I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.Of those so close behind me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lonely worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air;
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
–“The Waking” by Theodore Roethke
(Illustration: “The Cat That Walked by Himself” by Rudyard Kipling)
Our host company informs me that it will be installing a new version of PHP this week and that MuseBlog might or might not be affected. So please brace yourselves for anything or nothing.
I assume this is why the pies and squids have disappeared.
Groundhog,
That’s right. The plugin that makes pies and squids possible now fills up the blog with error messages whenever it’s activated, so I’ve had to turn it off. I hope to fix the problem soon, but I have to be careful not to make things work.
Something seems to have happened to my access to private threads and moderation-type stuff. The only things I can see through the dashboard are replies to threads I started, and I definitely can’t access the R&R thread (which is unfortunate because I have an Important Update that belongs there).
Working on it! Patience, please.
First casualty of the PHP upgrade: pies and squids. I’ve had to take them down to avoid copious error messages. With luck, they’ll be back over the weekend.
Upgrades! *shudders*
If I love Cirque du Soleil, Barenaked Ladies, the “Wow Canada” series, and the CSA and its astronauts, and I can speak a little French, am I the Canadian equivalent of the stereotypical anime fans who are obsessed with Japan?
That’s a rhetorical question, n’est-ce pas?
Hmmm, kind of a slow week, isn’t it?
Aye, these be the Doldrums, for sure.
I do hope no one has succumbed to calenture.
I RETURN
Which is a funny thing to say because I have literally been reading all of your comments for a year, scattering the occasional pie, without comment.
In the meantime, I have Gone Off To College – I’m now on Easter break (I have four and a half weeks, because they take Easter really seriously here) and have found myself in Europe! I’m babysitting in France, and before that I went to visit my friend in Austria and loved it.
My first two terms of college average out to… quite rough (enough Sad Chok to populate some other thread, some other time), but with plenty of bright spots. I have seen lots of old buildings, gotten fake-married (there was a ceremony with wine and candles), accidentally joined Chabad, started a radio show, performed with an improv group, conducted an orchestra, taken up martial arts, and lived in a library for four days between dormitory leases. Also, my classes are very cool. I have wonderful professors and I have fallen head-over-heels for Biblical Hebrew, philosophy, and a number of other things that aren’t remotely practical.
I’m sorry to have been neglectful – please know I’m always here reading your posts, especially when I ought to be doing something else. Lots of love from your resident citrus ♥
Welcome back, Chok! I’m glad that you come bearing such a cornucopia of good news. Pie buttons are still offline, so I’ll just say
.
Cool! Where in France are you?
Question seconded!
HI CHOK HI
CHOK! CHOK
<3 <3 HI CHOK
I missed you!!!
you got to conduct an orchestra???? what and how and when and what was it like !!!!
Hello! Welcome back!
If anyone finds themselves in New York’s Financial District, I wholeheartedly recommend the National Museum of the American Indian at Bowling Green, not enough people know that it’s there, but it’s just as good as the main building in Washington DC, if smaller and in an awkwardly-decorated building (it used to be the customs house and there’s a painting of Columbus in the main rotunda)– but they make that part of the discussion.
the show I’m in closed tonight! our audience tonight was the best audience we’ve had (the biggest + the best sense of humor + the highest percentage of people I know), and I’m insanely proud of us, but I’m so sad it’s over. I’ll miss spending so much time with that particular group of people. (Well. My nemesis was also in the play, but. Everyone else was wonderful.)
(How do you keep being friends with somebody you met working on a play? Is “it was fun working with you, i like you, let’s get a food” too forward?)
One GAPA’s opinion: not at all.
(continued from the last thread)
Oxlin: the “Doodling in Math Class” course will be taught by David Bachman. He also has a blog that I think you would really enjoy, featuring cool things like a clay 3D printer: mathartblog. com
I made a photo backdrop for my dorm’s Yuri’s Night paper out of construction paper, scrap cardboard, and foil paper from a restaurant. Hurrah for recycling!
We saw the Martian! It was so great!
Had you seen it before? Do you agree that it’s pretty much the best movie ever? Have you read the book? You should, it’s even better.
No, it’s up there, and not yet.
I got into an orchestra I auditioned for a couple months ago! Auditions are pretty competitive (and there were something close to 30 excerpts to learn) so I wasn’t sure how it would go, but here we are!
I won’t give too many details but we’ll be performing around 15 concerts on tour in multiple Asian countries this summer.
Brava, Selenium!
Thank you! (Did I mention the US$12,500 scholarship?!)
No, you didn’t! Sorry, I’m all out of pies.
Don’t worry, I have some in reserve:
Bril! What an opportunity!
That’s fantastic! Congratulations!
Neil Gaiman is writing a TV adaptation of Good Omens! I wish Sir Terry were here to see it but I’d much rather have Neil writing than anybody else. Hype train!
There are few sights in New York more beautiful than the Rose Center seen from Central Park in the late afternoon.
I could probably get more done if I took my waking a bit *less* slow on the weekends…
So could I, but we are who we are.
Well, I did one reading for class and wrote a funding proposal and will hopefully get seven hours of sleep. (I can balance that out to 8 with a nap after church.) Tomorrow I can submit the proposal, do some research for another assignment, and hopefully more readings.
I had to stay up much too late, but I did do both of those and did both of my readings for Thursday today.
Since I can’t pie, here’s some:
I totally agree. It takes me hours and hours to get out of bed on the weekend! And by then it’s mid-afternoon so I might as well not do anything else…
It is reassuring to know I’m not alone. I’ve always been a late riser, but now that I am out of my parents’ house and living on my own, it’s too easy to stay in bed until well afternoon. It kills my productivity, no matter how late I stay up.
I had fun at the Earth Day festival in Union Square today, there were lots of companies giving out juice samples, and I made a wallet from an old postal envelope. I got a sqishy rock and two kind of seeds I can plant, but I need to get soil before I can plant them.
Are R&P (and R&R) non-existent for anyone else? I assume it’s because of the upgrade? I had a traumatic spider-in-room experience the other day and couldn’t find the ‘plaints thread. (Luckily the story ends well with my prince charming coming to the rescue.)
Also I can no longer see a preview button for comments.
We had a spate of upgrades all at the same time. Now a lot of things aren’t working quite right. I was busy with another urgent project last weekend but hope to work on the blog this Saturday or Sunday. We regret the inconvenience.
Selenium, can you see any of those things now? I’ve tried a few tweaks.
Yes, preview button is back and so are R&P / R&R when I search for them!
I just logged in to check and have an admin-like dashboard for the first time!? So this is what you all meant about being able to create / edit posts? I don’t know why it never showed up before.
That’s one of the tweaks.
I just realized that my big research paper for lit seminar is due on Shakespeare’s birth/death day. It’s not on Shakespeare — it’s on Anne Carson and Lynda Barry — but still. Gonna make you proud, Billy.
Chasing the Sunset is updating again, which makes me happier than I thought it would. The authors’ son is so cute!
Today I learned that vacuum-sealed tuna packets are safe to eat for many months after their “best by” date, which is only an indication of when it will taste best.
I most certainly did not learn this by freaking out and looking up the company’s website after looking at the packet halfway through eating a bowl of tuna and chopped tomato I’d just made. Certainly not.
Of course you didn’t!
Better than realizing post-meal that your tomato sauce is actually blue and fluffy on the underside of the lid. Especially if this sort of thing happens more than once.
Forgot to mention I’m doing an April nanowrimo session this month. Set my goal at 60k since I already had so much written. I’m pretty excited about this story. The first rough draft is turning into trash, but redeemable trash. I hope I can find the time to make a second draft at some point in my life.
Good luck!
As part of a theory class exam, we are given 3 weeks to compose something (with set motifs/texts) in one style (a second exam in another style comes later). Turns out it’s due next week (normally Tuesday but with extension to Friday allowed.)
This is not only (partly, yes, but for once not entirely) because of procrastination, I also *legitimately* thought the deadline was further away since things have been so busy these few weeks. So now I have one week left to do the whole thing, which is manageable but still super annoying. It’s one of those things that’s really hard to sit down and actually get a start on. Being “creative” with constrained parameters is difficult.
Also we are allowed (expected?) to get ongoing feedback from the teacher each week in class, but I’ve missed the past two weeks – ie every one since the assignment was given – because of orchestra rehearsals (for school, so according to policy take priority…) He will take a look if you email in a scan or photo, so that’s what I’ll have to do this weekend. Once I’ve actually, you know, got something down. Old habits die hard.
Hm, some of the great composers did their finest work under deadline pressure. Let us know when inspiration strikes.
Supposedly Mozart wrote the overture to Don Giovanni the morning of its premiere (I don’t know if this is a legend or true). However, I am no Mozart.
We’ll see!
Halfway through a draft, and it took less time than expected. Ran into a block, but it doesn’t look like it will take as long as I feared, so I’ll continue tomorrow.
“Join our Earth Day webchat!”
Why would you encourage me to use electronics on Earth Day?
Starting to get really excited about Star Trek 50th convention this fall. And increasingly anxious, the more money I put into it, that life is going to throw some curveball at me that prevents my attendance, and that I will be out a decent chunk of nonrefundable money.
But OMG Star Trek 50th. I just bought way too many photo ops, and there are twice as many still that I want to buy, but….they don’t post the schedule until less than a week before the convention, and the more photo ops I buy (pretending for a moment money is unlimited), the more risk that the photo op conflicts with a panel I really want to see.
So I painstakingly narrow it down to only (“only” being a relative term, considering that my “only” is photos with nearly 3X the people that I got photos w/ at Wizard Con 2 years ago) a select few that I felt I “had” to have.
Meaning I get to get a photo with George Takei (Sulu!!!!), Nichelle Nichols (Lt Uhura!!!), Walter Koenig (Chekov!!!!), Robert Picardo (Voyager’s Doctor, and far and away my favorite character from that series), Nana Visitor (Kira Nerys from DS9), Jefferey Combs (who is phenomenal in every role he’s been on in Star Trek, even if I didn’t realize for THE longest time, that Liquidator Brunt and Weyoun were actually the same actor. Which speaks both to his acting, and the vast quantities of latex on his face in both those roles. But he was Liquidator Brunt, Weyoun, and that Andorian whose name is eluding me at the moment, from Enterprise), Terry Farrel (the amazing Jadzia Dax from DS9), and last but not least Rom and Nog in costume (and hopefully makeup?)
And there’s 15 more people I want photos with, and 25 people I want autographs from, and I keep trying to remind myself that just because I have a job an am earning money, does not mean that I have an unlimited amount to spend this fall (plane flight, hotel room, and base convention ticket is already a scary amount). But. It’s also a once in a life time event (50th anniversary!!!!). And I’m just super super excited.
And I’m also really excited for this spring, when my best friend from vet school and her sister come up to visit me. I get a whole week off of work, which is wonderful, because I could really use a vacation from work because it can be really stressful.
But OMG this summer just has such a phenomenal line up of *things*. June. My friend is visiting. July. Star Trek Beyond (which I am doing everything in my power to know nothing about until I am actually watching the movie….*fingers crossed*. And also Harry Potter “eight book” aka the script from the play (which I also have managed to not know anything about). August: Star Trek 50th.
And just woah being a grown up is weird.
I organized and put away my magazine collection a couple/few weeks ago…..and I’ve got a ridiculously large number of magazines.
Spider magazines spanning 8 1/2 yrs [May 1994-Oct 2002] (between both my sister and I, I believe), with only 5 episodes MIA
Cricket magazines spanning nearly 15 full years [Sept 1993-May/June 2008] (combination of both my sister and I’s subscription), with only 3 episodes MIA
Muse magazines spanning 14 years [March 2001-Feb 2015], 7 MIA (all but 1 from when I was in college, and most are consecutive from during my first year of vet school….so hopefully they’re just lost in the void of unpacked boxes)
American Girl magazines spanning 6 years [Nov/Dec 1999-July/Aug 2005]. My sister and I were super into AG when we were younger. We were in an AG club, and every year for Christmas and our birthdays, all we wanted was AG stuff. I’ve got 2 of the dolls, and at least at the time when I switched from AG to Harry Potter, darn near everything they had made for the Kirsten doll, lol
And wow. holy cake. I did not realize it was 9:22p. My day off is passing way too quickly. It feels so much earlier in the day. I forget how much daylight we have. It’s still fairly light out. I mean, the sun is behind the mountains, but it’s not dark by any means yet.
My grand plans of getting lots unpacked today failed, just like every. single. other. day. off. I’ve. had.
I have extra Muses that might fill the holes in your collection, if the missing ones don’t turn up.
Would you be able to fill my holes too? One from 2003 and a bunch from 2008-2013
Tell me which ones are missing, and I’ll see what I can do.
Since the R&P thread isn’t accessible, this is going to have to go here.
Short version: my partner is not doing well and if you’re the type to pray, maybe pray for them. I wouldn’t normally ask that but hey, it’s probably not going to be much less effective than anything else I can do for them right now, and it certainly won’t hurt.
Maybe I’ll post a long version later, I don’t know. It’s definitely a more R&P thread-appropriate thing.
I’m not the type to pray, but I send jedi hugs and warm fuzzy thoughts to the both of you ♥
I’m sending good thoughts to both of you. *hugs*
I’m thinking of you both.
Sending prayers your way. *hugs*
It’s pretty unnerving that you can still see the aftershocks in Ecuador and Japan on the three-day global seismographic map in the Hall of Planet Earth at AMNH.
Three days is nothing. Those things go on for months.
Oh, I know, but the map only shows earthquakes within the last three days. (“Three-day global seismographic map”.)
On a happier note, Solar Impulse 2 made it to California! (I kind of worry that their relative lack of publicity is connected to these long downtimes for maintenance. But heck, commercial flights do that, too!)
I can imagine my personified Trieste character, Therese Piccard, calling up the airfield to wish them congratulations. “Bertrand! So glad to see your flight went well! Your father would be so proud! Perhaps while you are in America, you might consider visiting your aunt?”
Good: I have the opportunity and time to rewrite my Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus research paper for a higher grade.
Bad: My paper was short and poorly organized enough in the first place to require a rewrite. My teacher said my initial outline was perfect, but the final version was disorganized and needed to be re-planned from the ground up, so I don’t know what I did wrong in the process, and I can’t think of a way to ask her about it without seeming like I’m disagreeing with her notes. I also need more sources and there is not much information on the internet about Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus.
Sounds like time to consult the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
I was about to recommend a website that was really helpful in my dinosaur class but then I realized plesiosaurs aren’t dinosaurs… Good luck!
Is it a website that’s only about dinosaurs or does it have other Mesozoic creatures, too?
It’s limited to Archosauria, but anything above Dinosauria isn’t well represented. It basically is a record of which papers the names and alternate names for dinosaur taxa were defined in.
That does sound useful.
R*S,
Another thought: Asking for help gracefully is an important skill in any educational setting, and rewriting with guidance is the best way to learn to write better. (Editors and professional writers know that bad first drafts are par for the course. The final product is all that matters, and however you get there is just fine.)
Just go to your teacher and say you want your paper to be as good as possible and ask what specifically she recommends. I guarantee that it won’t hurt and could help a lot. (It’s also a good habit to develop. College professors love it when people show up for their office hours.)
Things that happened today, chronologically
—did not fail a Greek test
—had a picnic for lunch in a local park with a friend
—turned in a big paper a day early so I wouldn’t keep stressing about it
—turned in a statement of intent to study abroad in England summer 2017
—turned in an application to work at my school’s writing center
—set up a meeting with the president of the student-run theater to talk about possibly directing next semester (!!)
—got back a paper that I was really apprehensive about, and found out that I got the highest grade that prof has ever given me and he wants to talk to me about options for submitting/presenting for a larger audience (!!!)
A good day.
Congratulations! Exciting opportunities and well-earned praise.
Reserving practice rooms is a real nightmare. Too few rooms for too many students…
welcome to music school
Practice rooms in general are a real nightmare, what are you talking about
Based on reading a megathread on another site today, I think the three professions most likely to be accused of faking their own deaths are musicians, dictators, and CEOs.
Also, to the two people who said “Steve Fossett”, fourteen-year-old me would very much liked to have believed that as well, but I’m surprised anyone who remembers his going missing wouldn’t also remember that they found his plane, wallet, and remains a year later and had a DNA match. But I will say that those were not feels I expected to get again today for the first time this decade.
Running through my texts for PHIL 101 to write the final, found this note in the margin of Augustine’s Confessions: “get wrecked, Anaximenes.”
Pretty sure I stand by this.
Was it in Augustine’s handwriting?
Nah, in my own handwriting. And in English.
Was so tired and out of it during studying for biology I had to Google whether ducks could fly or not because I didn’t remember. On the bright side, I got 80% on my practice test thing.
Yesterday I walked into a lamppost and now I have a bump on my head… But I woke up this morning, and I didn’t even have any weird dreams like the last time I was hit hard on the head!
I have weird dreams even when I haven’t been hit on the head. Sometimes what they mean (or the subconscious reason why I might a certain dream) is super obscure, sometimes unnervingly clear.
Oh, dreams are always weird, but concussion dreams are something else entirely.
I have a question regarding the instance of a name ending with S. Would it be more acceptable to use Catwings’s as opposed to Catwings’? Because I have seen both used, but I’m not sure which one is grammatically acceptable.
This is an ambiguous case. If you consider “Catwings” a plural noun, then the possessive is just an apostrophe. But if it’s a singular noun (a name), then the possessive is apostrophe+s, unless your publication’s copy editors think the other way is prettier.
I’m pretty sure you write an apostrophe after the end of the name, this semester I’ve written ” Boas’ ” in my papers and not been corrected.
You would have been, according to the AP and Chicago style guides, unless “Boas” were an ancient name like “Jesus” or “Socrates.” The rules vary and aren’t entirely coherent.
In high school I had one of my more disliked teachers take points off wrongly for doing an apostrophe+s, and I took great pleasure in pointing out exactly where in the style guide it said that was correct (I think it even used the same name as an example) and insisting I get my points back (taking me from like a 96 to a 100). I was a _great_ student.
In this case, I’d let pronunciation be my guide. If you say two “s” sounds at the end of the possessive form of your name, write apostrophe s. If you say one “s” sound, just write the apostrophe.
The first Google suggestion for “Sir R” is “Sir Richard Branson”. Not who I was looking for, but exactly as it should be.
We finally got to kokon! We are eating Thai food and talking about ASOIAF.
POSOC: It’s been great meeting her and reminiscing!
Kyra and POSOC,
Pies to you both!
So, which of you is taller?
Me, but it’s closer than you’d expect, especially when she wears heels.