of Pacific Peoples and the Met’s Art of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas Hall (and then subsequently stating a lot of incorrect information about the Met’s wing), saying that the dinosaur skeletons in the AMNH Roosevelt entrance hall are both herbivores (really, guys, even the Allosaurus?!?), saying Neanderthals lived in the Bronze Age, saying that there’s a hall named for Joseph Campbell at the AMNH where there are Star Wars action figures, saying that Teddy Roosevelt hunted cheetahs in the Amazon, doubting that Ancient Romans actually spoke Latin (and not English with a British accent, like in the movies), referring to Alexander Hamilton as “Old Hickory”, repeating the incorrect urban legend that “Donkey Kong” was a typo on “Monkey Kong” instead of the original Japanese title…
Also, it reminded me that I really want to know what was in the “extended sequence” set in the planetarium that the writers say they wrote in the commentary but never elaborate on. All they say is that it was cut at some point and that it was set in a hall based on the original Hayden Planetarium rather than the modern Rose Center.
Also also, “Good Lord, Lawrence, why are you slapping a monkey?” will never not be funny.
You know, for most of my life, I thought Girl Scouts were probably lame. I still think that, sometimes. But at the same time, because of Girl Scouts, in the last few months I’ve dressed up as the Eleventh Doctor and built a model airplane and all sorts of other things. And as of today I can identify ten constellations (maybe twelve in a darker night), and nine stars. Whereas before I was hovering around three constellations. And that’s really cool.
Also, I started working on “Children Will Listen” from Into the Woods in voice today, and now I desperately want to watch Into the Woods. Which is on Netflix, fortunately for my curiosity.
Today was a good day.
I didn’t like Girl Scouts, because I was younger than all of the other girls in my group and they teased me, but I understand now that this is an atypical experience, and I now find myself wishing I had been in a good troop.
My brother J: “Actually, I don’t know what happens in ‘Dracula’. I mean, I know he’s a vampire, but I don’t really know what the story is.”
My brother P: “Seriously? Okay, so there’s this town in Eastern Europe that’s ruled by this guy named Count Dracula, and this one guy goes ‘What’s up with Dracula, why does he never come out, why does he act so weird, why’s he so mean–‘”
My brother J: “Why does he throw all of these parties and never go to them?”
My brother P: “No, that’s Jay Gatsby.”
Enormous crossover potential here!
“Gatsula.”
This is the first time I’ve ever been tempted to write fanfiction.
“Listen to them, the children of the night. What wonderful music they make, old sport!”
“No, I never drink…wine. I’ll have a Gin Rickey.”
1920s vampire- hunting adventures? Yes, please!
First thing I did this morning:
1) Go to my computer,
2) Put my headphones on,
3) Turned the volume up to ‘loud’,
4) Relaxed and played some metal!
Heck yes! I approve.
Just played a masterclass for the Takacs quartet. They are officially amazing. Also the first violinist told me something that made something my coach has been trying to get me to do click, so that’s really really awesome.
Wow, lucky! Glad it went so well!
Warning: long, rambling post ahead.
I have a fantastic math professor, and I’m finally starting to understand things I never realized I didn’t understand.
I’ve always been better at math than most of my classmates in basically every math class I’ve taken, but it always bored me to tears – except on certain, rare occasions like when it’s featured in Muse. Up until today, I’d assumed that was because it was simply presented in a more interesting way. That is true, but I finally realized what determines my interest level: I approach learning math in the same way that I approach learning a language. I never had a clue that I thought about math in the same way before, but thanks to the way this professor teaches I’ve finally figured it out. The reason I’ve been having such a struggle staying focused (and forget about trying to be interested) in any of my previous classes is because the teachers just taught mathematics as “facts”. My mind treats this like memorizing sentences and the most basic definitions of vocabulary. So if I want to “write” anything from what I know, all I can do is rearrange sentences I’ve already memorized. Every time in the past when I’ve tried to experiment with what I’ve learned I’ve been penalized for it. Either trying different methods until I find one that works for that particular problem takes too long, or I’m not taking the same steps to get my answer that I’m supposed to – that sort of thing. But now I’m finally learning from someone who a) wants us to experiment with what we’ve learned, and b) explains why we do things certain ways and how we arrive at the assumptions we use for math – oh, and that’s the biggest thing. He admits that mathematics is based on assumptions! I’d never actually heard that before, but it sure makes the aspects of math that confused me make a whole lot more sense!
So yeah, I finally figured out that I think about math the same way that I think about language. And the more I learn, the more I realize that math really does work like a language in some ways. I’m finally starting to get it, and I have to say it’s a lot less boring and more intuitive when I don’t have to constrain myself to “acceptable” methods of finding an answer!
So the campus bookstore had “Savage Harvest” and I bought it immediately and am deeply immersed. [Insert dumb joke about getting lost and sending search parties.]
I’m spending spring break in beautiful and rainy Toronto, where Julia and I are eating everything delicious! I mean, we are also seeing museums and stuff I guess.
Food log so far:
-a supremely unsatisfying chicken salad sandwich and pasta salad, Tuesday lunch (Amtrak food is terrible)
-gnocchi in gorgonzola sauce, Tuesday dinner (delicious!)
-kimchi tofu fries and a bahn mi sandwich, Wednesday lunch (so good!!)
Coming soon over the next day or two:
-duck poutine pizza
-french toast which my boyfriend swears will be deep fried (he just wants a break from my strange tastes)
-possibly kangaroo sausage?
Dodec got duck sausage and I got wild boar sausage and we both got duck fat fries. It was a food-filled time and a lot of fun :3
Tomorrow at this time (give or take a hemisphere’s worth of time zones) I’ll be in Assisi. Hurrah! I plan to jot down some short notes each day so that I can tell you guys all about it once I’m back in the States. I imagine that mostly I’ll be writing about food. I’m looking forward to the food more than anything.
Arrivederci, Pigghi!
Enjoy your trip!
Have the best time!
Have fun!
Have fun!
Right, so. The well known Vulcan phrase live long and prosper (frequently abbreviated LLAP) is correctly answered by the lesser known phrase “peace and long life”. I just inadvertently realized in a text with the ex, that the abbreviations form a palindrome. LLAP/PALL. Mind=blown (it’s late. well past my bedtime and i have to be up in….shoot. 6 and a half hours)).
Of course, that’s only in English… and it also seems to be okay to just repeat it, going by the series.
In response to Robert’s 117.1.4.1 on the previous thread. Quoting pertinent passage below:
“I wonder whether we’re repeating the mistakes of the 1950s. Then, too, there was a big emphasis on educational lockstep as a recipe for success. And the result was a huge backlash in the 1960s: Flower Power, “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out,†the whole 1960s counterculture scene. I keep expecting to see that repeating itself, too. Maybe it will, once the economy improves to the point at which people can scrape out a meager living by selling incense or making sandals.”
I did a little research (emphasis on “little,” so feel free to correct me if I’ve got something wrong, folks), and I discovered that degree completion rates among 16 to 24-year-olds have been decreasing over the past 20 years in the USA.
Study is here, de-linked, though I haven’t got the energy to analyze it at the mo. http :// www. psc. isr. umich. edu /pubs /pdf /rr07-626.pdf
At Logan Airport, waiting for my plane to Lebanon… Lebanon, New Hampshire, that is!
That was so cool, I’d never flown in a turboprop before, it was like a car and the pilots were right in front of me and I could see out all of the windows (which were bigger than on jetliners) and we were right level with the upper cloud level, so the big clouds were all around us like a landscape of mountains and valleys and sometimes we went right through a cloud and the whole world turned white, in every one of those windows… it was amazing.
Well oops. So there was one present on my christmas list that i went ahead and bought myself back at christmas because mom pretty much flat out said she wasn’t going to buy it for me. that’d be the pon farr perfume.
so….i never really bothered telling mom i got it for msyelf, because she kinda thought it was stupid/waste of money/what ahve you and that she wasn’t going to get me it. so birthday in 8 days. first of my presents delivered today. the return address on the box is for “one stop perfume”. What are the odds it’s anything other than a second bottle of pon farr perfume. and i haven’t even used the first one yet.
and now i feel a bit bad that mom spent $40 on something taht i already have…..but i don’t want to tell her i already have? and my sister knows i have it, but i don’t know if she remembers, or if she’s smart enough to keep her mouth shut if she does. oops. :/
Although…..there are two different brands/scents of pon farr perfume. based on what amazon turns up for “one stop perfume”, it is the different scent than the pon farr perfume i already have. so….that’d be cool.
also i hate not being able to open my presents until my birthday. this is killing me. even though i know what it is already.
My birthday is in July and my mom started mentioning her present for me last month!
Hey, Fiddler or possibly someone else! I’m trying to pick out a Hornblower book to read for a class. I see that the chronological order and the publication order are not the same, and I know that sometimes a book in the middle of a series is the best… Which book is recommended for a Hornblower newbie?
I really, really liked Lieutenant Hornblower, but it’s probably not a good example because it’s the only book not written from Hornblowers pov. I also rather liked Beat to Quarters, which is a more typical Hornblower book. And the one where he goes to Russia is cool too, but fairly late in the series.
Okay, thanks! I’m leaning to Beat to Quarters, then…
Bela Fleck has a shirt that has a robot fighting a dinosaur on it and that makes me happy.
(I still don’t like the concerto at all though)
Home by 11am on a friday? heck yes today is awesome.
i mean, hello. rarely happens/rarely will happen for the rest of my vet school career (and life thereafter in the real world). gonna miss the shelter med rotation when we go back to rotation at school, where we’re at the vet hospital day in and day out and there is tons and tons of paperwork and you do more paperwork than you do anything else at all.
so yeah. today is awesome. tomorrow is James Tiberius Kirk’s birthday. so tomorrow is awesome as well. plus it’s the weekend.
Just had my first dinner at the hotel in Assisi. Sat with my roommate, the two adults and the two priests. Two bottles of red wine–I liked the first one better; the second was too sweet. Also, Assisi is really cool and I still can’t believe I’m in Italy. There’s just so many choices old stuff here….
You drank two bottles of wine?! Are you sure you’re not Italian?
Hey, in my defense, the first bottle was pretty small.
No, it was of course two bottles for the table, not for me. I only had three conservatively sized glasses. I can’t claim that everyone on the trip is being this responsible with their newfound privileges, but I, at least, had
two priests watching methe maturity to drink responsibly. Actually, one of the priest’s exact words regarding Italian wine were, “Have fun with it.”I recently read that the Vatican has the highest per-capita wine consumption of any country, about 74 liters a year, so they do seem to have fun with it. (France and Italy were tied for
a distant secondfirst among big countries, with about half that much.)Do you know whether that figure included communion wine?
It did, but the news story said sacramental wine doesn’t explain the whole difference. Hold on, I’ll find it…
Don’t forget the cultural thing- I think it’s more traditional to have wine with dinner in France/Italy than in Germany or the US.
I can confirm. And sometimes wine is cheaper than water.
Mm, that all makes sense. Thanks!
*so much old
I’m still not sure this SwiftKey thing likes me….
So……My dinner and a movie I treated myself to in my celebration of being single a year…..
Given I’m now the proud owner of 2 bottles of Pon Farr, albeit 2 different scents (and ignoring the fact that I’m not technically supposed to know/don’t know that that’s what the birthday present package is), I figured it’s about time I finally wear some and stop waiting for the right special occasion. cuz let’s be real. All I do is go to school day in and day out and no special occasions.
So I spritzed on a bunch of Pon Farr and left my apartment smelling like a Vulcan in heat. (Which is actually surprisingly good smelling. I wasn’t sure. I’ve never worn perfume before and always found that people wearing perfume give me a headache. But I quite liked the way I smelled/the Pon Farr perfume smelled.
So I had the passing thought about how i was going to throw on a cute top and go out to dinner/movie smelling all nice, and wouldn’t it be funny/fun if i get hit on, cuz i totally never have been hit on in my life and you know, it sounds like fun. i dunno. i have weird passing thoughts.
And…..the bartender/waiter at Chili’s knows my name. Which is serious evidence that I order to go food from Chili’s waaaaaaay too often. and he was possibly maybe debatably hitting on me. Which was horrible. I wanted an invisibility cloak. Or the one ring. Anything so I could become invisible.
Decided to get lunch at chili’s today and eat in the restaurant (instead of ordering to go like I normally would. Since it was my treating myself to lunch celebration. And I decided to ignore the weird-ity that i was returning to the same restaurant who’s parking lot I was dumped one year ago today. Although i pointed out to myself i was more specifically dumped in my car, and i drive in it every day so there’s not really any significance to the parking lot. so therefore it wasn’t weird.). And one of the bartender/waiters who is working a significant portion of the nights I order to go food knows my name. And my server was the other bartender/waiter. Who may or may not recognize me but gave me the WORST service during my lunch.
So I was seated. Got my food ordered. Am sitting there reading a book guzzling my soda, because i haven’t drank anything all day and am thirsty. The both across from mine was getting their orders taken by the bartender who knows my name. He takes their order, takes a couple steps down te aisle, turns around walks back to where I’m reading my book, with an empty soda glass. Goes “what are you drinking, miss?” I look up and say coke. And he goes to get me one. Comes back and I say thanks. And he’s like “Michelle, right?” And I’m like OMG I wish the floor would swallow me up right now. This is so humiliating. “Yeah”. Then he says something about “to go order served me right”. Or something. I’m not quite sure
And then my a real server brings me my food. Coke is still half to mostly full so no big. Halfway through my food or more, coke is starting to get pretty near empty. I keep hearing my server on the other side of the divider between booths and aisles flirting with some “ladies”
He comes back to my aisle, asks from a couple booths away (because he’s at the end if the aisle) if “everything all right, miss?” And of course as is 100% the norm for whenever a server asks you questions my mouth is super full of food. I motion towards my glass, swallow, and say I’d like some more coke (becUse it’s pretty much just ice). He gets me a refill, walks top speed past my table and slams it down without pausing or hardly even glancing my direction. Two seconds later he’s back at the booth on the other side of the divider. “I have time for you ladies. Any thing you ladies need?”
Like what the heck am I, chopped liver? You can’t even give me a normal level of waiter cheerfulness? Can’t even check on how I’m doing as frequently as you’re suppose to? You stopped at my table all of one time during my meal to check on me. Your coworker who wasn’t even serving my table had to refill my soda for you the first time it was empty.
And then you bring me my check sort of as a second thought on your way to go flirt with the “ladies”. I finish up the few bites I have left (of my tiny little meal of 5 potato skins, a cheeseburger, and the fries that come with the burger) and dig out my debit card
You’re now bussing the “ladies” table
Your coworker who again was not my server and therefore not required to do anything as far as taking care of my table, walks up and asks “is it alright if I clear these [my dishes] away for you Michelle?” And yes I’m cringing and wishing I was invisible because he knows my name and its embarrassing, but I’m just “yeah, thanks”. And then he’s like “And since Dylan doesn’t know how to do his job I can go ahead and run this for you as well….” As he looks (jokingly, despite it being pretty damn accurate) at Dylan across te divider and takes my card to go run it
And then comes back and says something about it being nice to see you again, Michelle. And asks if I want a to go soda.
And then as I’m figuring out a tip for Dylan and deciding whether or not to reduce his tip, as a sort of second thought he’s (Dylan the horrible server) all “do you need anything else?” From halfway down the aisle and I didn’t even realize he was talking to me at first cuz I thought he said Christine, and assumed he wastalkingtk someone named Christine until he walks closer and repeats himself and I’m like, no, good, thanks. (Thanks for sucking at your job)
But yeah. Anyway. Apparently I order to go way too often if the bartender knows my name. So awkward.
although perhaps my passing thought of hey maybe i’ll get hit on came true. because i guess may be he was hitting on me? i dunno. i wouldn’t even know if someone hit on me and apparently when they do find it really uncomfortable, so yeah. weird random thought to have. but anyway.
Also, divergent is a good movie. Now I have to go read the book(s?). It’s kind of hunger games-y in a way
Today I accidentally skipped math class.
…The actual story of how it happened is really boring, but I feel a certain amount of satisfaction. I’m so rebellious, you guys.
Oooh, I’ve been late for class before because my music was up loud and I was reading fanfiction… (hides)
Yeah! Accidental rebels! *high five*
So…..my brilliant idea to celebrate Captain Kirk’s future birthday tomorrow by watching the first 6 Star Trek movies with Captain Kirk and the 2 reboot movies does not look quite so brilliant or feasible when I crunch the numbers.
It would take 15 hours and 47 minutes, not counting the bathroom breaks and the breaks preparing food to eat.
But at the same time I kind of want to be able to say I’ve watched ’em all in a row all at once….because I’m weird like that. We’ll see what happens. Depends on how late I decide to sleep in…..
If I do it….it’ll be the second viewing for the first six movies (I’ve only seen them once apiece), the 4th viewing of the 2009 Trek movie and the 8th viewing of Into Darkness. yes, I’ve seen Into Darkness 7 times in less than a year….
Of course what I really should be doing is starting to read that 100 page document i have an exam on in 2 weeks, or even studying the 2 powerpoints i have an exam on in one week, but….that sounds like school/work, and I don’t really feel like doing that for a few more days, lol.
This remote sending conference is going well, and I managed to finish “Savage Harvest” during the breaks. I expected it to be a little longer, or at least to present, I don’t know, I guess one more final piece of evidence that would make me like 100% sure of the author’s solution– as it is, it looks pretty definite to me, but not exactly 100%.
The creepy bit is that after the lectures, we went across the street to have a poster session in the social science library, and it turns out the building is named for Nelson Rockefeller, who apparently went to Dartmouth, and in the lobby where the reception was, there’s this big painting of him. And I was just mentally going “Dang, if he could have had the information Carl Hoffman found about his son, maybe he’d have gotten some closure. Maybe he could have even gotten the bones the Dutch recovered (even if Hoffman didn’t believe they were really Michael’s, but if they got them back they could have checked dental records and known one way or the other) and buried them.”
I really know nothing about the man’s politics beyond the offices held, and it’s possible I would have vehemently disagreed with them. I certainly do not hold a high opinion of politicians in general. But I saw the newsreel coverage of him at the press conference when the search ended in the “In Search Of…” episode, talking about the qualities he admired in his son, and I know that I love my own father very much and that my father loves me and called the University Police once because I had missed all of his calls all evening because I’d been studying with my phone on silent. And I know I would not wish my parents, or anyone’s parents to have to lose their child and never know what happened to en like that.
My entertainment for the evening was reading Luna rant about stuff in the Geeky TV Shows thread….
Glad I could be of entertainment.
I had a good time tonight. We went to a local museum, which was having a sci-fi/space exhibit, which was pretty decent. There was a cool video about Curiosity’s landing and meteorites from the moon and Mars that you could actually touch.
There was also an astronomer there, who gave an interesting talk on exoplanets. i already knew a lot of it, but not very well, and he was a pretty good speaker, so I enjoyed it.
When that was over, we went outside, where they had telescopes set up. We didn’t actually look through any of them, because there were lines and we have a telescope, but we stayed out there anyway for a bit. During that time, I looked up and saw something weird, which we finally decided was just a really fast-moving bird. Then, while we were still looking up, we saw a beautiful shooting star, which arced its way across most of the visible sky, It was truly spectacular. Unfortunately, we didn’t think to draw anybody’s attention to it until it was almost gone, though we had plenty of time. A courtyard full of astronomers, and I think we were the only ones to see it.
Then on the way out I spotted a satellite.
I didn’t even know we were going to this event until maybe an hour before, but it was pretty great anyway.
WHAT MUSEUM WERE YOU AT THAT THEY LET YOU TOUCH MOON ROCKS THAT IS MY DREAM!!! AND MARS OH MY GOD I NEED TO KNOW
idk if anyone else has played the game where you describe what your “spirit crime” aka the crime that you would commit that would best fit your personality, but my answer is consistently “breaking into NASA so I can touch the moon rocks” so if there is a legal way to accomplish this I must
Its a rotating exhibit called ‘Alien Worlds and Androids’. I can’t find a list of places it’s going, just ill-documented reports on where it’s been. And a bunch of helpful Google suggestions of it being mentioned in local news.
You can touch a moon rock at the National Air and Space Museum, it’s small, though.
Awesome, sounds like a blast!
I don’t believe I’m capable of living more than about 6 maybe 7 months with a person before I grow to strongly strongly dislike them.
Thus commences the thermostat wars. I’ve given up on the “please don’t slam the apt door” request. I asked. Nicely. A few weeks ago because I couldn’t take it. Now she shuts it slightly quieter, and talks at full volume on her cell phone right outside my door as she gets her coat out of the closet at 6 something in the morning. Not okay. It wakes me up the days I get to sleep in, even through the earplugs I sleep with.
And tonight she had the thermostat switched over to the “cool” setting. And set to 58 degrees, so the apt would cool until it hit 58 degrees. Sorry, not okay. Especialy since although it got up to 70 today, it’s suppose to drop into the 30s overnight. and even if it weren’t, that’s never an okay temperature to set the AC to. Never.
32. 32 degrees outside.
my roommate is in the living room by the thermostat, with it set to god knows what temperature, but i know it was on “cool” and the temperature in the living room currentlyr eads 69, but since it’s still pumping cold air…..the temperature she has it set to is below that.
my bedroom when its cold outside is colder than the living room. it has two external walls.
so if it’s 69 in the living room…..yeah.
and why. why would you ever turn the thermostat to COOL when it is 32 degrees outside.
omg how to people cohabitate.
have you been like “hey I’m freezing, would you mind not setting the thermostat so low?”
No……that would be logical and intelligent. And more importantly require talking to her……
I just switch the thermostat to a reasonable setting (like off, or heating to 70, or if it’s above 70 cooling to 70) when she’s not sitting on the couch right next to it.
And am currently bundled in 6 throw blankets in my bedroom so that I’m a comfortable temp for my movie marathon.
The last time I asked her something it didn’t really accomplish much (the whole not slamming the door thing). Now she just talks really loud on her phone outside my door in the morning instead. Or in addition.
Turn it to -10. You’d suffer, but so would she.
I mean, it’s a lot healthier to bring it up when something bothers you instead of letting it fester and resenting your roommate in silence. That goes for the cell phone thing too. People cohabitating requires communication!
oh right life etc
I don’t post often but I read every comment (wow I love the comment viewer it’s so useful)
anyway
break started today I guess, though I have so much to do it’s not really going to be… a break… a ton of work + rehearsals for a show I now regret joining but it’s too late to back out of.
I’m not doing too great personally tbh. Lot of emotions and probably not dealing with them in constructive ways. Definitely still not dealing well with breakup, but it was a pretty horrible end after a long time together so I’ve been assured that this at least is understandable. I could elaborate but it’s… probably not worth it… yeah
*hugs*
Aw. That sounds rough, Jadestone. We’re here if you want to open up about things some more!
Not sure I’m going to successfully make it through my movie marathon…..I started shortly before 9:30 this morning, and due to necessary breaks and an unforseen interruption (an advanced birthday phone call from my grandpa), I’m only 4 movies down. Which mean’s I’m nearly 3 hours behind where I should be…..And 4 more mvoies to go. So I”m either not going to complete my marathon, or I”m not going to get to bed at a reasonable hour.
We’ll see how I feel after the next two movies. The 6 original movies are a must. The two Abrams movies aren’t strictly required for the marathon, although I *would* like to include them.
Yaay! I get to go to a party with people that I don’t even like in the first place! Yaay!
What’s especially special about this party, is that it’s being held in a hospital for some old bag who my ex-mother likes to refer to as my “great-grandmother”
Yaay!
The irony is; I don’t even like parties!
Yaay!
Maybe the food will be neat- I was served rabbit once in a hospital. Eating with a tube in your arm is a bit annoying but devouring to carcass of the fallen enemy did cheer me up. (I have no idea if it really had pink fur before, but I presume so)
Most likely not. The family is bringing their own “food” to eat.
They consider spinach and cabbage coleslaw as dessert.
Writing crack fic based on a random joke someone I don’t know made nine years ago that contained numerous spelling errors…
Shopping carts and flip flops are a dangerous combination.
Went to joann fabrics today to buy a bunch of embroidery floss because during my movie marathon yesterday i google Star Trek cross stitch patterns and bought an epically awesome looking Star Trek Enterprise pattern and wanted to get started on it ASAP
Before I even found where the embroidery floss was located, when stepping forward, I smashed my pinky toe into the cart. I thought I heard it pop and I was like, oh, great, ow ow ow, i wonder if any of these times i’ve actually *broken* it and not known it. I reach down to poke and prod at it to see how much it hurts (logical, right?). I see that about a centimeter in diameter chunk of flesh has been sliced nearly all the way off the top of my pinky toe. I push the skin back down, thinking that this would be a really great time to have vet wrap or surgical tape in my purse and ru nning through my mind if I even have anything absorbent in my purse like a napkin. I decide the toe doesn’t hurt that much, so I’m just going to go about my shopping and not worry too much. And as I’m thinking this, blood starts welling up out of hte wound, and about two steps and there’s a ginormous blood drop poised to fall. I realize that unless I want to make a huge bloody mess all over the store, something needs to be done.
I locate the restroom (my flip flop is starting to get bloody) which is conveniently a one room one person restroom, and thankfully has papertowels. I get a papertowel and apply compression. the ball of my foot and my flip flop is now all bloody.
I realize that the the pressure i’m applying is doing nothing to slow/stop the bleeding, and start digging through my purse in the hopes there’s something in there that I can use to jerry rig a bandage for my toe so it doesn’t bleed all over while i finish my shopping.
By some miracle i find i actually have a bandaid in my purse, so I manage to get my foot up in the sink to wash off the blood, and get the bandaid applied.
And then midway trough locating the ~50 colors I needed, my poor little toe finally gets warm enough/over the initial shock enough to start throbbing. And has been mildly throbbing (not horribly) inthe several hours since.
So yeah. Flip flops + shopping cart= bad idea.
I am so clumsy. It’s terrible.
Ugh, that’s awful. Flip-flops are highly impractical.
Very true. I just hate putting on socks and shoes when avoidable…..
ow ow ow ow
cringe cringe cringe cringe
I’m so sorry for your pinky toe
Eesh, sorry.
I had a similar experience with a shopping cart and my awesome ninja ability to climb and tip things over in the process. I’m not too far off from your experience.
Hope your toe feels better by now.
On reevaluation, I can’t guesstimate size at all. The flap of skin is really probably only about 5 mm in diameter. And while it looks a nasty red blood blister color, is really only tender when i put pressure on it.
Unfortunately, while my normal sneakers don’t put pressure on it, the shoes I’m wearing down at the shelter (we’re suppose to have separate shoes, so we don’t spread any diseases from the shelter animals) do everytime I take a step. So that was interesting, today.
<rant
I have an internet friend who is a little on the sensitive side, and I don't know what to do with her. She always complains about being depressed, and wonders what she can do, but when I offer to help her in some way, she turns be down while arguing that "It's not that bad.”
And, if I’m busy or away for a while while she’s online, and she sends me a message about her being depressed, or if she makes an inappropriate joke (which she is also prone to. No, it’s not a problem,) and I’m unable to reply right away, she immediately assumes that I’m angry with her or something and sends me a million apologizing messages telling me to dump her because she’s a horrible friend for driving me away, which usually results in me actually getting angry for real, (which is my problem, I know,) and then we make up, and become friends again.
I guess it’s a Take-Her-Under-My-Wing-Because-She’s-Complaining-About-Break-Ups-And-Exes-And-Family-Problems-And-I’m-The-Only-One-She-Can-Go-To-For-Support-At-The-Moment sort of thing…. Don’t get me wrong, I like her for other reasons, but we don’t really talk about those things anymore. She’s busy talking about school, (which I can’t help with because you all know that I’ve never been to a public school, except on visits with my schoolgoing friends) friends she doesn’t think like her anymore, (may I ask, how the hell am I supposed to know how to help her with that? I don’t know these people! She lives like, across the country from me!) and I have no idea what to do with her anymore. She wanted me to punish her for spilling a box of powdered chocolate on the floor one day. I tried to convince her that a box of powdered chocolate is absolutely no reason to want your friend to scream/cry/shoot/beat/kill/whatever she wanted me to do with her, but she was being very stubborn, so I just stopped talking with her for a while, which she immediately resorted to sending me hundreds of apologizing messages, begging me to come back. I thought she wanted me to punish her.
I don’t want to end the friendship, she is a really cool person, it’s just that… there are these problems with us being friends that I don’t know how to resolve! Y’know… I just realized something. I guess I’m acting kind of like my friend with Museblog. Like, stopping by once in a while to complain about this friend that you didn’t even know existed – and probably will forget her existing as soon as you go to bed tonight – and family problems. I seem to take this as a place to dump my problems because you’re all older and smarter than I am. What do you guys think? Am I annoying? Bothersome? Frustrating? How should I know? I’ve gotten used to myself.
Anyway, topic straying. I’ve gotten to know this person very well, and if our friendship stopped, I would probably get pretty lonely a lot, considering I don’t really have many friends anymore – inside or outside of the internet. Except you guys. And that’s mostly the problem. If I didn’t have her to talk to, I’d probably come in here and dump all of my feelings into your laps without as little as a thanks or a hello. I mostly don’t want to be a bother here, because I want you guys to trust me, and the GAPAs to not have to deal with any more of these long rants of mine. I feel so sorry for the Admin who gets stuck with reading this entire thing.
Maybe I should keep a diary? But then there would be no helpful answers.
Ugh, I’m all typed out. So sorry, Museblog, but I can’t tell my friend all of this, she would be so embarrassed if she heard me talking about her like this. And I don’t really have any other friends or relatives on hand to talk to.
Really, music is the only friend on hand I have.
And all I have to do is listen to that kind of friend.
</rant
Oh, by the way.
Thanks for at least listening.
Ooh, that’s a tricky situation. Your friend is obviously going through a very hard time, and her insecurities about you are only worsened by the other things she’s going through. It’s hard to be there for someone 24/7, I know. And you, as an internet friend, can only do so much.
As for your own doubts regarding this particular corner of the web, don’t worry about dropping your troubles here. It’s what we all do. We’re all here for you, and I know I for one have appreciated the amount of time you’ve put into the blog.
I don’t think you’re annoying, bothersome or frustrating! I think the R&P thread would be better for this, but otherwise- well, you have a long way to go if you want to catch up with my whining
You don’t have to apologize for being young. I also doubt that I’m “smarter” or “dumber” than you, inasmuch as that can be measured (opinions vary). Obviously, some of us MBers have more life experience due to being older, but that comes with time and pitfalls along the way. Age also brings more emotional resilience with it- I cringe at things I whined about when I was 13 and at that age, I never thought I’d overcome some of the circumstances I faced. Whining about everything on the ‘blog helped me through, and I’m trying to pay it forwards by complaining less and listening for a turn, like others listened to and advised me (but I’m new at this, so you’re sorta screwed. Sorry).
I should also probably add that my oldest IRL friend and I spend most of our time talking about a lot of people the other only barely knows, since we’re in different faculties pursuing different paths. It’s kind of a relief since the other person is usually more objective (as an outsider to the group/friendship dynamic), and you don’t need to worry about jeopardizing the friendship through some sort of high-school gossip chain.
~Back to your friend~
Anyway, perhaps you could tell her (in the most polite and gentle way) to cut the crap? Just like any other relationship, friendships have boundaries and she’s been overstepping them. Yes, of course you want to support her (and you do!), but just because she doesn’t have (m)any others to turn to doesn’t make it your job to fix her life.
Of course, being that she’s sensitive, formulating that message will be tricky. If I recall correctly, Dodeca has a post on the Coping thread about this sort of thing. For example, using statements along the lines of “When you xy, I feel zk.” Something along the lines of “When you ask me to punish you, I feel …., because I don’t want to hurt you.” comes across less aggressive than (the bookgirl_me unfiltered thought) “Wtc is wrong with you? Don’t drag me into your messed-up mud pie.”.
The two of you aren’t communicating well at the moment. I don’t mean this as a criticism of either party, but as a call to action. Situations like her flipping out because you don’t respond right away will just keep frustrating both of you in the long run.
On a personal note, I might try prefacing the email with something along the lines of “We’re still friends, we’re staying friends and I’m not mad at you as a person.”. You can also try pointing out some of the good things you mentioned- that you have a lot in common you’d like to talk about. And you can ask her what she wants you to do when she tells you about her problems- though advice sounds like the most constructive response, sometimes people just want to let it all out.
I know, it’s easy to say all this and much, much harder to do it, but I really think that a) you can pull it off and b) it would very much improve your friendship on both ends.
tl;dr Finding a way to tell her how you feel without her flipping her lip would be awesome, give it a go.
It sounds like she’s in a really awful place, and unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot you can do. I think we’ve all faced something like this, where someone we really care about is going through a rough time and we wish we could fix everything, but we can’t.
If you do want to help, and it sounds like you do, just listen to her as long as you can, and keep telling her she deserves so much more than the awful circumstances around her, tell her all the good qualities you see in her, tell her she’s a wonderful person and life will get better eventually. She won’t believe you, not the first time and maybe not the fiftieth time, because it’s hard to change someone’s mind when they’re convinced they’re worthless, but at least she’ll know you’re there for her, and you’re behind her every step of the way.
(If you don’t believe this or don’t have the energy to keep talking to her or whatever else, that’s okay. She’s not your responsibility, in the end, and if you can’t offer help anymore, it’s okay to take a break. Just be as patient as you can, and keep trying as often as you can.)
If you can find Boggle the Owl online, I reccommend it highly. Both to draw comfort from and as a tutorial in how to talk to people who are hurting.
And never feel bad about leaning on us for help. We want to do anything we can.
Does anyone know where I might find a listing/description of the gear/equipment/luggage etc. aboard Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra on the final flight? The story I’m writing now (the aforementioned crack fic) has Earhart and Noonan land on a remote island and then find another castaway who needs clothing and possibly medical attention, so I need to know how much they could do for him.
Apparently even the people looking for wreckage in the Phoenix Islands don’t know for certain, the record keeping just wasn’t very good, it wasn’t a government operation, and there are a bunch of conflicting newspaper reports about what was aboard at each stop on the world flight. There is an inventory of what was aboard on the first world flight attempt two months earlier, but that’s all. Most researchers apparently work from that, so I will, too. It seems safe to give them a first aid kit (that’s in the earlier inventory), and some spare clothing for each in personal bags (Earhart said she had that much, we don’t know about Noonan, but his clothing would be more likely to fit the other castaway, so I’ll plead benefit of the doubt.)
All quite reasonable, IMHO.
Last night in Assisi. We went to Siena yesterday but to be honest I didn’t much care for the town. It just had a negative atmosphere for me. Pretty, though, and that tower is cool. The food here continues to be wonderful, including the wine. Today we had seven hours to ourselves in Assisi. A nice long lunch, then another visit to San Francesco, then revisiting San Damiano. It was a pretty big day spiritually for quite a few people, I think, myself included. If any of the epiphanies I had were groundshaking, though, I haven’t felt the tremors quite yet. It was exhausting, though, and a lot of people were just in a weird mood at dinner. Distracted, not hungry. Several people talked about breaking into tears today while praying or looking at artwork. I didn’t, but I know where they’re coming from. I wish I could’ve spent more time at San Damiano, but they kicked us out at 4:30. There were a lot of tourists coming through as well but most of the time I barely realized they were there.
I’m telling you, man, be careful about offering your day to Our Lady. She doesn’t mess around. Francis and Clare don’t, either. I’m really glad my roommate wants to turn in early tonight as well; I’m exhausted, and staying up till midnight last night drinking wine and playing pitch only explains a bit of that. Pitch is great fun, by the way. I highly recommend it, if you’ve got someone to teach you how to play.
I don’t have time to catch up on posts at the moment, but I wanted to let everyone know that last night I looked up hair tutorials on youtube (as a new form of procrastination) and as a result today have my hair up in a really cute roll on a bandana, with the front of my hair pinned in such a way that it looks like I’ve got Bettie Page bangs. It’s fancy and pin-up-y, and makes my usual button-up + jeans + boots infinitely classier. One of my bandmates said I looked like rosie the riveter.
On the downside, I’ve got mad jitters from this medication, and my hands are shaking more noticeably than usual. On the side effects warnings thing it says to call a doctor if you get tremors, but, my hands shake a bit already, so I’m not sure whether or not this, for me, falls into “serious side effects” territory. :/ (It’s not so bad I can’t write or anything, it’s the same level of shaking I get when I drink too much coffee or am really hungover, or keyed up for whatever reason.)
holy crap I’m giving a recital in two weeks oh god
Heyyyy guys, you should all sign the whitehouse dot gov petition to legally recognize nonbinary genders if you haven’t already.
Making paper flowers to hang on my door…
That moment when you realize you’ve been browsing google images tribble pictures for several minutes because you’ve been pondering how brilliant a poster child tribbles would be for a spay/neuter campaign…..all because your brain is fried to mush trying to work on a powerpoint presentation for one of your rotations.
*headdesk*
but seriously. “Spay and neuter your pets; unlike tribbles, dogs and cats aren’t born pregnant! You can help prevent overpopulation” with a picture of tribbles overruning the space station/Enterprise
It’s freaking perfect.
OMG kill me now i need to finish this presentation.
William Shatner and a bunch of TNG actors were at a convention in my college state earlier this month. On a weekend where I had no school commitments and nothing at all going on. And I only just found out about it. Far, far too late. Because it’s already happened.
Life sucks. Grrrrrrr.
But OMG. Just found out Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, William Shatner, Nathan Fillion, and some other really awesome peeps are at another convention very soon from now very nearby. And OMG OMG.
Assuming I can swing it……if you ahd to choose between an autograph of a celeb or a photo with the celeb, which would you choose? I’m leaning toward photos even though i photograph terribly
Photograph. More unique to you and the specific experience of the event.
Exactly, then you can prove to disbelievers that you didn’t just print the photo from the internet.
Autographs also serve that purpose, but it’s still really cool to show your friends that you stood right next to this famous person and got your picture taken!
So I got into Carleton, and didn’t get into Harvey Mudd, so meh.
Either Carleton or the state school here. Looking at the Carleton facebook it looks really like people I’d want to be with so hopefully the finances work out in that regard.
Has anyone here read Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy? I’m just starting the first one (Red Mars) and I’m liking it so far.
My sister is going to Carleton next year!
Carleton is a great school! I thought about going there, and I know a cool guy who’s a freshman there. I hope the finances work out.
(Sorry about Harvey Mudd! It would have been nice to have another MuseBlogger at the 5Cs! I heard they got overenrolled last year which dropped their admissions numbers this year.
)
OMG I AM FLIPPING OUT I AM IN SHOCK THIS IS GOING TO BE AMAZING I HAVE TICKETS. TICKETS ARE MINE. WILLIAM SHATNER MATT SMITH KAREN GILLAN NATHAN FILLION
OMG
i no longer even care about my birthday in two days, or what any of my presents i have waiting to be opened are. b/c in just a week and a half I’m going to be at a convention dressed in my science uniform and meeting shatner and smith and gillan and fillion and OMG
That’s really exciting!
Apparently i care so little about my birthday at this point id ont’ even remember it’s *three* days, not two. Because it’s only Wednesday today.
Also, in my super hyper excitement induced state of mania on my drive to find slimming (aka super constricting) undergarments (my starfleeet uniform is a bit too snug in areas) and suitable black boots (only halfway suitable. they have shoelaces and zippers and buckles and stuff and don’t quite fit, but….close enough), I was talking to myself in the car and going OMG comic con comic con…and then realized. Comic KHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNN. And screamed it 2 to 3 times in Shatneresque style driving down the road, which super irritated by vocal cords momentarily and caused me to start coughing so hard I very nearly regurgitated my stomach contents.
It was awesome. I am still in a very super hyper excitement indcued manic state.
Matt’s been hanging around in America for the past few months… and the stars are aligning that he might come to Chicago. I mean, St. Louis on April 4-6, that’s two weeks before the Chicago convention. And John Barrowman didn’t get announced until around 2-3 weeks before.
What I’m saying is, please, oh please come to Chicago Matt Smith there’s no other guests I’m interested in.
I’m now editor-in-chief of my school newspaper!
Congratulations, Chok!
CHOK CHOK CHOK congratulations you super mega deserve it
Sweet!
Aaahh! Yay!
Congrats, Chok! You deserve it
So…
I’m thinking of changing my alias.
“Ducky” only reminds me of my young, annoying days, and even though others may not see it that way, I personally want a clean-ish slate.
Rós þyrnir (according to Google translate, Icelandic for “rose thorn”) may or may not be my new alias. It’ll probably take some getting used to for all of you as well as myself, we’ll see how it goes.
If anyone here can verify the translation, it would be greatly appreciated.
I think my absence, even after I “came back”, is due in part to my alias feeling like trying to fit my nearly-adult self into clothes that I wore as a child. Hopefully this return will be for real, and Rós þyrnir will fit a bit better.
All the best,
Rós / Ducky
We’re glad to have you here no matter what name you ‘re using!
Thanks, Kai!
I think I’m really back for real this time. I’ve been looking through some posts on here and remembering some people that I’d almost forgotten about, and realized that I’ve missed this.
Oh man, all those usernames… all the people who I miss so much…
I personally don’t think you were ever annoying. At all. But if you need a change, that’s cool. I’m just glad you’re here.
welp. I’m stil at collegeland over break, doing rehearsals for a circus show I’m in. It’s supposed to be a “fire and aerials” thing, although one of the fire acts dropped out, so there’s less than there used to be. But it’s the first time my school’s allowed fire stuff at any show (we’re doing it on the tennis courts, heh), so, there’s that. I’m (predictably) doing poi, and also in the group fire-eating acts. I know how to eat fire from a torch and will be learning to breathe it (with cornstarch, not fuel, because it’s MUCH safer) in a week or so as well.
We haven’t gotten a chance to actually practice with fire yet, it’s been too wet/cold/windy outside (thank you, late snowstorm). I’ve only spun fire once before, two years ago, so I’m kinda nervous about getting the moves down reliably enough. But the fuel burns at a really low temp, and I had no problems at all touching/eating/lighting myself and small patches of my jeans on fire at our first practice, so, it will hopefully be fine. None of the other people in the show really do a lot of poi so they seem to like my routine well enough (it’s pretty simple… I can’t do like any of the tricks in any poi videos I watch online, but, most people aren’t familiar with it soooo counting on that for the impressive factor. I mean, they’ll be on fire, that should make it impressive enough as is).
still pretty bummed out in general though. got the news this week that my childhood best friend’s mother passed away this week, after being very sick for the last two months. I’m going home for the weekend/start of next week for the funeral. I still have to email my professors about missing class on monday, and also do a lot of the work that got piled on before break even started, and I have very little motivation to get anything done. I’m so tired when I get back from rehearsal I just don’t want to do anything… sigh.
Is fire-eating as painful as Penn and Teller said?
How painful is that? Worse than eating too-hot pizza?
“The definition of a stupid thing is something where if you do everything right, you still get hurt. Fire-eating and love are stupid things.” http :// www. smithsonianmag. com/arts-culture/penn-jillette-reveals-the-secrets-of-fire-eating-132787272/
The kind I’m doing, not at all. It’s basically a way to extinguish it in your mouth, instead of like, by smothering it with you hand. The fuel burns at way lower temp than skin, so you just have to be careful that the handle doesn’t get too hot or it burns your lips a tiny bit. That only happened when I tried it with the larger torch, the flame was a bit too big.
I imagine it’s maybe different if you’re swallowing fire.
okay now that I’m on my computer and have read the article:
I doooon’t think I reccomend the cotton/coat hanger thing! The torch I have is a ball of cottony wick material at the end of a thin steel rod, so same general idea, but it’s not bendy and there’s 0 risk of it coming apart.
Otherwise: I was taught to exhale as you lower it into your mouth, which doesn’t blow out the flames but seems to keep them pointing up–and, most importantly, keeps you from accidentally inhaling.
We also put our tongues right on one side of the torch when we brought it into our mouths. This makes the flame smaller and again, doesn’t hurt because the fuel burns at a lower temperature. Before this we actually lit our tongues on fire on purpose (the flame stays for like, 3 seconds before dying out. we had to try hard to make it big/long enough for a transfer to another unlit wand).
As I said above, my housemate and I wanted to try a fancy trick and so ended up needing to try the larger torch. The metal on this was hotter since the flame was bigger, and so we both lightly burned the inside of our lips (think: hot chocolate a bit too soon, but I’ve had worse hot chocolate burns to be honest). I ended up with a few sores on the inside of my lips the next day, but I get canker sores REALLY easily. My housemate didn’t get any.
The fuel IS super gross though. I hate the taste. My roommate kinda likes it but I made a point of rinsing my mouth out every few takes and didn’t swallow until well after.
I gotta deal with that and a mouthful of cornstarch for the show though. I’ll figure that out in the coming weeks I guess!
Interesting.
Rrgh I want to read the newly released preview chapter for The Winds of Winter so bad, especially since it’s an Arya chapter. But I have to stay strong and keep all the stuff that’s going to be in TWoW firmly in the book so I can get as much out of it as possible without going “oh, I’ve read this already.”
No way….
It’s… raining?!
Oh my God! It’s raining! It’s raining! It’s raining!!! I’ve been waiting for it to rain for months!
Ugh, I am just a total kid when it comes to anything nature!
Augh, but… it’s RAINING!!!
So are you happy or frustrated that it’s raining? I can’t tell?
I love the rain.
Could those of you who can access the R&P thread do me a favor and see my post on there? I need some advice.
Thank you ♥
Spring break just started, I scored a 98 on my chem test, I found my ipod which I thought I had lost, and I’m going to DC on Sunday… things are looking up.
Awesome, what will you be doing in DC?
I’m going with my family to visit a few relatives, and then of corse to check out all the cool museums and monuments.
Sweet! Here are some secrets from a two-time DC intern:
– Take your own food to the Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Annex at Dulles if you go, because there’s only a McDonalds on property. But go if you can and see Space Shuttle Discovery!
– The Air and Space Museum on the National Mall is a little better, there’s a Boston Market in their food court, so it’s not just McDonalds, but the lines are always huge, so you’re better off going one building down to the National Museum of the American Indian cafeteria, which is an actual rated restaurant and delicious, as Pan and Fiddler can attest.
– While we’re talking about the Museum of the American Indian– try to visit around noon on a sunny day, because there’s a window in the main atrium space that has prisms set in it, and if you’re there at the right time, you can stand in the rainbows they throw across the floor.
– Check out the Moongate Garden behind the Sackler Gallery of Art for some quiet in the middle of the city, it’s a lovely Chinese-inspired garden that has a very pretty pool that reflects the towers of the Smithsonian Castle building.
– You can walk all the way around the Lincoln Memorial at the column level and get a great view of the Potomac and Arlington National Cemetery. Most people don’t realize you can, so they don’t, but it’s both safe and allowed.
– The Hope Diamond is about as big as a Gatorade bottle cap. This is big for a diamond, especially a rare blue diamond, but you shouldn’t go in expecting it to be the size of a baseball or you’ll be disappointed. There are ACTUAL giant gemstones elsewhere in the geology halls, though. (And check out the other “treasures of nature” in the same room as the Hope, because nobody looks at them but they’re worthwhile, especially the giant sheet of copper.)
– The line to see the pandas at the National Zoo is always absurdly long, so check out the awesome bird house, the elephant exhibit, and the Komodo dragons instead.
– Don’t eat or drink on the Metro, it’s serious business. Be aware that trains run less frequently on Saturdays and Sundays than on weekdays. But it’s a way smoother ride than New York or Boston’s subways, so enjoy it!
Wow, thank you! I’ve sent this on to my mom for when we plan our trip.
Oh, and visit NASA HQ if you have the time! It’s right by the Federal Center SW Metro stop!
My birthday was on Ivy Day, which was kind-of-but-not-too disappointing. No from both Yale and UPenn, so now it seems like I’ll be choosing between WUSTL and UC Berkeley. I’ll be visiting both of them in April, so hopefully the choice will be easier…
YOU GOT INTO BERKELY, I am so proud of you ♥
I SHOULD PROBABLY LEARN HOW TO SPELL BERKELEY BEFORE I APPLY
The trick is to remember that it’s spelled as if it would be pronounced “Burr-Kelly”, not like it’s actually pronounced.
You’ve decided to apply? JOIN US
Barkley? : D
Hey, he beat Godzilla at basketball!
I was thinking of the muppet xD
Congrats on Berkeley!
(Man, Yale rejected both of us? They don’t know what they’re missing.)
Hey, I go to UC Berkeley! I hope you decide to come here
Person: Wow, that guy can really fight!
Other Person: Did you know he’s a preacher?
Person: Yeah, I could tell. With that right cross of his.
Just thought of it this morning, don’t judge me.
A relative is visiting us today. He’s a particle physicist at CERN!
Awesome! Tell him he’s got a sweet job!
That really sounds like the set-up for a pun.
(But seriously, that’s awesome!)
He’s glad that some people find his work awesome! He says that usually people don’t know what his job is about. He also offered to take me into the tunnels of the Large Hadron Collider if I decide to visit Switzerland someday!
I hope you get to go, I’ve visited the RHIC tunnels at Brookhaven National Laboratory on visitor days and it’s really something!
A word of advice: if you have to get up early to board an international flight, be sure to drink little enough / leave yourself enough time to sleep (taking into account the hour lost to the start of Italian daylight savings time) that you don’t wake up with your head still spinning. This may be difficult to do if the wine at dinner has already been paid for by the tour company and the meal lasts for more than four hours. But hey, at least the Trevi Fountain is cool at two in the morning!
I’m going to miss Italy. I am really not ready to go home. This has been an absolutely life-changing experience for me.
And then you realize that despite being on airplane mode, both your and your roommate’s phones automatically adjusted themselves and so you’re up an hour earlier than you should have been. Blurgle….
Does anyone know how I can find out if someone is married over the internet in a way that diverts from straightforwardly asking?
Hm…. propose?
I presume you’ve tried searching for “Firstname Lastname married” and “Firstname Lastname husband/wife” already?
No, I haven’t. Mostly because I don’t know this person’s last name.
Ask something about their spouse and wait for them to say they don’t have one? Ask something about a person they’re dating?
…These may not be any better than, “Are you married?” but I can’t think of anything else.
I went busking in town with two of my bandmates today, and we made about $30 in a little over an hour (which we then split three ways). It was fun, and we’re planning on doing it again, which I think will be good. I hope it’ll also give us a bit better stage presence for when we do performances.
A random thought inspired by re-reading my old Stephanie Stone stories– does anyone else of roughly my age remember being surprised at hearing the word “terrorist” thrown around in children’s media created pre-9/11 (the 1980s GI JOE cartoon calling COBRA a terrorist organization, X-Men junior novelizations where Magneto was described as a “mutant terrorist”, the Zilpha Keatley Snyder book “Secret Weapons”, etc.) when it was very much verboten in most children’s media created afterwards? I remember that for me at age 10 or so, the X-Men example I mentioned above was shocking and even semi-scandalous– “That’s a serious word! You don’t just say that word!”
Hold on — this is new to me. Are you saying that after September 11, 2001, the word “terrorist” became taboo? Why would that be, when suddenly there was so much more for it to refer to?
Taboo in media for children, at least, simply because (I guess) it was something children would likely have heard on the news in and from their parents in a frightening context and thus it had “real-world” and “scary” baggage. When a word will make your audience think of their parents being frightened and possibly their own family members being in danger, I can understand not wanting to use it to describe a random cartoon supervillain.
Interesting. I wonder whether that’s formally specified in ratings guidelines — I suspect it must be. That’s why so many Saturday morning cartoons depict fights with or between robots: because human-on-human violence is strongly discouraged. It makes sense that, as terrorists were seen to pose more of a real-world threat, they became unsuitable for the “fantasy violence” that’s allowed to be shown on kids’ TV.
I know that the “Max Steel” theme song was specifically redone to remove narration about “fighting terrorists” and that the packaging on some GI JOE toys was changed from “fighting COBRA, a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world” to “COBRA, a ruthless organization determined to rule the world”.
on wikipedia there’s a “list of entertainment affected by September 11 attacks” but it doesn’t list anything specifically child related..
It may also have been an attempt to circumvent the stereotypes to which using the word “terrorist” seems inevitably to lead.
Back home again. My internal clock is so confused. Also, my typing skills seem to have plummeted. Is this because of sleep deprivation or being away from a keyboard for nearly two weeks? Difficult to say.
I already miss Italy. Usually when I go on vacations of a week or longer, by the end I’m pretty tired and ready to go home. But this time was totally different for me. Rome was getting a little old (ha!) but I would have been very happy to catch a train back to Assisi and stay there a while longer. Even more so if a few of the people I’ve befriended could join me.
I’m too tired to write any lengthy summary at the moment, but I have at least one short thought I want to type out. This trip helped me, for really the first time in my life, have a real heart-to-heart talk with someone about what’s going on inside my mind and my heart, about my dreams and my fears and my problems. One night in Rome, after a game or two of pitch and a pretty good amount of wine and beer, I stayed up late with someone after everyone else had turned in for the night. She was one of the two people I had already known before the trip, and she’s really a fantastic person–the type that is sincerely friends with everybody she meets. Anyway, we talked about our vocations and about how both of us are considering the religious life and what problems we’ve run into and what our prayer life has been like on this pilgrimage and things like that. She said that for a few years now she’s been really fighting against a possible vocation to the religious life, but recently she kind of accepted it and found great peace in that, and now she’s not sure what she’s going to do with her life. I shared that I know I’m meant to be a priest, but I’m really struggling with knowing whether I’m supposed to be a parish priest or a monk. She mentioned that something I had said the day before had really hit her and made some things click in her head, and I realized the same was true for me. Both of us admitted that we had been wanting to talk to each other about this for a while.
Between the prayer and the meditation and the conversation, this pilgrimage I think has really shaken me right from my foundations. I can definitely tell that it will have been the start of a great chain of events–I say “definitely” because I firmly intend to keep the ball rolling.
More thoughts later. Sleep now. Apologies for such a jumbled and hard-to-understand comment, especially since my faith is something I’ve tended to keep under wraps here on MB. Anyway. Sleep.
It’s great that you’ve had an epiphany-type-thing. I’m certain it will take you where you want to go.
They’re switching the schedule all up on my convention. What. Why. For instance, the firefly Q&A was moved so it’s now during Nathan Fillion’s photo op time, so not only can *I* not go to it (since I”m doing a photo op), Fillion is no longer part of the firefly panel (????). Although he does now ahve a panel of his own at the time the firefly panel originally was.
and the Q&A panel with Matt Smith is no longer listed on the schedule, and what is this i don’t understand. How do people who buy tickets months in advance cope with the schedule changes? I barely had my tickets a week in advance and they’re screwing everything up so I probably won’t even be able to go to half the things i want to, and are switching photo op packages from sold out to not sold out, and i would’ve got a firefly group photo, except it was sold out when i pruchased tickets. And not it’s not. AND not only is it now not, it has even more recently added the actor who played Jayne, and a;kfdhjlgkhadl;fdkfghdlsfads;
I’m annoyed. and should be asleep. So….I’m headed to sleep now.
I can’t find the Rants and Plaints thread, even though I’m logged in, and I really need to type something out right now so I don’t keel over and I’m really sorry for putting this on the Random Thread. If a GAPA can move it, that’d be great.
Over the past month, it’s sunk in really hard for me that, being both a woman and queer, I’m unlikely to ever feel completely safe for the rest of my life and there’s nothing that will fix that and I really just need some hugs.
*hugs*
Want some tea, too?
Thank you. I’m not sure about the tea–I’ve only ever had tea that scalded my tongue and tasted of nothing, but I ate some cookies once with green tea in them that I liked, so maybe that’d be nice to try as liquid. Is that a good beginner’s tea? Cerulean asks, rambling a little.
It’s raspberry tea with honey. It tastes like pleasantly warm raspberry jam, only lighter.
Ooh, that sounds really nice.
*Lots of hugs and a kitten*
{Cuddles kitty.} Thank you.
The rest of your life could be long enough for a lot of changes to happen to make the future safer. To name one obvious example, I doubt many people from the years when GAPAs were young expected to see same-sex marriage on the near horizon, much less actually gaining majority support. That doesn’t equate to feeling “completely” safe, of course — and gains usually come with backlash — but safety is relative, never absolute, in any case.
Thank you for the reminder, Lady B. I woke up bleak and bitter this morning–I usually do manage to keep telling myself that. I mean, when one of my grandmothers was my age, she’d only just mostly gotten over a stutter brought about by being forced to use her right hand to write with in school, when she was really left-handed (which, like being queer, is inborn, instinctual, and oughtn’t to be much trouble to deal with). That’s seen as an obvious and arbitrary cruelty now, and maybe in a few decades, hardly anyone would be more than slightly surprised because of statistics that some of the people I happen to be attracted to aren’t men. I guess I don’t know whether anyone ever feels even reasonably safe, but I’ve been under the impression that many at least worry about fewer things, and I’m covetous of that. Sigh. {Sips tea and pets kitty.}
Robert, I know you mostly collected Marvel, but I figure it’s worth asking if you have/had Batman 194 (August 1967)?
Almost certainly not. I was extremely loyal.
Understood. It was worth a shot, though, as I don’t know anyone who was collecting comics at the time.
So I had to make up a fictional Pacific island for the story I’m writing, and it needed to be near the Marquesas group in French Polynesia, but also far enough away (at least 100 miles from the nearest island) that it’s relatively remote. I came up with Longitude 140 west, Latitude 6 north… which just happens to apparently be near the coordinates given for Gilligan’s Island in one episode of the show. Accidental shout-out?
Hey, GAPAs, question, here…..I know y’all usually do some sort of April Fool’s Day thing, and I remembered that that was tomorrow……But of course I’m at school on clinics all day long, so I was just wondering if it was going to be an all day April Fool’s thing, or if it was going to be one of those things that only takes place for a brief period of time?
And if it’s the latter, any chance you could drop a hint as to what time of day I should try to sneak a peak on the ‘blog?