The first installment of this month’s random thread sports a pointillistic picture by our very own Enceladus.
(Users’ Manual: Obey The Rules. Consult The Guide. Have fun!
Patience, Please
This site is under reconstruction and will look strange for a while. We regret the inconvenience.
WOAH. That’s awesome, Enc!
Ooh, very nice.
thank god, i can’t wait for this miserable year to be over
axa we need to talk
*SQUIDHUGSFOREVER*
We love youuuu ♥
We love you FOREVER DAMMIT
WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT
*choklitpie*
thank you jade
i love you toooooo 
You’re awesome! *pies and hugs and hug-pies*
thanks oxlin! hug-pies are my favorite variety…:)
*ULTRA-GLOMP*
Don’t worry. It can only go uphill from here.
Remember, we’re all here for you.
Beautiful, Enceladus! Magnificent!
Exams are over, I finished knitting a sweater, and I’ve started buying Christmas presents. Life is good.
Thank you, GAPAs and everyone!
If you’re wondering, it’s a picture of an area outside my house at around 2PM. (But you probably weren’t)
SFTDP
Is there any way you can make it a bit bigger? It seems to have lost some quality (I could send you a larger version, but the version I sent was background sized, so…)
But thank you nonetheless!
I can try to upload a bigger or higher-resolution version, but not right away. I was a little pressed for time last night.
Holy cake. It’s December?!?!?! Yikes, the time flies. *shakes self*
Anyway, nice pic Enc, luv.
Wow. That picture is really cool, Enc!
Last thread: Beedle, post 166 (or something like that):
A pie war? Why would we ever start a pie war? I for one am a convinced pacifist and would never- oh, hang on a sek, will you?
*goes away to confer with suspicious figures*
As I was saying, I’d never ever- *light blinks* Change of plans: Pie cannons, fire!
re calvinball on the other thread i don’t think i related this in my college adventures, but comic/graphic novel club got their own tour of the cartoon library and we got to see a bunch of original calvin&hobbes strips. it was really cool. (the cartoon library here is awesome and people never seem to know about it. if you collegevisit osu at all, check it out. it’s sort of hidden in the side of the wex)
in ebethland, today is an oral presentation in italian that i’m not really prepared for, then last ever bio lab, then studying like mad for history. tomorrow: work in the morning, finally scheduling work for next quarter (oops), more mad studying, history final, last english class, WEEKEND. weekend is english final paper, studying for italian and bio finals. then work, finals, les mis, home.
oh yes les mis is in columbus so i’m gonna go see that as my post-quarter splurge
Valjean, at last,
We see each other plain
`M’sieur le Mayor,’
You’ll wear a different chain!
Before you say another word, Javert
This woman leaves behind a suffering child
Listen, there is something I must do
You must think me mad!
I’ve hunted you across the years
A man like you can never change
A man such as you.
Believe of me what you will
There is a duty that I’ve sworn to do
You know nothing of my life
Men like me can never change
Men like you can never change
No,
24601
I posted this: “Paul, you’d like the class I’ll be taking next semester on reading and books in the middle ages. A bit early for you, but I think we might end up later given that the printing press wasn’t invented until the 15th century (which, admittedly, is still medieval).” on the other thread. Vendy (and everyone else), I’ll tell you all about it once it starts.
Enc, I like the picture!
I do early sometimes. It’s just that there’s not much music available unless you’re heavily into chant.
The lack of a printing press didn’t mean there were no books. It’s just that they were all written out individually by monks – often illiterate monks. So you ended up paying a fortune for a book, and then you had to understand Latin to appreciate the hilarious typos.
I know. I meant that printing press made distribution to a much wider audience possible and we’ll probably want to study that change.
Very nice, Enc! Beautiful. Just had a rather nice candy cane in celebration of December 1st. I also got hooked up with a few borrowed games, in the form of BioShock, inFAMOUS, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Batman: Arkham Asylum.
Overall, a very nice week.
And as for the pie war, well. *configures pie howitzer coordinates*
You know, next time the Pie Warres flare up, I think perhaps we might abandon the teams of old and simply create a second generation. That would be kind of fun, especially seeing as people spent more time making mini-teams anyway.
What say you all?
There were teams? I don’t think I’ve participated in a pie war before, or if I have, it was before teams. I might be up for joining a team.
Watership Downers Forever!
Oh. Those teams. Yeah, I think I’d rather be Watership Down than Chuck Norris.
THE JADESTONE SIDE SHALL ALWAYS TRIUMPH
No! Vanilla will be victorious!
…wrong pie war.
No matter! Vanilla!
I realize I’m a little bit late to reply to this, but the Pie War Lovers stuck it out to the end!
What about WoP teams? *is LOST all the way* ‘Course, that was mostly me and YS and five different versions of AJAR, if memory serves. I wasn’t there for the original teams, but I ganged up with bookgirl_i and bookgirl_myself last may… *trails off into thought*
New teams?
Steampunk MBers! We must unite!
We will create an Victorian society! A land where people can wear suits as they please! Where all technology will be comprehendable but beautiful!
Victoriana, rule the waves!
*goes off to design a Steampunk pie tin and cannon*
w00t!
Oh look, people are making teams. TIME TO BREAK IT UP.
Amazing picture!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
December. It smells like snow. I am getting out my snow boots and various other cold-weather garments. Please come snow, I want to ski! Christmas is coming…ahhh! It snuck up on me!!
Enc, you made that!? it’s so cool!
In other news, the best part about december is the chocolate countdown calenders to Christmas, Christmas carols, Christmas presents, christmas snow…heck, anything about Christmas is awesome!!
Haunakah (or however you spell is :P) is great for you Jewish MBers as well. My Jewish friend threw a Haunakah party last year, where I drank a concoction of apple juice, sugar, hot sauce, and salt and didn’t throw up. earned me a dollar, too.
Did I mention I love being in an elevator by myself?
Same here, LBK. I love getting all Christmassy and happy, and seeing people being nice to each other and being nice back… it’s a great time of year.
Oh, I love Christmas so much. ‘Tis the season to be jolly… I love advent calenders, too. We just got one.
What’s your favorite Chistmas song? Mine would be Sleigh Ride. It’s a tradition for the Wind Ensemble to play it at the winter concert every year, and former members come back to play. It’s so happy, especially with the awesome sound effects and the trumpet horse whinny thing at the end. We do the one by Leroy Anderson.
My favorite “songs”, with lyrics, are “Snoopy vs. The Red Baron”, followed by “Do They Know It’s Christmastime?” and “On Christmas Day” by Dido.
In terms of non-lyrical music, I LOVE “Carol of the Bells/Sarajevo” by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and the version of “Deck the Halls” done by Mannheim Steamroller.
Favorite lyric-including songs: “The Christmas Song”, better known as “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire”, and “Christmastime is Here” (from the Charlie Brown Christmas special). Sans lyrics would include most or all of Mannheim Steamroller’s Christmas tracks. I’ve had a few piano lessons with Jackson Berkey, their keyboardist, including one in which I was playing a piece he had written. It was fascinating to hear insights about the piece which couldn’t be written into the music–the story behind the piece, how he imagined it would be played, when to loudly stomp on the pedal in the middle of a two-measure rest….
your avatar of the pokemon was awsomeness!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!![…and so forth. ~EPG*]
*Excessive Punctuation Gnome
Gratias nimium interpunctione Gnome. *gives cookie*
My favorite is Carol of the Bells. It sounds like it belongs in a HP movie, doesn’t it? There’s also something called 12 days of Christmas by a band named Straight No Chaser. Really fun sounding, check it out on YouTube.
Anyways, we got our Christmas tree the other day! It smells so good!
hugmoster-Uh…thanks? *daunted by number of exclamation points* GAPAs, can you still snip some of those or is it irreversible now?
Speaking of pie wars
Coming soon to a school near you!
Eeeennnccc, awesome pic! Doesn’t your hand get terribly tired after about fifteen minutes of stippling though? I had to do a roughly 4×4 area once, and it was painstaking. Props to you for being an amazing artist!
bookgirl-
Oh, I’m sorry. Did those hit you?
Thank you!
I did it over a long period of time, and with Sharpies, so my hand was essentially vibrating up and down. However, another picture I did with colored pencils ended up looking a lot like Van Gogh without paint.
Nice picture, Enc!
Wow, December already? Where did 2010 go? I’m gonna miss it.
Oh yeah! I saw that picture on deviantART by Enc. Great Job, Enc!
Cool pic.
I just got my violin and concertina out. I’m not sure if I touched them at all last month, I don’t think I did. And I think I only played once or twice in September, too. My poor fiddle, the G was almost two steps low, the D was three, the A was completely slack, only the E was close, it was about a half step high.
This will not happen again.
Also, tomorrow I will work on cleaning my room and setting mousetraps.
I will also get that bloody paper written and I will do Spanish hw and I will finish Writing Strands and I will UNDERSTAND GEOMETRY.
But right now there are tunes to play and my fingers are itching….
If you have any more specific questions about Geometry, let me know. I like Geometry. Same with Spanish. I hear you on papers. I really need to finish mine.
Addendum to last post:
I am also going to make more time for reading and wondering at things. I want to read Two Years Before the Mast, and I want to browse through The Rattle Bag more, as well as others, and I want to run around the woods and sing for no reason at all.
“Two years before the mast” is a classic. It shows what life was really like on sailing ships. I think it was written when steam was putting sail under pressure, so sailing ships were probably undermanned to save money. It might have been a bit easier in earlier times, but it was still a very hard life. You’ll love the Deck Bear.
So I had a thought. What if pie wars were like Calvinball? That’d be excellently chaotic!
So what’s the song?
All other blog games aren’t much fun!
They have lots of rules and I think that they’re dumb!
Pie wars are better by far!
They’re never the same! They’re always bizarre!
You don’t need a “like” or a reply-ee!
You know that it’s great, cause it’s Kokopelli!
If you wanna…MuseBloggers are now invited to harmonize on the rumma-tum-tums.
Pointillism is the shiz. I usually refrain from using that phrase, but seeing this picture made me think so. I have procrastinated very well, today, and I think now I shall read the nineteenth chapter of Great Expectations for English finally… How do you all feel about that book?
Horrible. The teacher forced it on us and never explained anything, leaving us confused and with a strong distaste of Dickens. I don’t think I’d like it even if she did make us read it, though.
Dickens isn’t too bad, I liked David Copperfield a lot.
Eh. It was okay.
oops, I hit +1 when I meant to reply…
but anyway, I’m not really a fan of Dickens. He spends too much time saying nothing, for my taste, and it tends a bit too maudlin for me.
Okay, if we ever have a Kokon where we all dress up as characters from Dr. Who, I want to be Ace. Mostly just so I can wear that jacket.
If you’re Ace, can I be either 7th or 11th?
I’ll be Eight.
I’ll be Four, as I have the scarf.
Happy Hanukkah, everyone!
Happy Chanukah!
Happy confuzzling Hebrew spelling, everyone!
Channukkah
Channukka
Channukah
Channuka
Chanukkah
Chanukka
Chanukah
Chanuka
Hannukkah
Hannukka
Hannukah
Hannuka
Hanukkah
Hanukka
Hanukah
Hanuka
Thank you for bothering to type that up. Case in point.
Webster’s Third accepts Hanukah, Chanukah, Hanukkah, and Chanukkah… *goes off singing “How Do You Spell Hanukkah?”*
chappy chanukah!
Happy Hanukkah! Everyone should go listen to the LeeVees now. (Most amazing Hanukkah band ever. Also, I just found video of them performing at the Yule Ball in 2008, which makes my life.)
Everyone should go search “19 Years Later, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Soundtrack by Isaias Garcia (FAN-MADE)” on Youtube immediately if they are Harry Potter fans and feel like suffering crippling bittersweet nostalgia.
That made me cry. It really did.
Me too.
Great pic, Enc! Loving the pointillism thing!
Does anyone know why there’s a Gatorade flavor called Fierce Grape? This in itself would be kinda strange (FIERCE grape) but not only that, it’s also blue. Beats me why grape flavor is blue. I am confused.
I am currently in the middle of a college-application frenzy, and was wondering if you all could look over my essay and tell me what you think. I think it’s kind of funny and entertaining, so enjoy and thanks much!
Air Conditioning
A wave of heat washed over us, amplified by the humidity, so hot it was almost suffocating. We, the youth group of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Salem, Oregon, had known before we left that New Orleans in August would be dreadful, but nothing could have prepared us for this. We hurried to the rental car building, dragging our heavy suitcases behind us. The air conditioning was sweet relief. None of us wanted to leave the peacefulness of the cool building to make the short trip to the newly rented van, but eventually we all piled in, squeezed like sardines against each other and our suitcases. Jay, one of our chaperones, turned around in the front seat and said smiling, “Hey guys, we got the cheapest model of van available, so there’s no AC.â€
He was met with a shocked and accusatory silence. The most outspoken of the group said what the rest of us were thinking: “Are you KIDDING me?!â€
Jay was surprised that none of us got his joke and replied “Yes, of course there’s AC!†He turned back around, muttering “Jeez, tough crowd.â€
Air Conditioning. Our lives were controlled by it. It was a wonderful surprise when we discovered our living quarters at the revamped church were a blissful sixty degrees. Kitchen duty, however, was horrendous, as the heat of the oven intensified the already awful temperature. Vik, our youth group leader, said somewhat reproachfully, “Be thankful for air conditioning. When I was here five years ago, there was none.†She had helped clear out houses in the weeks following Hurricane Katrina.
I felt deeply ashamed at our selfishness. How can we complain about the heat when the citizens of New Orleans lived through the heat every year, and lived through even worse after Hurricane Katrina? Our purpose was to help rebuild a house that was destroyed by the hurricane, not moan about how hot it was. How would we get any work done in the heat when we complained all the time?
Our first day on the job was not as bad as I expected it to be, probably because most of the time was spent introducing us to the various construction tasks we would need to perform over the next week. The second day, however, was something out of a nightmare. We brought three large coolers of water for a group of fifteen and we drank it all. Heatstroke was a constant worry in the hundred-degree heat. One member of the group fainted (fortunately not while on a ladder) and another threw up in the communal garbage can. Painting is usually not considered the most strenuous of construction activities, but I was sweating profusely while painting the side of the house for hours on end with the burning sun over my head, pausing occasionally to take a long drink of water and to move the ladder.
Again we gave in to our selfish need for air conditioning. At around noon everyone packed into the van and made an “emergency†trip to Burger King to partake in lunch and slushies in a cool, air conditioned environment. We basked in it, reluctant to leave the world of cold soda and Whoppers. Our duty to the homeowner obliged us to return after a half hour. When we got back our construction manager, whom we had left behind to guard the house, came out to meet us. The disappointed look on his face said it all. No more Burger King visits for us.
I was again discouraged by our dependence on air conditioning. We let down the construction manager and the owner of the house because we couldn’t stand the heat, or at least we thought we couldn’t. I resolved to work harder painting the house and think of the horrible conditions that the people of New Orleans were forced to live in after Hurricane Katrina. My and the group’s service in painting and building the house would let the owner come home that much more quickly. How hard we worked really would make a difference.
For me, the working conditions got much better as the week went on. Even though the thermometer still read a hundred degrees, I decided to not notice the heat and instead concentrate on getting paint on every little white spot on the house, knowing that I was at least partially responsible for making the house look perfect for the owner. In the later days of the week, when I climbed the tallest ladder to paint the highest bits of siding, an occasional breeze would brush past my face, providing me with a momentary relief from the heat. Up there, I had my own air conditioner.
It’s nice how you took a common subject to write about for such essays (service trips) and looked at it from a different perspective. I like the whole concept and organization of it all.
But, suggestions: I had no idea why you were going to New Orleans until the fifth paragraph. Even if you don’t want to mention it right off the bat with with the information about your youth group and destination, it might be nice to say something a little earlier so I know the general subject of what I’m reading. Also, “communal garbage can” sounds strange and distracted me.
There’s a couple of other small things that I noticed, but overall, it’s great.
What is the purpose of this essay? If it is an example of creative writing, or about community work specifically, than it probably fits pretty well.
However. The purpose of the essays for the common app to showcase your personal experiences and development and just how awesome you are. This essay describes the experience of N.O. very well, but doesn’t tell me about how awesome you are.
it is very well written but i agree with vendy that it doesn’t tell enough about you yourself. i feel like the point you want to make is that through helping others you overcame some kind of selfishness and came to understand what is really important…but i think it ends too abruptly. you need to give more attention to the act of overcoming if that is indeed the purpose of the essay.
I agree with Vendy and Axa. I’d like to hear more about how you stand out. Why are you different than other air-conditioning dependent people on similar trips?
Thanks a lot for the help. Looking over it again, I do need to concentrate on myself a little more. I need to create a good balence. The other four essays I tried to write concentrated on myself too much!
So today I was shown a video of the science fiction club at my school’s nerf war. We fight every week but the video day was the first time I’d gone. We were told to dress up as if in an action movie. I wore my /awesome/ jacket. It has buttons all up the front, many tiny little round ones, and gold braid on the waist, wrist and neck. It looks like the jacket for some sort of fae or space army. I really enjoyed my first time and came again last week. I did pretty well! I shot my good friend Browncoat four times (he kept complaining about it).
Today I also wrote quite a bit. I worked on two different short stories and a poem.
And I managed to get a good amount done on my final paper!
I like days where I’m productive in many different areas.
…and when I said “last week” I meant “today” Though now that’d be yesterday. December 1st anyway.
Started a five-page essay this evening, of which the first draft is due tomorrow, first class of the day. And I still have about ten billion other things I need to do after I finish – I have two more paragraphs to go. It’s already nearly 11 pm. Why do I do this to myself?
You can do it! Write your heart out! *gives encouragement choklit*
I shall never understand why teachers stipulate quantity, rather than quality. Good luck!
My English teacher last year told us to make our essays “as long as they need to be to be effective”. He was great.
28~ Basically what the others have said, I think if you could get to why you were in New Orleans sooner in the piece it would make more sense as a whole, and then you could spend more time developing your change of mind about the heat and your focus during the trip. I would like to hear more about how your perspective changed and how you felt more fulfilled doing a good deed than lounging in a cool environment and get such a picture of how terrible the first few days were. It’s good that you stuck it out, but I would make sure more of the emphasis is on how the experience changed you, instead of coming off as “it was soooo terrible, but eventually I got used to it through guilting myself and then it was better.” (I’m not saying that’s how you come off, I’m just saying there’s a possibility it could appear that way.)
other than that, I really like how you explored a subject that probably most of us are familiar with and took it to a different level. The writing is, of course, very good as well.
Essays. College applications. Oh lord. I need to start filling out the parts of them that I can. Like, now. Essays. Good god, what am I going to write about? Aojpwefoiuansdvnjklfvjkfshfhjwadfscx.
Also, I may be adding another college to my “places I would totally apply for/go to if I thought I had any chance of getting in or being able to pay for it. Whoo.” That makes it 2 places I am definitely apply to and can imagine going to, and 2 that I seriously doubt I could get in to/pay for, but have had recommended to me a million times each and actually can kind of imagine enjoying.
Yeah, the latter two are Oberlin and William & Mary, the former two are Warren-Wilson and Principia. Can I say that here? Meh. I’m pretty sure I can get into Prin (they’re kind of desperate for students, so yeah), but I have no idea about WWC. I really want to go though.
I should probably take this whining to the college thread, but since CPM was talking about essays here……yeah. I transfer the blame. I’m good at that. Maybe that’s what I should write about for my essay.
“I am completely fantastic at transferring blame to anyone but myself. So if I attend your school and end up failing miserably for no reason other than my ineptitude, I promise you, I will still be able to convince myself that it is in fact the fault of your institution and not mine. For this reason, you should totally accept me as a student.”
Or maybe I should make my application really stand out, write my essay in the form of a SSSS, complete with explosions, torture, HPBs and Mr. Green.
Today I:
-Ran a mile.
-Walked a mile (home).
-Went to academic team.
-Squeed over the fact that I may be going on a date Saturday.
-Cleaned out the chicken coop.
-Went on MuseBlog.
Overall, it was a pretty good day, and tomorrow’s Friday.
*applauds*
So many comments on this thread already.
I played at a tree-lighting ceremony today. It was sort of lame and cheesy and Santa rode in on a firetruck, which I’m pretty sure is illegal as it had its sirens on. But it was the mayor who was running the thing, so I guess he can do what he likes.
*bows* *applauds at P_M’s playing*
Jingle bells, Juniors smell, Seniors go away
Sophomores are all bores, Freshmen all the way!
Nope. Sorry.
Agreed. Although the ones you’re singing about are just the ones I avoid hanging out with.
Nice!
Nice, P_M!
Tess… Just admit it. You smell, and I’m a bore.
I smell of Hello Hydration Herbal Essences shampoo and pomegranate lotion.
I want to smell you now… Is that creepy?
Yes. But it’s okay! <3
I do too…
*creeps*
I smell of finals. But I’m a Junior in college, does that count?
Of course, juniors smell. We have noses, you know.
What do your nose and your feet do alike? Smell and run.
Oooh, I’m so excited about the arsenic microbe!
Who knew such weirdness existed right in California?
So THAT’S what my Biology teacher was talking about! He made a casual remark about “life based on arsenic” to a student in class today but I wasn’t aware of the discovery, so it didn’t mean anything to me. Neat!
Published in my magazine, I might point out.
Is there any kind of weirdness that ISN’T in California?
There is plenty of weirdness here, and you contributed for many years!
True: I guess there is one kind of weirdness that’s no longer in California, since I left. Q.E.D.
Your magazine? I didn’t realize you owned it.
(I’m only saying this because I’ve been reprimanded for calling the H&H “my” tearoom.)
I like this comment. (Still protesting the like buttons.)
Why are people liking my protest of like buttons?! How hypocritical.
((Sorry, I had to like this comment))
I like your confusion at people’s liking your protest of the like buttons.
I like the recursion.
Boom de yada, boom de yada…
I like what the first reply to this comment likes.
I like what the comment to which this is a reply likes.
I dislike whatever the first reply to this comment likes.
I like what the comment this is below likes.
I like infinite loops.
Oh god…
14.2.2.1.1 is the second most liked comment on this thread. THAT WASN’T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN.
“Supposed to happen” is a concept that has little meaning on MuseBlog.
I like that both your comments ended up liked enough that they got /highlighted/.
It is technically “your” tearoom because you’re the only server/bartend(? Is that it?)/whatever you call it.
I don’t own it, so it isn’t mine. I just work there.
This conversation reminds me of an exchange I saw on Shari Lewis’s show when I was about five years old. Hushpuppy was complaining that somebody had stolen his bone. Lamb Chop said, “That’s impossible. Your bones are in your body.” At the time, I thought that was the cleverest thing I’d ever heard.
It does raise interesting analytic questions about the ways in which we use the possessive pronoun: for things to which you are legally entitled, things that you control, things that are part of you, and things that you are part of. “My magazine” falls into the last category.
As you may have gathered, Ambiguity makes up an important part of the curriculum at Muse Academy. Speller73 would enjoy the unit on fuzzy logic.
Can we use fuzzy logic to define fuzzy sets? Or even better fuzzy descriptive complexity theory, a subfield of fuzzy theoretical computer science. That sounds awesome. (Does P = NP? Well, if you look at it the right way…)
Naturally!
New life plan: Become a fuzzy logic professor at MA. I’m assuming you wouldn’t burden me with too many classes and let me do fuzzy logic research. (Not that I wouldn’t love my students, but research is better.)
Fuzzy logic?
*read Wikipedia article*
Hmm… I like the idea about fractional truth values, but based on probability doesn’t really suit me. I’d probably enjoy something like this:
Statement: The Hot Pink Bunny ate the human.
To determine the truth of the statement, we must determine the truth of each part. So we end up with:
The Hot Pink Bunny (That is) (ate) the human (that is). ((Things in parenthesis signify things that determine the truth value.))
If we have that it is not true that the HPB is, or that the human is, then the truth value would only be .33 because only 1/3 of the statement would be true.
If we have that both the human and HPB are true, but not (ate), then the truth value would be .66 because 2/3 of the statement is true.
However, since it’s possible for the bunny not to be pink, in this case, we notate it as:
The HPB (that is (pink)) (ate) the human (that is).
So if only the HPB is true and pink, the value remains .33.
However, if it is only a bunny and not pink, we get a value of .166
If it only a bunny, and the human is, but it did not eat the human, it would be .5
If all of the statement was true except the pinkness, the value is .833
Logical Ramblings! Congrats if you read.
Having just actually looked up fuzzy logic, it appears that it’s based off fuzzy set theory. Which makes my crack at it slightly more amusing. It appears to be a form of non-monotonic logic, which I studied a bit this summer and my dad I were talking about one week when I was at his university for research. I know more about the probabilistic stuff, but fuzzy logic seems pretty cool… (You have me babbling about logic now. This is probably bad.)
(This conversation inspired a Stupid Senseless Smiley Story.)
But yeah, so cool!
I’m not in California.
I’m only in California sometimes, when visiting family.
Yes, but that’s because it moved to Singapore.
Oh! Oh oh oh! That’s so cool, I just read the article now! Wow… That’s mind boggling!
Anybody else think it needs a more casual name than GFAJ-1?
Jiffy?
Ayjayone?
Jiffage?
Let’s make up something fancy and Greek. How do you say “Discovery” in Ancient Greek?
I really think this is amazing. I saw it in the paper today..but forgot to bring it in to my biology teacher. Hey, I’ll email her!
oh! I heard someone mention that offhand too. I’ll go look it up!
I was so excited to hear about that, not only because of the whole ground-breaking science thing, but because my family vacations at that lake all the time! Every time we’re down in that area, we visit there and then we have burgers and milkshakes at the place nearby! We’ve been doing it since before I can remember! It’s so cool that that lake is the one that’s got the awesome microbes!
Shall we form a “GFAJ-1 (Or the new, better name we come up with) Fan Club”?
Has anyone seen the latest xkcd? Robert, don’t go feeding arsenic to people.
Just read that. And had a similar thought. I’m worried now. But Robert’s a nice, non-murderous GAPA, yes?
Nothing’s ever been proved. I shouldn’t worry.
Don’t worry.
Poisoning peopleOrganizing press conferences is the job of our PR department. I’m in News.I think I’ve made life-long friends here. I just realized that right now. I think a few of you will still be my friends 25 years from now. That’s pretty cool.
i agree wholeheartedly
I need to meet some of you people. Unfortunately my parents would never let me go to a city a hundred miles away to contact Personages I met on the Internet…
Perhaps I’ll go to college in a town with some MBers or ex-MBers in it. I just need to hang on for a year and a half longer.
Fellow smelly junior? Where are you thinking of applying?
college visits=excellent excuse. just run through all the schools in two of the biggest ohio cities and you’ll get a good chunk of museblogger population. do it in february and you can come MOSH OUT with me and jade at an ensiferum concert!
my general strategy is to tell my parents where i met you guys -after- the meeting but i’m probably not allowed to recommend that due to High GAPA Law or something. plus it only works because my parents only know a small percentage of my friends, especially now that i’m at college
Come visit small liberal arts colleges in the midwest in general, not just Ohio! Penty and I go to school together.
Noooo! I was looking forward to the new Big Bang Theory all this week, and it’s not till next Friday!
I just noticed…three of the GAPAs names start with R, and Paul’s is only one line away.
Was this planned somehow?
Our parents planned it all long before we were born, but something went wrong. Paul was supposed to be named “Raul.” As a result, the Harmonic Convergence will not occur during our lifetimes. The chronosynclastic infundibulum will take another thousand years to reach singularity. O fortunate GAPAs of the Fourth Millennium, we salute you!
I was supposed to have a middle name, but I can’t remember what it was. if it happened to be Richard, we could postulate a virtual concordance.
So you don’t have a middle name at all? Is that common in Britian?
I think it was part of the post-WWII economy drive. People still mended clothes, grew their own vegetables, and did without middle names.
Somewhere, there is an old Yorkshire coot grumbling about the young people today and names that waste the registrar’s ink and time.
I need to write something where Sweeney Todd meets Jonathan Swift. Just think about it.
Modest…
Ever feel like time-travelling back to the 1500s and killing Shakespeare before he wrote Troilus and Cressida, so your English teacher couldn’t make you read it?
NO! Just make Troilus and Cressida another lost play!
Hey, T&C is a fascinating play. I wrote a paper on it in grad school. My most insightful source was an essay by Joseph Papp. His experience as a director gave him a very practical viewpoint in contrast with a lot of academic writing on the subject.
No, don’t do that either. Alter history so that your English teacher never reads it, or has different opinions about it, or something similar.
If you kill him then, he’ll never write The Tempest!
Oh no!
yeah, The Tempest was my favorite Shakespeare play! Probably because I was the boatswain in it, but oh well…
I got to scream at people 
Yar yar!
Nooooo. You mustn’t kill thy Bard of Avon.
troilus and cressida wasn’t bad! my uncle was in it a while back with the chicago shakespeare theater. i’m not sure why you’re reading it though, it seems an odd choice for high school. what grade are you in? are you in honors or advanced english or no?
Just look up the results of various horse races, travel back a few years, put on some bets, and grab the cash. Then you can sit in your favourite big fat squidgy armchair in the withdrawing room of your mansion, drink tea brought by your butler, toast crumpets in front of the fire, and settle back to read Troilus and Cressida in total peace and comfort . It’s worth a read.
If you bet too much too accurately and too often, though, you risk drawing the attention of the Guardians of Forever.
Fun fact: The first horse race I (legally) bet on when I turned 18, I picked a horse that had 1-8 odds, was number 18, and was called “Coming-Of-Age.” It won. It was great, except mom had been all “just bet for it to show instead of win, it’s a safer bet.” Oh well!
Being random, because this is the random thread, my goal for tonight is to go to sleep at 5:00. Because I have nothing else to do and I don’t want to go to sleep. Also, like 5 in the morning, for people who didn’t get that part… sorry for the double post, I will do it again.
I put my latkes in the air sometimes/saying ay-oh/spin the dreidel
-Candlelights by the Maccabeats
We got our Christmas tree! At Ikea. But still!
Massachusetts rocks.
Nice.
Happy Chanukwanzaamas everyone!
My family just mashes them together and has this large winter holiday in which we invite lots of family over and eat.
I don’t know why People Who Run Things insist on including Kwanzaa in their “Happy Holidays!” wishes. First of all, it’s a non-religious holiday, second, I have never met a single person who celebrates it, third, if it weren’t in December would we really care, fourth, it’s just a way for people to sound like they care about holidays other than Christmas, fifth, their are other winter holidays BESIDES Christmas, Hanukah, and Kwanzaa. Such as all those holidays I learned about in first grade. I think “Denali” was the name of one of them.
I also don’t like saying “No offense,” because it means what I am about to say or what I said was inherently offensive, but I truly didn’t mean to attack shadowfire. It was just a general rant. That probably belongs on the Rants and Plaints thread.
Not to mention, Kwanzaa was invented in 1966 by a man who would a few years later be thrown into jail for felony assault and false imprisonment.
I know. but it has always been Chanukwanzaamas.
I did it! Just woke up, is it Hanuka(?) already? I get out of school in 2 weeks! Happy various Holidays!!
Yes, it is. Unless you know and can type Hebrew, don’t bother attempting to spell it correctly. THERE IS NO CORRECT SPELLING.
Epic Mickey= CREEPY!
The box is kind of cool.
Read the synopsis? Now all bunnies, not just pink ones scare me to death. *shudder*
Guess what?!
It’s snowing!!!
YAY!!
Hey, I was going to say that!
It’s snowing where you are but it’s not snowing in Massachusetts? This is not fair.
It is most definitely fair because you probably get about twelve times as much snow as us per year on average!
Hello all!
It feels like it’s been a little while since I’ve posted here, so for another “random update of my life which I’m not sure anybody actually reads but that’s ok”…
Today I took my first high school entrance test, which was surprisingly easy, although I’m trying not to really expect anything – acceptances usually get mailed out in February, so it’ll still be awhile, but fingers crossed! I still have another test next Saturday but after that all I can do is wait… It’s nice to know that I’ve already finished one, though.
I can’t even remember if I told you guys this but I talked about that whole dilemma thing with basketball or the play and decided to just play basketball for school – for a variety of reasons, but long story short mainly because I didn’t end up making my church team – so I might just stick with stage crew for Willy Wonka this year instead. I was seriously leaning towards the play, but then I realized that if I want to play basketball in high school, I sort of have to play this season. Plus doing no basketball this season would put me seriously out of shape for the soccer season in the spring = not good. I’m happy with the choice I made now though, so it’s basically all good. Especially since two of my best friends are Willy Wonka and Veruca Salt, so that’s really cool. If I can manage to do basketball and stage crew for the play (since stage crew only has to go to the last two weeks or so of play practice up to the performance) I might do that.
And right now I’m freezing. It really feels like December, although I’m always slightly irked by the fact that the radio starts playing holiday music the day after Thanksgiving… and I haven’t done any Christmas shopping yet, although I usually wait awhile before I start doing that. :/
SFTDP but I just realized there was one more thing I wanted to say…
Oh, and GAPAs (or anybody else) – could you please be your wonderful selves and explain how to change your password on a Paleo account? I very un-technological in this “figuring out stuff” sort of way, so I haven’t been able to find it even though I feel like there’s got to be some sort of edit button staring right at me…thanks guys!
When you’re logged in, click on your name by the comment box, which will take you to a settings page for your account.
Hey! I’m glad you made the right decision about basketball and the play.
Nice to “see” you again!
Pro of the day: Snow in NC. It’s only sticking on the grass but this is rare enough that everyone is delirious with excitement.
Con of the day: My sister’s hamster is dying in her arms. (Well… Her hands, but still.) She’s heartbroken and I’m depressed about it. He’s an old little guy and he’s had a good life. And the snow… “such a beautiful place to be with friends.”
Aw…tell your sister that her hamster will be missed! *hugs sister and hamster*
I LIVE IN NC AND IT’S NOT SNOWING! :sob:
0- “December Random Thread”
Creative names running out of stock?
IBCF? Haven’t seen you around here much recently.
What an enthusiastic welcome.
I’m tired. Give me a break. (Junior year is evil. Pure evil.)
Do you have a suggestion for a suitably creative alternative?
I haven’t been here in a while-what’s the deal with the thumbs up?
It’s a “like” button. If you click it, it means you “liked” the comment and it gets a little “+1.” If a comment gets ten likes it gets highlighted in pink.
I really do love my dad, because he put up with letting me drag him out into the middle of a soccer field when it was 37 degrees (Fahrenheit), stand around while I took measurements for my light pollution project, and handed me my equipment. He’s a real trooper.
But next time, I’m going to get one of my brothers to be an assistant, because they won’t go “I’m cold!” every five minutes.
cheers to the dedicated (if slightly confused (or cold)) parents of musers everywhere!
A GAPA (I think it was Paul?) said he wished there were like buttons and another (I think it was Rebecca?) said she wished that at least once a day, and then Robert found some, so he added them.
50.2- Decaffeinated December? December Dementia? December Dyspepsia? December Depreciation? December Derailment? December Doozy? December Desalinization? December De-icer? Depressurized December? Descartes December? December Desynchronosis? Indelible December? December Decimeter? Deciduous December? December Doppelgänger? Decidedly December? December Deli? Deciphering December? Dorky December? December Decant? Indubitably December? December Decongestant? December Decor? De-calcified December? Dead December Doornail? December Descending Colon? Didactic December? Distilled December? Dicey December? December Dilly? December Decertification? December Desacralization? December Descrambler? Indeterminate December?
That pretty well demonstrates why we stopped doing alliterations.
Mine is currently a rather indeterminate December. Or possibly an indifferent December.
Dotty December?
U of O is going to the BCS national championships!
*happy dance* Oregon is good for something!
So so there was a ballroom dance and we polkaed all the way around the building including the stairs, elevator and all floors. It was great. We also danced to excellent songs, such as “Still Alive”. I wore a dress from Senior year of high school (purchased for $8 at a store that mostly sells sweaters) and then afterwards I went back to my dorm room and changed into my suit. I like my suit. People said I looked nice in it. I stole it from my brother, though, (or rather, he gave it to me) and everything that is hand me up from him is usually rather short in the sleeves. Ah well.
Goodnight, MB!
Christmas. Shopping. Nightmare.
On the other hand, I got yarn. And Santa hats.
SFTDP: At the mall I went to, a group of Sesame Street characters in Chinese opera masks were reenacting the Ramayana in song.
I just thought of something really profound and wise to say. Unfortunately I forgot it. Can everyone come and admire my deep thoughts anyhow?
I think that’s deep in it’s own right.
I mean its own right. Sorry.
Grammar mistakes are forgiven; my own previously impeccable grammar skills have been sliding lately so I have no right to criticize.
The like button is doing weird things to the Currently Popular sidebar. Ancient threads like “Breakfast on Mars” are popping to the top again.
That has nothing to do with the like button. That’s just spambots visiting old threads. That’s always happening.
New goal for school: by the end of the semester, make my Creative Writing class cry. I don’t care if it’s only one person, I don’t care if they give me weird looks for the rest of the year, if a single person cries in that class because of something I wrote, my life will be complete. (For now.)
I brought out my enormous menorah hat to wear around now that it’s Channukkah. Have I mentioned the menorah hat? It’s pretty awesome. Google Image “menorah hat” and you will have an extremely good idea of what it looks like. I got a haircut on Friday (the first haircut I’ve had in years and years that I liked) and proceeded to walk home from the haircutter’s shop, down the most commercial street in my neighborhood, wearing the hat. I love wearing the hat. You should see the looks on people’s faces as I go by. They’re brilliant.
And my parents ordered me a NaNoWriMo winner’s shirt for Hanuka! And incredibly fuzzy socks! Hooray! (And I can’t stop thinking in a British accent because I’ve been watching Doctor Who pretty much constantly since school got out on Friday. That, and making latkes. I make latkes like a latke ninja.)
Latke ninja with a menorah hat. I love you.
Are there any Jewish MBers here with spectacular latke recipes? My family is not Jewish, but it’s my turn to make dinner for Meatless Monday tomorrow night and my mom and I were thinking that potato pancakes would be perfect for the season.
Well, I’m not an expert, and it’s not really all that complicated, but here’s how we do it:
Get potatoes. Plenty of them. If you get one potato per person, you’ll have enough, and maybe a bit extra. Peel them and put them in a big mixing bowl. Then grate them until that big mixing bowl has lots of potato grating in it! Don’t worry if it’s pink. For some reason, it may be pink.
The ratio we use is around one onion for every ten potatoes, so make of that what you will. Grate the onion. COVER YOUR EYES while you do this. I can’t emphasize that enough. I’ve seen people bring swimming goggles especially for the occasion. You can actually damage your eyes by just standing there grating an onion for that long. And it’s going to be painful to your eyes no matter what you do. Worst part of the whole business.
Mix them up a bit. Try to make sure there aren’t any big pieces of anything, especially potato, floating around in there. (Note: the whole grating and mixing onions and potatoes thing can be done by an ordinary Cuisinart, and the final product tastes exactly the same. But come on, half the fun is gone if you do that!)
Pour a lot of oil into the frying pan. I mean a LOT of oil. If you tilt the pan to one side, the oil should slosh back and forth easily. Stick your pinky finger into the oil. The level of grease should be up to the moon of your fingernail. Yes, that’s a lot of oil. It will be delicious. Heat the frying pan until the oil is sizzling nicely, and maybe spitting just a bit.
Now comes the ninja part! Take a scoop of potato-onion mix and splosh it onto the frying pan, into the oil. (I say “splosh”, but you should do that more carefully than a splosh.) It should be a bit bigger than the size of your fist, but about as thick as the thickness of a single finger. Also, it should be shaped like an oval. The oil will sizzle, hiss, and spit, so be careful not to get burned! Do that enough times so that your frying pan is filled with sizzling ovals of deliciousness. Mine can usually hold around four or five, but mine is a bit big.
It’s just like pancakes, here, except with lots of boiling oil so don’t get burned please. Check to see if they’ve been browned on the bottom. If yes, flip carefully. If no, don’t. Push them around a bit and rotate their positions in the pan because often the heating isn’t equal everywhere in the pan.
Once one is nicely golden brown and just a little crispy on both sides, pick it up using a spatula, tilt it so that the oil on it drains back into the pan, and place it on a plate covered with paper towels. No matter how much you have tried to drain all the oil back into the pan, the paper towels will be immediately soaked with grease. If they aren’t, you didn’t use enough oil, and you should add some more. In fact, your oil will be slowly depleting itself throughout this process, so keep adding more the whole time. Not too much more, though.
Enjoy with sour cream. (And applesauce, I guess, though I have ideological conflicts with applesauce on latkes.) If you have any boys under the age of thirteen, mischeviously encourage them to have a latke-eating contest. Do not allow them to eat more than eleven. Put the leftovers in the fridge and warm them up for lunch the next day, unless you have no leftovers, in which case, yay you. The smell of latke will not leave your house for eight days. That’s a good thing.
My computer has a virus so I won’t be able to post for a while (if anyone cares). I also spent four hours making a cake for my brothers birthday, and when I showed him, all he said was oh, a cake…. * is annoyed* super awesome cake for a super idiot brother…. Also the last thing he told me last night was that I shouldn’t exist… I shouldn’t have made the cake….
Have I mentioned that you have a really cool username?
Haha! My dad fixed my computer faster than he said! It might come back though, it’s not 100% fixed. And, *laughs* it was a Trojan Horse virus.
I really want another computer, I bought mine used for 200 dollars, I thought it was inexpensive, until I spent another 300 dollars trying to get the battery to work, and other various problems…
It kept saying that my disk drive had fatal errors and telling me I had to buy a repair thing. REALLY ANNOYING, everything was dying and it took like a hour to fix. I was really happy that I might get another computer, but no, it came back from the dead.
But ‘Tiger! They care about you!
*cue music with fish ocean creature names replace by MBer names*
I want to do some writing for fun today, but I feel burned out after writing my analysis essay for English on irony in “Ozymandias” and “The Sea and the Mirror”.
My friend’s mom came to cook us a Chanukah dinner. It was excellent. Matzoh ball soup is my favorite, but I also like latkes.
Ohmyhotpinkbunnifiedbeatlesitsalmostchristmasohdearohdearohdear. It snuck up on me again. *screams*
Yes, and it doesn’t seem like we’ll be having an MA party this year…
Nope. *sigh*
No reason we can’t still have it. Maybe plan this week and start the party next? Other suggestions? Sorry, we fell behind on this. GAPAs have been fighting through colds and other unscheduled distractions.
Maybe start planning now and start the party the sixteenth? (The date was chosen mostly at random, though it does line up with Las Posadas.)
December 16 is also Beethoven’s birthday. Jane Austen’s, too.
It’s also the date Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I is (finally) coming out here.
So perhaps we’ll play some of his music, then!
Beethoven Day!
only ten more days until winter break
almost an entire month of no homework and no classes…SIGHHH.
when do you all go on break? i take it some of you already are, to which i saw AWWWW D: i miss the time when winter break meant YAY A PARTY WITH COOKIES and not HAHA ENJOY FINALS
just ten days…..-_________-
Oh. Oh dear. And suddenly I realize that, yes, it is only slightly over a week until break for me too, and CAKE IT ALL I’VE BARELY STUDIED FOR ANYTHING YET. *sob* I had all weekend I could ahve been productive, but no….
But yeah, my last final is a week from Thursday, so December 16th, so just 10 more days for me, too, though my flight home isn’t until the evening of the 17th….
And I’ve got so much I have to do before then, I’ve got to study so much, for animal phys (the final is Friday), for spanish (I might just be able to scrape an A- if I study really, really hard, and the listening part of it is Wednesday), for accounting (I’m doing well in it, I’d hate to lose my A because I don’t study well for the final), and for animal handling/restraint, I need to study enough to ace the 4th test Tuesday, because then I can skip the final (which is the same day as physics, and at 8 in the morning, and why on earth would I want to take it?), and physics I just have to study a smidge, I only need a 53% on the final, but still….SO MUCH TO DO.
And I have to pack. I’ve got to figure out what I’m taking home, I’ve got to start packing, I’ve got to do laundry so that I have enough clothes to last until break starts and so that I can pack, and just….Gah.
And I’ve got to figure out what the cake I’m getting one of my friends for Christmas, because I learned Friday from Alan that she’s getting me something, and I’d not even thought about it, not thought that hey she might get me something and I really should get her something…..I thought i was done with my worrying about presents, since I’d already picked up something for Alan….And I’ve no clue at all what to get her. *headdesk*
Gah. study. Must. Study.
Eleven, that is. eleven more days from me. I apparently can’t type.
The like button is doing strange things on my computer… every time I mouse over one, it keeps expanding until I click it.
Ah, nevermind. That only happens when I zoom in on the page. *shrug*
Attention, Demigod RPGers! We are attempting to kickstart this RPG now that NaNoWriMo is over and done, but without your full participation, it’s like giving the Heimlich to a train-wreck victim! Head over there now!
Uh…okay.
I came home today after a three-mile run in PE (cross-country) and not having eaten breakfast or lunch, and the house smelled SO good from the Christmas tree and yesterday’s Hanukkah cookies that I immediately forgot my woes. ‘Tis the season.
Cake, my post on Pie Wars got a lot of replies.
I don’t know how long oxlin’s been around, (honestly I remember seeing you near the time I started, in 2007) but back in 2007/2008 the Pie War threads were largely controlled by the Prancing Unicorn Slayers (AKA PUS) and Zemtee. I joined PUS on IBCF’s behalf, as they were low on players.
I’m also about to take a road trip from southern CT up to Massachusetts to an alternative school called North Star.
AND IT SNOWED!
Has anyone tried listening to Stairway to Heaven backwards? 2
Oxlin was here before you were born, youngling. She was here before Museblog was even a blog!
Oh dear. I don’t think you mean that literally, but it a few years it could be true. I started going on the Gaboomba in approximately Dec ’03 and that will soon be before MBers were born, won’t it?
Oh, wow, it will. You seem to have gotten old.
Apparently.
Ahoy, oxlin! Do you ever hear from Parmandiriel nowadays? If so, what is she up to?
She’s a senior in college studying journalism. She keeps herself busy with fencing, flute, and friends.
It’s all relative, though, isn’t it?
*feels ancient*
you are ancient, santa
Yeah. Here I feel old, but elsewhere I feel really young.
Besides, in the scheme of things, we’re all very young.
Those future MBers are still 7. Am I mean if I hope that they don’t discover the blog for a good time yet? I could live without a sudden influx of 2nd graders.
By the way, happy Seven Year Blogiversary!
Oh hey, I guess you’re right. It is December after all.
Ooopsies.
I knew it was something like that, but when you said you didn’t know the teams I thought perhaps I could be GRAVELY MISTAKEN.
Anyway, I’m back from Massachusetts, where I found an awesome pizza place. Yumyumyum.
I haven’t ever really paid attention to pie wars. I didn’t know that there were teams other than Watership Down and Chuck Norris.
Today it rained in Jordan, the first real rain since I got here. It’s now officially winter. This is good because everyone has been waiting for the water supply to be replenished.
I skipped in the puddles.
For me, it caused a slight bout of nostalgia–not really homesickness–for Michigan, because the weather actually feels the way fall does in MI, although right now they’re probably getting more snow than rain, even if it’s still to early for the snow to do anything but melt when it hits the ground. *sigh* Cold weather here I come.
I was reading something else-internet and someone said “Enceladus is awesome!” and I thought for a second, “Wait, she knows Enc?” until I remembered that Enceladus is also a moon.
The moon is also awesome.
Of course,
it’s named after me!I named myself after it.They’re pronounced differently, however.
Oh, really? I was pronouncing both like the Titan… How are they pronounced?
Moon: enCEladus
Me: enceLAdus
How do you say “Enc”? I’ve been saying it “ehnk.”
Hard C or soft C?
Piggy- Soft C
Tesseract- That’s essentially how I pronounce it, though it also sounds a bit like “Ink”
IT’S SNOWING, IT’S SNOWING, IT’S SNOWING!!! *dances* The first real snow!!! There were flurries yesterday a bit, but it didn’t stick so it doesn’t count. I now need to go outside and roll around in the snow and skip around and see if there’s enough snow for snowballs and skiing and I really need to go skiing and take a pretty picture for our christmas card and paint and have fun…but first I need to finish reading POSOC’s amazing chapter thingy.
Blow it south.
Yay! It finally snowed today! Just a few light flakes, but it still looked beautiful. Unfortunately, it appears that the school didn’t turn on the heat until seven this morning, because it was freezing all day. I went around in my heavy winter coat because I forgot to bring a hoodie. :/
Blow it east.
Gladly. You can take all of it. Snow is nice in theory, but it’s much more annoying in real life. Too much shoveling.
What is the little thingy at the bottom of everyone’s post?!
Like buttons, more or less.
That, is a like button…
I actually finished all of my homework. 
But I still got a C+ on my French test… 
That language doesn’t work for me… 
But I got 104% on my math test 
I am proud of myself
Does anyone listen to Blind Guardian? no one at my school does…
This post has many smiley/frowny things
Good news: It snowed today. (But didn’t stick)
Bad news: I got my period and it’s making me very gassy.
Paul! Would you tell me about traditional Christmas Music and carols of the Medieval and Renaissance Periods?
Well now…
I won’t claim that Dickens invented Christmas, but it’s not far off the truth. It wasn’t a big event until Victorian times, and it was really That Book that made everyone suddenly go all cosy and nostalgic. Christmas was really just the church’s not very successful attempt to muscle in on various pagan solstice celebrations, and the Puritans more or less banned it in the 17th century. New Year was the time for giving presents. There’s a bit of medieval and Tudor Christmas music, but we have to scrape the barrel to make a programme. Here are a few snippets to look up :
Personent Hodie
Quem Pastores
Es ist ein ros’ entsprungen
The old year now away is fled
Drive the cold winter away
The first two are Latin, the third one’s German, and the last two are more ballads than carols. I don’t want to imply that there were NO Christmas carols, but most of the ones everyone knows are much later than Tudor. I think most people kept it quiet, dragged in an old pagan yule log and lots of evergreen foliage, and had a party. They might sing a psalm or two, but it was just as likely to be the latest ballad about a highwayman or a two-headed pig.
Could you tell me about other celebrations of the season? I’m particularly interested in Yule, the Solstice, and the celebration of returning light.
Thanks!
Just finished rewatching all of Firefly. I introduced Alan to it a couple of weeks back, as he’d never seen it, and we finally finished tonight. We’ve been taking it in turns with Buffy, as I’ve introduced him to that, as well–we’re near the beginning of Season 2 of that. I’ve also introduced him to Sherlock (he’s seen the first 2 eps), and I plan to “make” him watch Jekyll as well, and at some point probably see if he’s interested in seeing more of Doctor Who (last semester I made him watch Empty Child and Doctor Dances), and then Torchwood….
Anyway, bed. I should really head there….
i’m jealous you got him to watch buffy. mine told me it was a “girl show.” i raged. still working on it.
did show him firefly and doctor who though. he said he might base his D&D character on the tenth doctor. i was proud. (he’s joining chris’s group as well)
he also just stole everything on my external drive because he just bought a 2TB drive and didn’t really have anything to put on it…i think he just saw how useful mine was and figured black friday sales on external drives were cheap, why not. so hopefully he will go through some of that and gain some taste in music as well xP
A “girl show”? *blinks*
yeah, I had no difficulty getting Alan to watch, I think I was pretty much like, “Hey, I shoudl totally make you watch Buffy” and he was just like “Yeah, okay.”
He is whipped.
Oh, no, we haven’t done that….yet.
blargh. my bio 101 final is either at 1:30 today or 1:30 thursday. the syllabus and the exam schedule say different things. i’m just going to wander down today and see if it’s happening and if not, go on thursday
haven’t started studying though. oops.
tom and i were laughing last night because he was like “y’know…we’re doing all this stuff to relax for finals but neither of us has actually started studying for finals yet” my hardest final was last week though, and if bio is today then after bio i’ll just have one more
i have work tomorrow night and there’s a nerf fight planned
but hopefully i can sneak in late
i’m actually going home thursday and then coming back for festivities so that should be fun
i am excited for break though. i’ll get to see all the high school people again, and steven will still be here so when i get bored i can go see him, and jake might come visit, and i miiiiight go with tom to the YSU HvZ. apparently it’s just one day so i was thinking if i can convince someone here who has a car to go, we could do it. or i could greyhound i guess. but yeah i’d go to youngstown and get shot xP except with nerf so it’s okay
i’m also going to my grandma’s so i’ll see all the familial types as well. and it looks like a lot of people are going to be back by new years’ so we might have a collegey new years’ party
My GPA dropped TWO POINTS in ONE DAY.
Shoot me in the face. Life sucks.
Oh, ouch. How does that even happen (if you don’t mind explaining)?
Well, I failed to study for several tests because of all the show choir stuff Ive had the past week. My teachers decided to give me 4 tests on the same day, and coincidentally, my grades ranged from B+ to C-, so my GPA went from a 3.7 to a 3.5 over night.
So it’s 0.2 points, not 2 points.
Oh. Yep you’re right, but still, that’s a huge difference…
79.1~ “The old year now away is fled, the new year it is entered, so let us all our sins downtread and joyfully all appear. Let’s merry be this holiday, come let us run with sport and play. Hang sorrow, cast care away, God send us a happy new year!” That one? And Drive the Cold Winter Away, I’m surprised to find that I don’t have a recording of it in my iTunes, because I’m sure I know it. Alas. I’ve probably got it somewhere, just not on my computer.
What about the texts that Britten compiled in the Ceremony of Carols? I could have sworn some of those were quite old. I think I remember some being in middle English, even. No? I know several were Latin.
“There is no rose of such virtue as is the rose that bare Jesu, hallelujah, halleluja…for in this rose contained was heaven and earth in little space res miranda, res miranda By that rose we may well see there be one God in persons three Ares forma, ares forma The angels sung and the shepherds too Gloria in exchelsis, gloria in exchelsis Deo! Etc.
Or “As Dew in Aprille” “I sing of a maiden that is makulous. King of all kings to her son she ched. He cam also stille where his moder was, as dew in Aprille that falleth on the grass. Moder and maiden was never none but she, well may such a lady God’s moder be.”
Or are these in fact later? Or do you exclude them because the original melodies are lost or only in part? Forgive me, though I’ve sung the Ceremony of Carols I don’t know as much about them as I probably should.
At any rate, old, obscure and traditional Carols are fun.
I actually had an interesting conversation with a friend about the whole Pagan ritual side of Christmas….she and her family are very devout fundamental Christians, you must understand. Anyway, she was surprised to read in a book I had the heading for “The Holly and the Ivy” that said the chorus refers to Pagan sun and animal worship. I said “Yes, the part about ‘the rising of the sun and the running of the deer'” to which she replied “Well that doesn’t necessarily mean anything like THAT.” and I just smiled and said “Yes, it actually does, a lot of Christmas traditions are borrowed, including the time of year we celebrate.” Her face:
Then later when recounting this to my Dear Parents, Mom said “It’s interesting, because the stag is a well known symbol for Christ.”
“Mmhmm, ever wondered why? Perhaps the Pagans were worshiping stags and the Christians decided ‘HEY! The stag ACTUALLY is a sign for Christ, see? So we’re all on the same page! You’re worshiping Christ! Yay!'”
“Oh, yeah. That would make sense…..”
Another fun thing (for me, at least) is all the other holidays around the advent. There’s St. Lucia’s Day, St. Stephen’s Day, Holy Innocents Day, Twelfth Night, and so many others.
SFTDP
I AM EXCITED.
Remember the thing Piggy had us look up? The group of choristers who started singing the Hallelujah Chorus in the Philadelphia Macy’s? Yeah, that one. The Random Act of Culture thing? The flashmob sort of performance?
Yeah, THAT!
There’s going to be a similar event near where I live! And I’m going to participate! And I am insanely excited about this! LOOK FOR ME ON YOUTUBE, DAHLINGS! Actually don’t, it hasn’t happened yet. But still. EEE! I’m quite exited about this, for one because I didn’t think our area would be cool enough to do it, and two because if they did I figured I’d probably miss it, and three because even if they did do something and I was there I wouldn’t be involved. So EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!
Also, I have a new pair of super awesome shoes from Wales.
[/squeeage]
Cool, Fiddler!
My friend from school found a pattern for Hogwarts scarves, (think third movie) and she is knitting herself a Ravenclaw scarf, and I am knitting a Hufflepuff scarf! I started today, and I’m nearly to the first set of stripes!
Finished with the first set of stripes, and now I’m repeating!
It’s going awesome, for my first real knitting project! I’m super pleased with myself.
Piggy has applied to be a tester for the Chrome OS notebooks. Reading the terms and conditions, having 18 years of age doesn’t seem to technically be a requirement, so I might be okay? 140 characters isn’t really enough to explain why you’d be a good candidate, though.
Twitter? * is on twitter*
[Ahem! –Admin.]
I’ve always “passed” as best I could. Unless you’re trying to buy illicit substances most people don’t care about age.
I was sitting in an exit row and had a flight attendant ask me if I was older than 12.
This was a month before I turned 18.
*exactly the opposite problem*
A worker at the Peabody Essex museum wasn’t sure if I was under 17.
At that point, I was 13.
One time I had a nice old lady ask if I had graduated from the high school my mom went to. I haven’t started high school.
But the one that really scared me was when I answered the door for a door-to-door salesman, and he assumed I was the ‘lady of the house’, and started talking about ‘you and your husband’, and my nine-year old brother was right there. In plain sight. Having answered the door with me.
This was about when I decided to acquire more t-shirts with writing on them.
I can certainly relate to that. But when I got older, people thought I was younger. Once when I was in my 30s, a sales clerk referred to my boyfriend as my father. (The boyfriend was actually not quite two years older than I was.)
Yes, my grandmother said that more or less the same thing happened to her. Which is nice.
Oh, ouch. I’ve been mistaken for my sibling’s parents before, and it was just awkward. I was kind of offended.
More recently, at college people seem to assume that I’m in my twenties, or at least past 18. It’s kind of awkward when they ask my age, I tell them I’m 17, and then they start going, “Oh, you’re so young“, in these really cute voices….I think I’m developing some kind of age complex now.
I wasn’t really offended. I was more amused/flattered/surprised.
But it is slightly awkward sometimes. Especially since my older sister looks young for her age.
Solution = Win.
Darn, that sucks. I have the opposite problem, like Enc. Apparently, men are always checking me out from behind (it’s easier to tell that I’m young from my front- I have braces), but my family and friends never tell me when this happens. It’s… disturbing. Very disturbing.
Everyone says I look young and then claims I’ll be happy about it when I’m older. Uh huh. I don’t like looking young. It leads to people infantilizing me.
even if you’re trying to buy illicit substances, people often don’t care about age
…or so you’ve heard.
…or so i’ve seen.
“Mileage may vary.”
Well, if they mention it at all, you could still get in some sort of trouble… (I only worry because you’re my friend.)
.1- No, it was unrelated to Twitter. There was just a 140-character maximum for one section.
.2- Hopefully they won’t look into it too much.
.3- The worst they can do is not send me a notebook.
Tomorrow is Pretend to Be a Time Traveller Day. I thought you all should know.
Yeah, I found out tomorrow.
LIKELIKELIKELIKELIKE
Okay. I broke down and liked that.
Thanks! I nearly forgot this year.
Ooooh… but I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere people won’t know me. Maybe if I get my homework done double-quick I can go shopping with my mom in the evening and do my pretending there…
Oh! And I could wear my silver lima bean clip-on earring and periodically touch it while muttering things to myself. And dress otherwise unusually.
Darn it, Mom says there’s no reason to go out.
*sobs* AUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! HOW CAN THERE BE ICE EVERY WHERE BUT IT’S TO FREAKING HARD TO LET IT FREAKING SNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
Iggy: Are you gonna vent know?
Me: Nah, later.
Iggy: But….
Me: HEY IG! CELERY! *tosses*
Iggy: *follows celery*
There was a puddle frozen today when I was going to school.
Me: *complains about my ancient iPod a bit*
Parents: *get me an iPod Touch for Hanukkah*
Me: O.O…
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Apple-induced bliss. Steve Jobs can take over the universe with my blessing. Love love love love.
Enjoy! I got one in October and can’t imagine life without it.
Very nice. For Hanukkah, my parents are paying for me to go to Boston in February for a math competition. I’m happy with that.
I got one last Christmas, they are awesome! But it wasn’t the 32 GB so I acted like a brat (not acted, but showed my true self) all day long until I realized I was a brat and that I was being an idiot. But I still didn’t apologize to my parents… *is a horrible person*
My iPod was almost six years old, and it was one of the dinosaur types (oh my god, there are dinosaur iPods. I’m getting happy thrills). It would turn off every ten minutes and say it was out of power, even if it had been charging for a full day. It also froze half the time and was incredibly difficult to work with.
I’m not sure if my parents realize what kind of power they’ve put in my hands by giving me an iPod Touch. Mom used to complain about me having my laptop in my room, because she thought it would be distracting while I did my homework. This will be so, so much worse. *cackles*
Also, very portable! And I can watch Doctor Who very easily! (Buffy too.) And it’s ridiculously user-friendly! And it’s incredibly thin and light! And the sound quality is fantastic! And it’s all smooth and black, like a ninja! And the Internet is just as fast as the Internet on my laptop! And it makes cute little clicking noises whenever I lock it, and when I type, and when I flip through pages of apps!
Is it legal to marry an Apple product? It should be.
Don’t worry, the honeymoon period won’t last too long. It’ll start freezing up and your icons will disappear, and when you go to update the software it’ll brick itself and you’ll have to spend four hours just getting it back to how it was when you first bought it, all your content having been lost.
That’s our Piggy, ever the optimist…
I got mine about a year ago and I’ve had no problems with it so far. In fact, I’m using it now!
I got mine… two years ago? and didn’t have any problems until a few months ago when I tried to update the software and after that it started saying that it couldn’t sync. I think it’s still syncing though?
Yeah, mine’s practically new and I can’t play flash applications or install my own apps! Oh, no wait those are “features”
OH YOU
Kerri Hopper might disagree with that…
Well, then, I’m extremely sorry, but I think I may have to challenge Kerri Hopper to a duel. I love this thing. Maybe she could convince The Steve to make an iStarrySky.
Has anyone checked out figment.com? I read about it in the New York Times, and it sounds Muserly.
I checked it out last night. It looks pretty cool, but I’ve only got one original fiction project at the moment and I’m putting it on hold for a while to focus on my fan-fictions.
Check the legal section, particularly section four. It says they’ll own your content perpetually.
Also, I think a space like that needs to be a good stomping ground. It needs to be open but only open to members, members need to be able to retain copyright on their own work, and there needs to be a space for fanfic there. I think it is a good and important space but that it could be better implemented. As such, I don’t think I would use that particular site.
It does not say they will own your content. They just reserve the right to publish any submitted content for the purpose of promoting their website or publishing an anthology of works. You still retain all ownership rights–just not exclusively. I’ve done a bit of research, and this does not violate copyright law–by agreeing to the terms and conditions, you agree to their stated contract and thus nonexclusively transfer some of your rights.
“by submitting a Publication to Figment, you grant Figment a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable license to (i) use, copy, distribute and display the Publications in connection with the operation and promotion of the Figment Website”
You’re right, you do own it but they do perpetually have the right to use it and you can’t get full use back as it is irrevocable. That still has implications if you ever want to publish and I don’t know if they’re up front about it to the people who might be using the site.
The key word there is “non-exclusive.” That means you’re free to re-sell it or republish it however you like. It’s the same arrangement Rebecca and I have with Muse for the Q&A column. Muse‘s publishers could collect our columns in an anthology, if they liked — but so could we. It’s fine for the sort of short work we do for them.
In theory, I suppose the Figment people could publish a novel you posted there, before you could do the same. I’m not sure they would, though. They seem like idealistic, well-meaning types.
I got to wear my black lace-up leather boots to school and got several compliments on them. My brother says they look like combat boots, my friend Hannah says they look like horse-riding ones. (She’s an equestrian, so I presume she’d know)
It’s weird, I like punk rock accessories (the boots, my fingerless gloves, my bomber vest), but in terms of actual music, I like easy listening.
Easy listening? Like soft rock? That is dentist music.
Yeah, soft rock, adult contemporary, that sort of thing.
Now I want to check out figment. But I have too much homework…
Falling into sleep-deprivation fugue while listening to Cage the Elephant.
Yeah, I had so much homework last night, I stayed up sooo late (mostly because I didn’t start until late). Then I fell asleep in math, and one of my friends had to wake me up when the teacher came around to check homework. My teacher is really oblivious though… And she looks like a lama…
*SCREAMS*
but either way i have two unpleasant finals on one day! BAWWWWW
so i found out TODAY that my logic final is on MONDAY at the same time as my japanese final! WHY! so i either have to take it with the other teacher on a different/nearby campus or hope that my japanese teacher will let me take it at another section if there IS one and if it even fits my schedule
this and approximately 12340982398573924872983579283572984 other things i have to stress out about
UGH HATE SCHOOL HATE LIFE HATE EVERYTHING
ALSO I HAD THE BEST GIFT IDEA EVER BUT SAID ITEMS DO NOT EXIST ANYMORE I HATE YOU DISNEYLAND
Marshmallows!
WHAT
MARSHMALLOWS IN HOT CHOCOLATE!!
WITH A PEPPERMINT STICK TO STIR IT WITH!
IN A CAVE! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!
SPARTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
♥ ♥ ♥
That SUCKS. I can’t believe they would have any two finals scheduled at the same time… seems like a recipe for disaster to me. But you can do it! Hang in there 
*hugs*
One of the best things about my college was self-scheduling for exams. Some people took them all at once and left early for break. I always paced them out so I didn’t have to think about more than one at a time.
man i’m jealous. i don’t think it would be possible to self-schedule exams here…
i am allllmost done. only one more exam that i don’t care about that much. over break i am starting up work again (the email job i mean) and looking for houses and visiting cleveland/youngstown and going to my grandma’s. woo!
Oh, that sounds wonderful…
Oh, that sounds nice. I was done with everything last Friday except for two finals, which are Monday and Tuesday. So I’ve had this weird gap week.
ugh long story short one of my classes is at another college so they don’t consult with my “home” college about conflicts x___x anyway it turns out i’ll just be taking the logic exam at the other class, which is kind of worrying since i think it is marginally more rigorous than the one i’ve been taking but hopefully they use the same test! *dead*
Nice idea, Cat’s Eye.
During dinner, my family was talking about near death experiences everyone had had.. I learned some things about my dad I never hear before. All these stupid things with motorcycles and race cars and explosives…. illegal things…. I only had seizures when I was little… Soooo boring. Then there was the time I almost drowned in a lake…. THAT was stupid, I still can’t swim…. And there’s still a missing piece of my heel…. Never broken a bone though, I know this one guy who broke his arm so many times, he can’t feel it when you pinch him…
Ouch… I don’t think I’ve ever had a near-death experience- and I’m not keen on having one any time soon!
Same here, knock on wood.
Apparently when my uncle was a teen he and his friends went to a vacant lot and chased each other around with Roman Candles. Not a near-death experience, but his clothing did get fairly burned.
That is sort of similar to what my dad did… But when his brother was finished with him, his head was bleeding. And now that my dads head is balding, I can see the scar. (it was something along the lines of blowing up a neighbors mailbox, running away, and having a glass door slammed in his face…)
I love the Unitarian versions of Christmas carols. They replace the words “god” and “Jesus” with stuff like “integrity” and “spirit” and whatever else they can get to rhyme, so the lyrics sound kind of odd sometimes (I think the only ones that got left alone were Deck the Halls, Oh Christmas Tree, and Jingle Bells).
Physics Carols! Delete this if you must, GAPAs, but it is awesome.
http:// www. mrflint. com/ features/ winter/ physcarols.html
I love “Deck the Physics Lab with Vectors”.
*delurks*
I’ve been lurking for awhile now. I had early release today, and we got out at 12:00. But I am really excited because in two weeks, my local library is hosting a Doctor Who marathon! There is also going to be Doctor Who trivia, and I wrote trivia questions and sent them to the coordinators, and they were accepted!
That’s amazingly awesome! I wish my library did things like that…in fact, I wish I knew anyone who is not my family and who watched Doctor Who and likes it and actually lives around here…my friends dislike Doctor Who, which…annoys me, to say the least.
What were the trivia questions?
Kill me.
I submitted my application to take the GED last month, close to the due date, but it should have gotten there in time. But anyway, I’ve been waiting to hear something, ANYTHING from the GED office, and since the Dec. test (which I was hoping to get into) are on the 10th, I figured I might as well just call and see what I could find out, since they obviously need some help with this whole communication thing. So I first off call the community college where I’ve taken the practice tests and whatnot. Unhelpful secretary said to call the GED office, so I did. Supremely unhelpful Baltimoron answers and tells me that I’m not on the schedule and I’ll get in January AT THE SOONEST. Blast.
Call back the comm. college, ask to get in touch with the instructor I had for the practice tests, who said to get ahold of him if I had problems. He listened, but said unfortunately the Baltimore office has complete control over the schedule, so there’s nothing he can do. Blahh.
Call back the Baltimore office, ask of there’s any way to be notified of cancellations, or if standby testing exists or if there’s ANYTHING one can do to speed up the process. No. You’re either scheduled or you’re not, and it doesn’t matter if you show up or not, that’s on you. It’s your spot, and if you don’t show up, sucks for anyone else who could have been there instead of your unmotivated arse. (My words, not hers.)
So yay. That will do a LOVELY job of stalling college applications even LONGER! Isnt’ that just great?!
*forces pies down throat*
Ah, it’ll be alright. Fear not, we’re here to support and splat.
So, I know I’m late on the pie war thing again, but this thread goes really ===FAST===. I was thinking more along the lines of two or three well-organized teams, handled by responsible bloggers, i.e. IBCF or Enc or someone who won’t go about screaming for people to join, join, join.
See, if anyone wants to do this, and rejuvenate the wars, (Pie Wars: Season II) with new teams and all, we can’t go running along with 34 different alliances composed of three people each like last time.
Well, we could, but It may be better to have two or three general sides so it gets no more complicated than pieing each other over funny, trivial arguments and launching into a battle.
Heck, we could even have a map of “The Blogosphere Conflict” and have actual frontlines and battles and *whew*.
Or we could start a pie war planning thread!
There’s so much we could do. So if anyone wants to pump epinephrine into the old, rusty veins of the pie wars, let me know.
And as they say on YouTube…thumbs up! (Just kidding!)
We had a pie war like that. It got too intense and we had to stop because some people started taking it personally (not everyone, of course. I remember POSOC and I had a lovely rivalry going, it was fantastic). So, fun idea, but probably not gonna happen again–the GAPa(s) had to intervene last time.
Oh well. Still a cool idea. Maybe I’ll go draw a map.
uugghh i’m sorry…that’s really frustrating
though i do have to admit i lol’d at “baltimorons” haha
*and other comfort foods if you’re not feeling the sweet-tooth bit right now*
that seems rather unfair, most things are usually “if postmarked by such and such date” so they should be more lenient :/ like why would they want to do anything that DISCOURAGES people? ugh…yeah i’m sorry that happened. so it doesn’t even matter if you show up for the december one just in case? if you don’t mind the massive trouble you could always try going anyway and raising massive hell about it all…but probably you don’t want to do that.
hugs and pies in any case!
I didn’t get much computer time yesterday, so I didn’t even know SpaceX was launching their Falcon 9 test today and not tomorrow, so it all happened without me ever knowing!
Aw…
It was just pouring today. I pulled my usual trick of not wearing a jacket, because psh, jackets are for people who wear jackets. But I had also written cute little word square designs of John Lennon quotes all over my arms, since today is the anniversary of his death (like “give peace a chance in the shape of a peace sign, “imagine all the people living for today” in the shape of a rainbow), and, well, my arms are now completely blue. I would say I’ll be sure to wear a jacket next time, but I don’t need a jacket! All I need is love!
And it’s the last night of Chanukah. Sigh. No more menorah hat until next year.
And my mind was DESTROYED WITHOUT MERCY today in Chemistry, since we just started our unit on light. My teacher even warned us against it. She said, “There are going to be some things in this unit that won’t make sense, or won’t be intuitive. I have to ask you guys to just go with a some stuff so we can move on with the unit, and rest assured physicists are trying to understand these things as we speak.” And then I brought up the dual nature of light and dark matter and the multi-universe theory cause I thought they would be interesting, and now OH GOD MY BRAINS
My iTouch is still beautiful and gorgeous and incredible! Marriage plans continue!
I hate junior year. I miss sleep. I miss being less stressed. I miss having a math class where the grades made sense. I miss not having to think about college yet. Mostly, though, I miss being happy, because that’s what all of those things combined meant. Now I’m always stressed and exhausted and unless I’m actively interacting with my friends I’m in a bad mood. I hate this.
I feel your pain. That’s basically what my life has become.
Anyone on Pacific time here? Turn on the Discovery Channel. MythBusters is doing a special episode requested by the president. Very amusing.
You mean I missed it? Darn! Maybe it’ll be on again…
This year’s Webster’s Word of the Year: Refudiate.
Trendy of them, isn’t it? I’ve pretty much given up on dictionaries.
But… but… dictionaries! They’re like the word of God!
Once, maybe. Nowadays, they’ll let in any old word, spelling, or pronunciation. If they won’t even pretend to be authoritative, then I have no choice but to pretend to be authoritative myself.
I suppose that would just be a return to pre-dictionary days, wouldn’t it? A more relaxed and difficult-to-read time.
Ye gods, you’re right. Future scholars are going to have a hard time reading our documents.
Also, they don’t even include every word. I’ve only ever seen one that included ‘pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis’ (with any spelling) or ‘agathokakological’ (This had both .). Even it didn’t have ‘hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia’ (with any spelling, even including just plain ‘sesquipedaliophobia’) or ‘loriciferan.’ I understand that dictionaries can’t always afford to be completely comprehensive, because then they’d probably be too heavy too carry to any place where they’d be useful, but they could just get rid of some of the things that just aren’t correct, like ‘amn’t,’ can’t they? Anyway, even dictionary dot com doesn’t have loriciferan, and no-one carries that around!
Have you heard of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED)?
I don’t think it includes every word, but it does do word histories!
I found a dictionary with “hippopotomonstrasesquipedaliaphobia” in it!
Well, it was a dictionary of arcane, unusual, and obscure words.
Meh, the dictionary I worship is from the sixties, so… I dunno. It’s got to mean something. And I’ve got to say, if they’ll let let in *any* old spelling, it would’ve made certain MBers’ lives a whole lot easier a few years ago.
Ew… Did they really do that? *annoyance sniff*
Actually, it was the New Oxford American Dictionary’s word of the year, announced here:
http :// oxforddictionaries . com/page/woty_us
Looking at the finalists, I think “nom nom” and “vuvuzela” would have both been better choices.
But isn’t it more frequently om nom nom?
Vuvuzela would have definitely been a better-BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
It should have been spoonerism. I like that word.
Spoonerism.
Who’s got two thumbs and received a Chrome OS notebook in the mail today?! THIS GUY! Gah, this is so incredible. I expected to hear back from them in a month explaining that I wasn’t chosen. But nope–two days after I entered a short application online, I receive a notebook free of charge. Chrome OS is incredible. It’s ridiculously fast. I LOVE IT SO MUCH
SO MUCH
Oh! And the documentation that came with it is hilarious. The main thing is a cardboard pamphlet about five inches wide and fourteen high. On the front, on the top, in clear, calm letters, it reads, “Don’t Panic.” It says you’re not allowed to blend the notebook or expose it to rap music. It has small parts which may present a choking hazard to men who have not emotionally matured. It notes that authorized technicians may not include the neighborhood 15 year old brainiac. It apologizes for having a lithium-ion battery, “as that whole cold fusion thing hasn’t been figured out yet.” Later on it explains, “You can try opening the display panel with one hand, but that goes into extreme display opening and may be frowned upon by someone special in your life.” Opening the display panel too far “could put stress (physical and emotional) on the display panel’s hinges”.
I heart Google so indescribably much.
Are you serious?
Yes. If I think of it maybe I’ll scan it in and post it.
Yay for you!
Awesome! Keep telling us about it as you use it.
All right. How ’bout the first installment now?
It’s about fifteen seconds from when I open the lid to when I’m on the internet. (It automatically turns on when you open the lid.) The interface is basically just the Chrome browser, which I’m very used to. All of my settings and extensions and passwords came back perfectly since I had been syncing them already. Browsing the internet is faster than on my other laptop, since Chrome OS doesn’t have anything else going on other than the internet. The Caps Lock key has been replaced by a search key, though you can change that in the settings menu. There aren’t any function keys (i.e., F1, F2, etc.); instead there are keys for forward, back, reload, full screen, next window, brightness, and volume control. It’s very quiet since it doesn’t have a hard drive. The general UI experience has been great so far, though I agree with what some people have complained about: there’s no real way to browse files that you’ve saved to the computer. That’s troublesome. Other than that, though, I’m extremely happy with it so far. For a user who used a browser other than Chrome, it would take a bit of getting used to, but for a person like me who’s accustomed to Chrome, it’s seamless–all the keyboard shortcuts and general features are identical.
Don’t worry, the honeymoon period won’t last too long. It’ll start freezing up and your icons will disappear, and when you go to update the software it’ll brick itself and you’ll have to spend four hours just getting it back to how it was when you first bought it, all your content having been lost.
Nahhh, just kidding. It sounds incredible. *is very jealous*
I’d be all right if that happened. This is only a beta version–it’s supposed to have a lot of problems. And I didn’t pay anything for it.
And envious.
That’s true. No harm would really be done.
And I know, I know – I realized my mistake right after I hit “Comment”. *needs to proofread better*
I finally got to see the scenes in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull that were filmed at Yale the day after I left when I went on a tour a few years back!
And having spent the summer there, I was able to recognize Broadway, and the park, and the Sterling Memorial Library, and Cross Campus…
There was even a chase scene where the motorcycle went right through an archway into Davenport College, literally right into the courtyard under my window!
The very window I looked out of while posting here in July!
the library is open 24 hours until the end of finals so i think i will be here all night
also the weather has been so nice recently! it’s supposed to get up to 81 on friday i do believe
kai – that’s so cool! i love being able to recognize places in movies…the opposite happened when we went to venice, i suddenly realized we were in the exact place where one of the last scenes in Casanova was filmed! considering i was in venice, maybe not the right reason to be excited, but ah well
now i’m trying to think of other times this has happened…
The first thing I thought of while walking into the rotunda at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia was “This was in National Treasure!”
It’s a shame that the titual museum in Night at the Museum is more of an interpretation of AMNH than a literal reproduction, so you can’t do that as much.
I just discovered that I know at least 6 people at my school that are actors/actresses… All of them are in a movie right now. That is kind of odd.
Have you guys heard the updates about the arsenic microbe? I’ve read that the science has been found to be less than solid.
As was pointed out on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, if I found an awesome microbe, the first thing I’d do would NOT be to feed it arsenic.
It’s been drawing criticism, but things are still being sorted out.
The “Give Felisa A Job”-1 microbe? Yeah, I read an article on it the other day.
Argh! My Humanities teacher told us to write two pages of script for a movie each of us had to make about a religion. I got Jehovah’s Witnesses. So I slaved over the computer, checking Wikipedia, and came out with two pages of cogent, well-written facts. Do you know what he said?
“This doesn’t sound like you wrote it. I don’t think any eighth-grader can write this well.”
That’s right- five hours of work down the drain because I wrote it well. And he’s ordered me to rewrite it and resubmit it on Monday, or face detention. But I’m not going to rewrite it. That would be like admitting I plagiarised it. Which I didn’t, for crying out loud!
That… is not fair.
Tell your parents. Get them to send a note to the teacher. Or something.
I’d rewrite it in iambic pentameter. Anybody would have to admit you couldn’t have copied that. Or start your sentences with letters that spell out a message like I-A-M-A-G-O-O-D-W-R-I-T-E-R-I-D-I-D-N-O-T-C-O-P-Y-A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G. That would liven things up.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are interesting, don’t you think?
Look at that “likes” count! We GAPAs are frightfully wise.
That’s… Totally ridiculous, and a great compliment and terrible insult at the same time. How could he make you re-write it? That’s so unfair!
GRRRRRRRRR
Yes, I like Robert’s idea.
That is… What. No. He can’t do that. I mean he actually can’t do that. I know kids who have taken that to the administration and won. You seriously need to appeal that to people, because unless he has conclusive evidence that you stole it from somewhere, he can’t accuse you of cheating. And no, “it was really good” is not conclusive evidence. What kind of teacher honestly expects a student with advanced abilities to turn in work that’s below the best they can do? Essentially, you’re being punished for being a hard worker and a good writer- two of the qualities that every teacher wishes they had more of in their classes.
You honestly don’t have to just accept that. You have a better chance of winning of you appeal it than he does.
Though Robert’s suggestion would be intensely amusing, so I kind of want you to do that, too.
What?! Come on. That’s ridiculous!
Glare at your teacher for me, will you?
Get your parents to talk to your teacher. That’s completely ridiculous.
Exactly.
That is completely unfair. You need to get your parents to talk to that teacher. They could confirm that you actually wrote it.
Thankfully, I persuaded my English teacher to vouch for me.
I am sick. *cough cough* But the concert went well, at least. My oboe played okay, I didn’t miss too many notes and now I get to stay home.
I had a band concert too!
Really? Cool! How’d it go? You play…flute, right?
It was utterly flamablamablous! (And, yes, flute.)
I have a concert on Monday(horrid time for a concert) that we’ve only had three rehearsals for. And I’ve only been present for two of them. I’m very concerned.
109~ Outrage. That’s ridiculous “No 8th grader can write this well”?! Do you have another teacher who can vouch for your writing skills?
Also, I like Robert’s suggestion. Iambic pentameter AND hidden messages.
The night before last I baked with my cousin, which was awesome, but apparently ground up tapioca pearls don’t make a suitable substitute for agar flakes. Who knew? Anyway, out delicious vegan lemon bars ended up being delicious lemon-tapioca pudding-ish-goo on shortbread crust. But whatever, aside from the revolting texture, the taste was quite good. As far as I’m concerned it was still a success.
Then yesterday was loads o’ fun, basically Mom and I fought the entire day over various stupid things. Including WikiLeaks, she pried into the text message conversation I was having with a friend (“Who’re you talking to?” “[friend]” “What’re you talking about?” “Just whatever.” “What’s he saying?” “it doesn’t really matter.” “WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?” “Wikileaks, geez.”) and proceeded to tell me how illegal, immoral and generally terrible WIkiLeaks and Julian Assange are, and that by mainly reserving judgment either way I’m as good as saying all the terrible things he’s done are perfectly fine. Seriously? I plead the fifth. >.<
ANYWAY.
Getting out of bed on cold mornings when you're extremely comfortable and warm is so difficult. Can't I just stay there all day? Please? *sigh*
I think we should get Congressional Medals of Honor for getting up and going to school every day.
I agree. It requires real testpilotness.
At my school, a more appropriate medal would be the Purple Heart Award.
So, just wondering….What sort of bitch would tell a male friend that his girlfriend is too attractive for him? Because that seems like a pretty awful thing to tell a friend. Yeah. Apparently one of Alan’s female friends told him I’m too attractive for him.
one who has a very poor self-image
it could have been a joke? it was probably meant as a backwards compliment to you and not meant to be taken seriously. i could see myself saying that to someone i knew really well who would know i was joking. if that’s not the case, then yeah she’s a bitch. but i’d make sure she was actually serious
I don’t know. I mean, I wasn’t around when the girl said it to him so I don’t really have any context/verbal cues to go off of, he just made the comment that “one of my friends said you’re too attractive for me”. But given that Alan already thinks, at least a little, that I’m too attractive/whatever for him, it doesn’t seem like the best comment for a friend to make.
Isn’t that for you to decide? And wouldn’t it give him a lift if you told him so?
Oh, I told him that there are a hell of a lot more important things than looks, and that I happen to think he’s cute.
Almost as lift-ogenic. Well done!
Seems rude and uncalled for to me.
112~ WTF? You’re gorgeous, it’s true, but if you find him attractive (I’m assuming you do) then it’s none of anyone else’s business to even THINK about whether one partner is “too attractive” for another. That’s shallow and stupid. (Creepy moment here, I admit I’ve stalked him [briefly!] through ~other online channels~ and he’s pretty cute.)
But yeah, that’s just dumb and not friend-like at all. :L
And the delicious lemon goop is gone. Sad, I didn’t really eat much of it. It managed to miraculously disappear when only mom was in the house. Hmmmmmm. BUT! I have the recipe.
Gah. I get frustrated and left out feeling so easily. I think it starts happening if I know people better, ironically, as it happened in high school and then I went to college and I thought it had gone away but really I was just with a new group of people and now it crops up again. Sometimes it crops up here, too. I feel the Ohio kokoners (Ebeth and MF and Jadestone etc) and Luna and other college-age MBers are all part of a social group that I am somehow floating outside of and yet I know that probably isn’t true or at least it isn’t true that you dislike me because I figure you don’t. But gah. And maybe it is because I don’t post often or don’t really talk to people too much else-internet but eh.
I especially need to realize that my friends group in college actually does like me and care about me and will probably remain my friends after college. I dunno how to get myself to see the factual things and not just my weird gut reactions.
Like last night there were snacks provided by the cafeteria as it is finals and I went oddly early so no one was there and then I went later but my friends had been about to leave and I got that reaction immediately of “oh noes they don’t like me” and I was actually able to work around it and say “no, you just have bad timing and you live in a different dorm than they do so you didn’t coordinate”
I sympathize with you. It’s so hard to tell if I actually consider people my friends or not, or just acquaintances I talk to friendlily. And my lurking habits both on and offline don’t help. I’m trying to go against some deep part of me and actually start conversations with people outside of class now. And I finally managed to meet some of the elusive other people in my dorm. So it seems my socializing habits are looking up, a bit, but even then I don’t feel the need to talk to people all that often, except when I do and suddenly start feeling lonely because I don’t really know anyone.
There really isn’t anything keeping me from having a better social life, except me. And that makes it really difficult because I don’t like going against myself that often. And I’m just going to shut up now and keep my other weird semi-philosophical musings to myself until I can make sense of them.
Mm. I hang around people, and generally consider them to be my friends but sometimes I have feelings of doubt. I dunno.
I’m so sorry that you feel that way. I get that feeling too, in plenty of social groups, and I think that the best thing to do is to remind yourself that often timing just doesn’t work out.
As for a college age circle, there is some truth to that, but only because you aren’t in contact as often as others; I think all of us like you very much!
Oh my god we have so much in common, it’s scary.
*hugs and choklit and assurances of eternal inclusion*
*and a puppy for good measure*
Oh, we like you here! I, for one, would be very sad if you stopped posting, and I’m sure everyone else would too.
I know how you feel, though. That’s happened to me a lot recently.
I like you very much.
As for feeling left out and on the fringe of social groups and the like, I’ve often felt that way, or similar. I often tend to feel sort of on the edge, outside a group, even when just hanging around friends. Maybe it’s because I’ve never really had friends and am not social and outgoing, but I can empathize with how your feeling, and how illogical your gut reactions to situations (like that with your friends in the caf) can be.
*hugs and chokilit and pies*
Thanks!
if it helps, you are all up in my social inner circle of awesome!
Hehe, thanks!
♥
I know how you feel, as I think we’ve talked about. I also get a lot of panicky social feelings, and need a lot of reaffirmation from my friends that they do like me and want me around. I’ve been trying to get better about this, with mixed results, but I think I am helping myself a bit.
It’s really hard and stressful but don’t forget that we love you forever and that you are amazing, and also I count you as one of my good friends, even though we don’t always get to talk a lot ♥
i also feel this way often! and even if i am often too lazy to comment much here i do consider you a very good friend! and i basically second everything everyone else has said here. i think a lot of us feel like the odd person out a lot, actually…
well anyway, you’re awesome!
(and ps how is penty, if you haven talked to her recently, i have not heard from her on any corner of the internet for a long time…)
She’s all right, albeit stressed from finals. Next time I see her, I’ll say hi for you.
“Alone on the outside,
So tired of looking in…”
This is me. This is so much me. There are times, many times, when I’m in a group. And everybody’s talking. But I’m not. I’m standing, listening to one conversation or another, but never part of any.
I can be on the inside, and I usually am, but sometimes, without warning, the inside becomes the outside.
And then I’m alone.
And this all sounds melodramatic. It’s really not that big of a deal most of the time, just occasionally.
I dream of a day where people will not be judged on their nationality or ethnicity by anyone, because it will finally be acknowledged that we all come from the planet Earth.
…the fact that this is only likely to happen after we meet some aliens to hate instead does not daunt me in the slightest.
There’s a Russian joke that I found in a book about Mars that goes like this:
What is the difference between a dreamer and a realist?
A realist says that someday aliens will land at the United Nations building, spur us to unite, and give us the technology to reach the stars and planets.
A dreamer says that we can buckle down and do it without the aliens’ help.
“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one…”
113~ *hugs* I know what you mean, I have similar feelings quite often.
One thing I’ve noticed though is often I get so involved in my thinking about “oh, why do I ALWAYS have to be the one initiating contact, everyone must hate me, my life sucks….” that I don’t reach out to others who perhaps I should. People I don’t know as well but wish I did (like you, for example). But when I get over that and start making connections in a “hey, I like you, let’s talk or visit or something” kind of way instead of a “hey, I wish you would contact me first but I’m just going to pretend that doesn’t bother me and act normal while resentment builds up inside of me” kind of way the conversations are, surprise surprise, much better and fulfilling and I start noticing how much others actually do pay attention to me.
So yeah, I don’t know if that makes any sense whatsoever, but you’re not alone in your feelings of being left out.
And, since you mentioned me as one of the other older MBers that’s part of a social group you’re somehow floating outside of…..I’ve felt that way as well, especially when I started actually talking more off-blog to some of them. I guess all I can say there is if you want to be a part of more discussions or just shooting the virtual breeze, just go for it. I for one would love to know you better and talk more often.
Basically what it comes down to is I think you’re utterly flammy. *more hugs*
Well okay then. Hey! You’re pretty great. Let’s talk or visit or something.
I just received a reply to the email I sent Larry Gonick a few weeks ago. He says that “Raw Materials may be over, at least in its original incarnation.” He says he’ll still work for that website, though, on more “sales-oriented cartooning”. Adverts, I take it. In other realms, he says he’s working on a Cartoon Guide to Calculus, which’ll be done in three or four months and out for sale sometime next fall. He’s considering doing a guide to algebra after that.
So there, whoever said I wouldn’t remember to post.
Sales-Related Cartooning?! *horror*
He’s making a living. And it’s not like he’s giving up Koko & Co. or anything.
i’m home! for break at least.
and i ended up with a B in history. WOOOO! still not totally decided whether i’m sticking with the double-major plan or just going with a minor. but i have one more history class to take before i need to decide that.
other grades about what i expected, got an A in english, B+ in bio, probably going to end up with a C or C+ in italian (only grade that hasn’t been posted yet, grr). so my GPA will stay above a 3.0 and my major GPA (in english) is well above a 3.5. so i am looking academically not like a total failure at life!
i’m going to cleveland next weekend! probably won’t have time to see the cleveland MBers though (if they’ll even be there). i’m just going friday night to a kid’s birthday party that i’ve never met (it’s a friend of ben, casey, and waltrip’s. ben told him tom and i would be around so he invited us. it’s a rave, it should be fun) ((i think i am going to end up befriending ALL OF CLEVELAND at this rate)) and then saturday morning we’re heading off to YSU with our nerf gear to play their HvZ (it’s only one day and we have some new guns to test out :P)
then i’m back for about half a week, then i’m going to my grandma’s for christmas! i’m excited to see the extended family and do christmassy things. there will probably be snow, too (there’s none really here) then back for new years’ and then another quarter of college
i love college. so much.
on monday a few of us are going to look at the houses we’ve been thinking of for next year. there’s one that we all love and it’s the least expensive, but it only has 4 bedrooms (so kate and leigh anne would have to share) and it’s quite old, so we don’t want it falling apart on us. it used to be part of a church and still has some random stained glass which is great (the church is now the headquarters of a camera club so that’s cool too, if we want to rent super-nice expensive cameras :P) the other one we like is 5 bedroom and really nice but is the most expensive of the houses we were looking at. i am super excited to live off-campus though. we’re not going to buy cable, we’re just going to get a TV and cord and a netflix streaming account. and we’ll have random doctor who and buffy marathons and we’re banning arbitrary things that we don’t like (banned so far are shoes (inside at least), natty, and snuggies)
to sum up monsterpost: life is just the best.
Won’t be there. I’m going home on Wednesday
SO EXCITED
Seriously, all I’m doing here is studying and practicing and whinging about life. Not that much different from what I do at home, but home is less stressful. And maybe I can get a massage so my back stops hurting.
109 (Choklit Orange): So I talked to various people over the course of the day, namely two English teachers and a few friends, and this is what they said: You should first get your parents to talk to your teacher, and then, if the teacher is adamant, take it to the principal. The issue shouldn’t be whether or not it sounds like an eighth grader wrote it, but whether or not it seems like you wrote it. Have you written many papers for that class before? If so, that teacher ought to have a good idea of your writing voice. Another suggestion is to bring it to a teacher who you’ve written a lot for, like an English or Language Arts teacher. They’ll know your writing voice and be able to confirm you wrote it.
Thanks- I did take it to my English teacher, and he sort of yelled at the Humanities teacher.
Wow, so many people posted in one day… I wish I had a problem like that, with the writing, because I am really bad at writing. Actually, this year, I want to study for the geography thing and at least get to the school finals. I want to, but I most likely won’t (the school finalists get put on a TV for the whole school to watch, and I have been working on disappearing from other peoples minds for three years. (also really shy). I think it was succeeding because no one asks me questions about math or science (my best subjects). *ahem* I have a GPA of 3.9
GAPAs, I emailed you (at the Gmail address) scans of the Chrome OS documentation.
I have an extremely urgent message for all Doctor Who fans.
Yesterday, I saw The Master.
I am not kidding. Here’s the story:
I was in a diner, eating lunch, when I noticed a man, who had the exact same clothes as The Master, as he is dressed in The End Of Time. So I wasn’t worried, until I saw his hair.
IT
WAS
EXACTLY
THE
SAME
AS
THE
MASTER’S!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m scared.
cosplayer?
*tap-tap-tap-tap*
*tap-tap-tap-tap*
*tap-tap-tap-tap*
Vote Saxon.
Around election time someone put those signs up all around campus.
Doing that, I swear.
*gasps* Yayness!
But what if the walls to the universe are falling apart?
You didn’t do anything that might attract his attention, did you?
I don’t think so…
SFTDP
But still, I’m worried.
Thanks everyone! I feel better now. I’d like to hang out with all of you more often (both in person and online)!
This computer seems to be dying a slow death, and my parents have assigned me the task of researching computers and memory backup devices. Suggestions?
The MyBookWorld backup device is pretty good, I think… that’s what my family has, anyway.
Good luck with your search!
external hard drive?
time machine is gorgeous. my dad has a time capsule so i use it whenever i’m home, it’s backs your stuff up automatically every hour or so and then you can go in later and pick out a date and time to restore to, or just find files that you accidentally deleted or whatever. i think you need a mac to use the time machine software but i’m pretty sure you can use it with other external drives, not just a time capsule. the time capsule is really nice though, it doubles as a router and can back things up wirelessly. dad has the 500GB but i think now it just comes in 1TB and 2TB
if you don’t have a mac, an external hard drive works as well. i don’t know if there are equivalents to the time capsule but if you’re on a desktop, you can just leave it plugged in and i’m sure there’s software to back up your computer automatically
SFTDP
107 of the monuments at a nearby cemetery were vandalized in one night recently. This is the cemetery where my grandpa is buried. Why would anyone do such a thing?!
That’s horrible!!!
People can be so terrible sometimes.
Because they’re stupid and they think it’ll be a trip. I’m sorry, Ducky.
Because that person is a jerk. How awful.
hahaha the lengths i will go to to avoid writing this research paper…i definitely just spent a good ten minutes trying to figure out where in ireland a music video was filmed before realizing IT DOESN’T MATTER
-____-
2819/4500 words….that’s really not even that much to write. how am i ever going to write a thesis?!
today was a perfect december day! it made me want to go into LA or well actually ANYWHERE but alas i am stuck in skool :/ also i lost my totoro keychain
but i am choosing to believe that he actually just hopped off my bag and is now having a snooze in a forest somewhere.
ducky- that is awful, i am really sorry
When I read “perfect december day” I stopped for a few minutes trying to figure out how this would be possible, and then I remembered you live in the land where the sun doesn’t abandon you for 3 months.
Me: I got the highest exam score of the class in English, Humanities, and Science!
Parents: What about math?
Funny, I had the same conversation with my parents.
Slightly different conversation with my parents, but essentially the same. On another occasion I heard my mom tell one of her friends,”we don’t pressure our kids about grades.” I’m sure she believed that.
my parents pressured me about grades all through high school…and then in college it just stopped. i mean they still want me to do well and stressed the importance of keeping a good GPA and doing my best and everything, but i remember last year when i got a D in math i was SO scared to tell them…and they just kind of shrugged and said “it happens, you tried, it’s not important for your major anyway”
such relief. of course now i pressure -myself- about grades (not a lot…i don’t really like the concept of grades in general. i prefer learning. but enough to feel terrible about missing easy points or doing badly on a quiz)
The worst grades conversation that I’ve ever had with my parents involved my mom asking me “What happened?” when I revealed that I’d had a B+ in AP Biology at the three-week grade check. There had been six assignments in the gradebook at that point.
Even that was kind of a misunderstanding. They’re pretty understanding about grades, thank goodness.
I get that from my parents a lot… Although oddly enough, when I told my parents about my near perfect PSAT scores, my parents were perfectly happy about it and didn’t make any jokes about the one point I missed. A few hours later, I ran into my friend’s mom, who instantly said “Rose, your parents should ground you for missing that one point.” (She was joking, of course.)
Hah, deja vu. I usually try to act really depressed about whatever I didn’t excel and and I mention it first, then tell the good news. Thankfully, they’ve stopped asking about grades so much. I can get 61,5/60 points in latin (even though it’s supposed to be impossible) and that’s nothing new but… *sigh* Never mind.
Guys guys guys…
I’m taking a high school entrance exam today – as in, I have to leave in minutes – so wish me luck!! I’m really nervous…a lot of the admissions process is based on this score, but luckily they also look at your transcript and everything and I know that will be good for me. I probably won’t be on MB until the afternoon.
May the Muses be with you.
Thanks, Robert.
I just finished the test and felt pretty confident about it – and I’m really, really happy that I’m finished!
Good luck!
Bonne chance! ♥
Καλή Ï„Ïχη! *wishes luck*
You will be awesome! You are awesome! Awesome!
Much luck! May the force be with you!
Today’s a basketball game! &hearts
Num Lock+Alt+3 ♥
You need a little semicolon ( ; ) at the end there. Like &HEARTS; but all lowercase.
Are you in the basketball game? Good luck!
♥
COOL
To everybody who wished me luck/Muses/awesomeness: thanks guys! I just love being reminded how great MBers are.
Now everything’s pretty much out of my hands – I get test results and my application later this week for one high school, and scholarship notices/acceptances for another high school in mid January/beginning of February. (I’ve already sent in my application for that school.) I feel so relieved – still a little nervous – but all I can do now is wait. (although I probably will have to go in for an interview for one of the school’s, but still. The standardized tests are over! For now, at least…)
Yay! Waiting!
You have to apply to high school? Wow. It is even more like college. Good luck!
Only for private/charter schools. If I don’t go to one of the schools I’ve applied to, I’ll go to my district’s public school, but it’s not a very good one – that’s why I’m applying to two private schools and one charter. Thanks!
Here’s a bit of cool news I couldn’t resist sharing. I’ve mentioned my Swedish (now Swedish-American) friend, Katarina, on the blog before (she was my senior year roommate in college and a very Muserly person). She and her husband own West Wines winery in California. I learned today that their West Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve 2005 was chosen in a blind taste test by the Nobel Foundation to be served at last night’s dinner honoring the Nobel laureates — the first time ever that an American wine was so honored (dating back to 1901).
Wow… That’s pretty cool.
Hanukkah gelt!!!! *is very, very hyper*
I went on a tinsel spree and the entire house now looks like the inside of an interior decorating store run by gnomes. I like gnomes.
So today I went to The Explorers’ Club, and I took LOTS of pictures and it was really cool! I’d do a whole blow-by-blow, but I need to wake up early tomorrow to go to AMNH with Erin, so I’ll try to do a whole thing with pictures and such sometime in the near future!
Cool!
Do they host talks and things?
Yup! This one was by a professor of chemistry at the college where my mom teachers!
Oh my gosh… Two day foreign congresses with housing are exhausting. I’ll elaborate tomorrow. (Actually, maybe not. I’m really busy.)
*falls asleep from exhaustion*
oh god SO MANY THINGS THAT NEED DOING
spent 10.5 hours total in the darkroom today… have 4-8 prints I will use for my final project on tuesday. Will be locking myself in there on monday as well.
Have a make up chem test monday as well… taking it to try to bring my grade up before the final x_x
Except tomorrow on my floor there is going to be an all day LotR marathon. I am never going to get work done gt;.lt; also taking more pictures tomorrow. Last set though. Then I should process the 2 rolls of film I’ll have left…
SO MANY THINGS AND THEN FINALS OH GOD
i just CALLED REALTORS. on the PHONE. it was SCARY. nobody was there (i know it’s a sunday, i called just in case because we were hoping to go look tomorrow) so i LEFT MESSAGES. i probably sounded so obviously like a teenager. it’s weird because we’re sort of doing the house shopping so sarah’s parents can rent it out for us, but they’re having us deal with everything (i’m sure they’ll check things over before we sign anything, but this finding bit is all us).
so i am essentially going through the process of BUYING A HOUSE. at 19. i don’t know, it feels so weirdly adult.
luckily there are lots of grownups around who said they would help out before the actual buying part. so i guess this is good, i won’t be totally clueless when i go to actually buy a house on my own (when i’m SUPER OLD)
now i have to sign a contract for grammar girl (i don’t know if i mentioned, i told her i wouldn’t be as busy next quarter and would like to come back and she re-hired me. so i’m starting that up again) and start on that, and get christmas presents for people and do laundry and eventually buy textbooks. other than that, it is all raves and HvZ and grandma’s house from here!
I AM SO ENVIOUS
i want to live in a house with friends! congrats on everything!
also lo l@ “raves and HvZ and grandma’s house” haha xD
Yay yay yay! The first issue of my new Muse subscription came today! *is hyper/excited/hyper-excited*
SFTDP. Isn’t there a thread for discussing the latest issues of Muse? If so, what is it called? I’d love to post on it.
Go over to the “Categories” section on the righthand sidebar and select “The Magazine.” You’ll find it.
Unless you’ve already received the January 2011 issue. That thread hasn’t been posted yet. If people are getting the magazine this early, I’ll activate it.
okay so abject terror…first two finals are tomorrow, logic and Japanese. Maybe given the assumption i’m going to fail my logic final I will actually ace it? hahahaha orz SOBBBB
and then of course my two essay finals are on the same day on wednesday BUT after that HURRAH HURRAH HURRAH FOREVER! but yeah not looking forward to the first one of those…ughh need to outline
jade- YEAH SERIOUSLY
*dies and is dead*
good luck with everything!!!
oh also my totoro decided to come back
now he’s sitting in a plastic cup with some sticky notes. I AM SO RELIEVED.
good luck to everyone who has finals and yay to evero eon break already!
starr – i’m sure you did brilliantly! *more good luck pies*
The key to finals is to stress and freak out and panic just enough that you study your ass of in the days leading up to them, and then when it’s time to take it just remember that no matter how you do you’re done with that particular course (yay!), then go in and ace the damn thing. Sometimes this works better in theory, but if you can get just the right amount of sheer terror, it really motivates the studying….Unfortunately by the time you’ve done a couple years of college, the sheer terror goes away and you lose the motivation to study, and….Yeah. You end up not studying enough. speaking of which, I really ought to be studying right now….
liked for the return of the totoro, mostly
it is kind of hard to tell what you’re liking in a multi-faceted post like this. because it could be “HAHA YOU HAVE FINALS *like*” or it could be “aww you’re almost done! *like*” or it could be “yay, return of totoro *like*”
(hint it is the last one in my case)
I got a beautiful kaleidoscope today. It’s black wood with cast brass (I think it’s brass) fittings on the ends. They’re cast in floral-y and leafy patterns. It’s got real glass on the ends and is just beautiful in general, and is a very pretty one for looking through, as well. Lots of colors. It’s got six mirrors, so all the patterns are hexagons and very intricate. It’s one of my grandpa’s old things, I didn’t remember it, but apparently he was quite a fan of all types of kaleidoscopes. It’s a fun reminder of him, this is the grandpa who died of cancer when I was around 6, so I only have vague memories of actually being with him before the illness kicked in.
It looks like a magic sort of telescope, I’m not tossing thoughts about in my head about writing a story about a child who gets a kaleidoscope and uses it to explore different lands. I might just do that. Part of me wants to make it all in depth and novel-y, and the other part of me is thinking to make it very simple and eventually print it with the Kelsey.* I’ll have to think about how to do that…..
*I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before or not; we have a Kelsey printing press. It’s pretty small, hand-powered and adorable, but perfect for greeting cards and other such niceties. Right now I’m lusting after a particular font, 12pt. Parsons. It’s absolutely beautiful and the perfect size for the Kelsey… I’ve not printed anything since forever, but I’d like to get back into it.
And as of today I am in charge of the kitchen and food preparation for our household. Mom was wondering what the terrible stench in the fridge was (it’s always terrible) and I jokingly said “well maybe it’s all the things that’ve died in there.” of course, there’s no middle ground, so she turned around and informed me that since I never contribute and always criticize, then I can try being the cook and keeping track of all the food for the household.
Then I got told off for throwing the empty margarine container into the sink from the table, I said since it’s not MY kitchen it’ll be run by MY rules, and I say it’s okay to do that. Dad looked both shocked and delighted, mom just looked shocked.
So, tonight’s dinner will be one of those Tofurkey roast things. That was planned before the Great Kitchen Transfer of Power, but I’m fine with it. Easy to make and yummy.
Mom stalked off to change in the bathroom and Dad and I laughed until we cried. She came back, asked what was so funny, and, being answered only by gufaws stomped off again.
Of course, this is not the first time I’ve had her threaten to make me the head cook, but this is the first time I’ve actually accepted the challenge.
We’ll see how this goes.
I’m just fed up with this, and if she’s gong to be unreasonable I’m going to roll with it and hopefully she’ll realize how ridiculous she’s making herself.
The Hallelujah chorus is so invigorating.
[/longpost]
I admire your boldness. I’m one of those kids who thinks about saying things like that, and then quietly doesn’t.
Good for you! You should make latkes. They are delicious!
The kaleidoscope sounds AWESOME! Please share the story when you’re done!
Augh 20 page paper due tomorrow. Help me, MB! Encourage me, MB!
Turn off your internet. Turn it off right now. Don’t let yourself turn it back on until the paper’s finished.
I mean I have 12 pages and a good idea of where I want it to go. I’m also not opposed to stopping at less than 20 if I’ve said all that needs to be said.
You can do it! I believe in you! Think of how worthwhile you’ll find these endeavors when you have the finished product before you!
Thanks, Cat’s Meow!
I made cinnamon rolls and put chocolate frosting on half of them. Then my brother came along and ate one with the frosting and I had a plain one. He asked me why I didn’t put frosting on all of them. I told him it was because I put ant poison in the frosting, he thought I was serious… How smart can you get?
Ha ha. How old is he?
16, and I’m younger.
140.1 (THF)~ I’m usually the kid that thinks these things but doesn’t say them too. But today something snapped. Actually, we should talk about recipies, are you still into cooking?
140.2 (Cat’s Eye)~ Latkes are indeed delicious. Since tonight’s dinner included potatoes, I’m thinking I’ll wait a bit until I try them, but I have a latke recipe (hey, that rhymes!) that looks amazing and I want to try. When I get around to it I’ll let you know how it turns out.
140.3 (Kai)~ When/if I write it I’ll post it. The whole motivation bit is my trouble. Also, while rethinking it it sounded kind of cheesy in my head. I’ll have to just see how it goes.
Well, dinner was a success. Not surprising really, as it was so simple that even culinary dunces like myself shouldn’t have any issues with it. Basically I had to mix 2 tbsp. of olive oil with 1 tbsp. of soy sauce for basting, then chop up veggies and roast them with the tofurky beast in the oven for an hour at 350 degrees. And heat up the prepared gravy. Yeah, a smashing success. But whatever, tomorrow I’ll be more adventurous. No, not spaghetti. I threatened to make spaghetti, but if I’m actually taking this challenge then I’m going to need to actually cook, as terrifying as that thought is. I’ll do spaghetti later, when I’m really craving it, like…..not tomorrow.
But yeah. I went grocery shopping too, as there was very little in the fridge. So now it’s all stocked with dark leafy greens and three kinds of delicious mushrooms. I love mushrooms, I got oyster, beech and pompom mushrooms. I don’t know what to do with pompom mushrooms, but they’re so cute I couldn’t resist. There are other things too, like guacamole, vegan cream cheese and other various veggies and suchlikes. I want to try roasted broccoli sometime in the near future. It sounds quite good. Broccoli is good, it’s just so easily misunderstood.
I was craving artichokes, but the ones at the store were depressingly limp and rubbery. No matter. I did learn some fascinating things about them while doing some pre-shopping online research. Did you know that nearly all artichokes grown in the USA are from California? And most of them are from Montery Co.? In fact, artichoke is the official vegetable of Montery Co. I found that out on the California Artichoke Advisory Board’s website. Such a site exists. I love the internet.
I need to stop thinking about food right now, as I’m completely stuffed and feeling slightly sick. Again. I do not understand why food doesn’t return my love. I feel so rejected.
Also, I have more TIGHTS! Organic cotton ones! And I’m so excited, because I’ve been ranting for ages that tights need to be cut lower in the waist so they match up with current waistlines, as opposed to stopping somewhere around one’s bra. I mean, really. But these new tights (from Maggie’s Functional Organics, good stuff, check them out) have LOWER WAISTS! I’m SO excited about that. It’s awesome because I don’t have to roll the waist down so it doesn’t look dorky. I am wearing tights tomorrow, for sure. Not sure with what, probably with this glorious sweater I have that’s like a dress-thing. I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s cozy and wonderful and I love it and I think it will look good with tights and boots.
By now you’re probably either very lost or just about ready to stop reading, so I’ll provide an end to this chaotic post. (Will I ever learn to make short posts? Probably not. Sorry guys.)
just wondering – how are you pronouncing “latke” and “recipe” so they rhyme? I can’t figure it out. For me it’s like “la-kuh” and “reh-sip-pee.”
Maybe if you said latke like “laht-kee?” The rhyme would be a lot closer.
or “reh-si-puh”
california is also the avocado capital of the world!
well, fallbrook/san diego area is, actually. ~*~*~the more your know~*~*~*~
your cooking adventures sounds fabulous! and so do non-dorky tights (i agree with that statement, by the way!)
143.1~ Yeah, whenever I read it I think “lat-kee” I’m dumb. According to the dictionary it should be like “lat-keh or -kuh” as Lizzie said. Oh well…..to me it looks like t should rhyme. >.<
good to know that my being Jewish hasn’t failed me completely
I’ve heard it pronounced “lat-kee” before. Also lat-kuh, which is how I pronounce it.
so the church house is a rental now and it’s CHEAP i am so scared something is severely wrong with it :O it’s definitely my favorite of the ones we’ve looked at after our online searching. we’re going to see it today at 1
the other house needs 24-hr-notices so i’m waiting to hear from kate about what times if any she’d be free tomorrow
i don’t know if we’ll be able to look at any of the other rentals this week though because sarah leaves wednesday morning for florida. i guess kate and leigh anne and i still make up a majority of the group though so we could go look at those.
one of the places we were looking at (the nicest one, actually) has a no-pet policy. i found it while i was looking for their number. so that’s out
we’re definitely going to have two cats and a fish and possibly a dog
i almost called it “the church house” on the phone with the guy :-! caught myself in time though. but then i couldn’t remember the address so there was an awkward pause while i found it on my computer.
man this is all so exciting and grown up. it’s especially great how i did it all lying in bed wearing pink flowery pajamas (yes i have pink flowery pajamas don’t judge i haven’t done laundry)
i think today i’m just going to hang out on campus. there’s nothing going on here, none of my high school friends are home yet. not that there’s anything wrong with classicwho marathons but y’know, i’ll have a whole week for those (i’m on the last season of the second doctor, just finished The Dominators. almost done with the reconstructions too, after this season they’ll be over)
What does the church house look like? Is it an old church? I think it would be so cool to live in an old church. Hmm, I suppose it’s the combination of the structure being repurposed as well as the building itself having some history. So really plenty of other old types fo buildings would work. Like an old bakery. Or a lighthouse! That’s it, I really want to live in a lighthouse. One came up for public auction a while ago, but it was several hudred thousand dollars out of my price range.
Oh man, that reminds me! It was actually looking possible to get the lighthouse, haha. The body that owns them (Park Service? Coast Guard?) First offers them up for public non-profits, who can buy them for a very low cost, as long as the mission of the project is in the public good. Afterwards, if no feasible plans are offered, it is auctioned off to anybody. So i was split, in my imaginary non-profit, to go for a marine biology teaching and research center, or more of an artist’s colony with residences. Hard to choose!
It is like my dream to live in a lighthouse and study tide pools and write in my leftover time.
they were built as parson’s houses for the churches. they’re next to the churches. one of them had stained glass, but that’s the one we probably won’t get
haha oh man i;m imaging you guys going in there all hgtv style right now…but yeah hope all goes well! so cool
Hey guys! Just checking in and procrastinating on my story.
145~ You are the best ever. Even though you wear pink flowery pajamas.
Vendy~ Lighthouses are awesome. This summer on Isle Royale I got to explore the lighthouse, and it was fantastic. I spent so much time up on the top. The lens wasn’t in (it’s not functioning anymore), and it was gross and hot, but the view was so incredible. There’s also just something great about being in the top of a lighthouse, you know? I loved it. I also love fresnel lenses, they’re just so beautiful and amazing.
The Fresnels are the best! The Fire Island lighthouse has a nice big reconstructed one, as well as some bits of other ones on the ground floor.
Oh yes! I bought a book about it one summer when we were on LI, and I really would like to visit sometime, although I’ve never been.
It’s weird thinking that if I get accepted to a college that’s far from here, LI won’t be so accessible anymore.
Done, done, done! *dances*
Good luck to everyone else who has finals!
yay congrats! time to relax!
the church house turned out to be disappointing…small, old, and inefficient. one of the bedrooms was advertised as a master bedroom but it was the same size as all the others, so there wouldn’t have been space for kate and leigh anne to share a room. we’re holding it as sort of a backup plan, as leigh anne’s mom is a contractor and has a friend who specializes in buying bad houses and fixing them up, so if all else fails we can have her remodel it and rent it off her.
the guy we were talking to had another vacant house though just up the street so we went to look at that. it’s north of our boundaries, but it seemed like a nice enough area. it’s a little far out but is less than half a block from the bus stop so it would be very easy to get to campus. it is one of the cheapest places we’ve looked at and it was really nice, had a TON of space. technically it’s marketed as a 4-bedroom but it has a huuuge attic that could be a 5th. all the bedrooms are upstairs too which is nice. it only has 1.5 baths but they put a random shower in the basement. right now it is kind of weirdly exposed and creepy but we could put up screens and stuff to make it more private. it is also owned by a church because apparently we like church houses (though this one doesn’t have the stained glass
). this church is actually a church though, they’re methodist so they’re probably chill. i like methodists, they’ve given me a lot of free food over the years and they tend to not be annoying and convert-y. the only problem is no pets allowed, i really like it but that might be a dealbreaker for casey. we haven’t talked to the others yet.
we’re going to look at another house tomorrow, and we’ll hopefully see the rental places over the next week
sorry if you are all super bored by monsterhousingposts, it is just all very exciting
definitely the most interesting going on in my life right now, none of my high school friends are back yet >.<
The majority of Icelanders either believe in elves or are unwilling to rule out their existence.
I am so moving there in…about ten years.
My mom is an artist/weaver/printmaker and, after getting irritated with weaving for a bit, she has gone back to good ol’ 2D art. In 3D. She makes an etching or a painting, then cuts it up and forms it into cubes, pyramids, octohedrons, decahedrons, dodecahedrons, etc. (Sorry for any spelling errors…) it’s pretty awesome for making Christmas ornaments, too.
After a bit of hard work with a ruler and a knife I got two pretty, sparkly octohedron ornaments. I’m content right now. Very content.
Brilliant! That sounds like fun!
What material does she etch?
It is, if a bit time consuming! She etches mostly zinc and copper plates.
That is SO COOL. 8D Can you post pictures on the blog?
My school is going to have an Honors English option next year. My mom would be the only one teaching it, since experience-wise she is definitely most qualified and they only want to have one pilot class. Said mom wants me to take the class. So if she gets her way, next year she will be controlling my English grade. Yeah, and you kids who aren’t homeschooled keep complaining about how your parents are too obsessed with your grades, test scores, homework scores? Try that. *hides head* I am so, so screwed. Help. Please, help.
In the two hours or so since I woke up, I’ve vomited twice. I have a final in a little under four hours. Of all the times to get a stomach bug..
*Gives chicken soup*
It’s no fun. It’s really no fun at all.
I shaved for the first time
todayyesterday.ugh… I’m home sick today. *dies* So much makeup work when I come back… I also started to watch Doctor Who, never seen it before but it’s supposed to be good. Some of the acting is really bad though… Whoa! It’s a running pig.
Doctor Who is teh pwnage. That is all.
Did you start with season one? Season two is where it gets a looot more awesome.
Doctor Who is amaaaaaaaaazink!!!
season 27 and season 28, please! i have been watching way too much classicwho lately and it is now extra confusing to hear new who being talked about as the first seasons. plus extra depressing, because it makes it sound like everyone is forgetting the first, oh, 25+ years of the show
Sorry…I’ve only watced four episodes of Classic Who.
yup, started with season one. I’m watching episode 9 right now. A telephone box is a weird spaceship. O.K then, creepy little kid with a mask…. AWESOME.
Think how much weirder it will seem to people who have never seen a phone box or booth. I also keep wondering where Superman will change his clothes. Port-a-potties just don’t have the same cachet.
I’m quite convinced that if
thea TARDIS landed around here, it would look like a port-a-potty. It’s the right shape and everything.Sometimes I look at blue port-a-potties and almost mistake them for the Tardis. >.<
Windows, windows.
Changing one’s clothes in a Port-A-Potty is extremely unpleasant, especially if it’s about 100 degrees inside it.
He does it in a storage closet at the Daily Planet in some of the comics I’ve read.
It’s a police box, luvs. As far as I know, we never had them over here.
Oh, Empty Child/Doctor Dances are by far the two best eps of that season. Not least because it’s the introduction of the ever pwnsome (and incredibly sexy) Captain Jack.
I told my drama teacher I’d started watching Doctor Who. Her reaction was, “That TV show from like thirty years ago?” The entire class responded as one to correct her. It gave me the warm fuzzies.
You’re lucky. I only know three people outside of the Musiverse that like Doctor Who, and none of them are obbsessed with it like me. In fact, most of my friends hate Doctor Who. Which is completely judgemental, as they’ve never even seen it.
why do the actors change for almost every season? I like the first actor…
You really won’t miss him when you meet David Tennant. Really. David Tennant *is* the Doctor.
Eccleston 4eva here.
It’s a lovely plot element first introduced when William Hartnell had to leave the show. When Time Lords die, they regenerate into a new body. which, y’know, enables them to replace the actor without causing (much) trouble.
The process wasn’t specifically named regeneration until Pertwee’s final episode. It was quite a shock when Troughton succeeded Hartnell with barely any explanation.
Thanks.
(I’ve only just started watching the classic series, so I don’t know a whole lot about that.)
Does Rose leave after the second season? After the first two seasons it seems the Doctor brings a different girl with him. And a different one for season four, and a different one for season five. Does Doctor Who end after season five? And. if he has four different girls in one year, and he is nine hundred years old…………
1. Yes, Rose leaves after the second season.
2. Season five is the last season that has currently been aired, but a season 6 is scheduled to begin sometime in spring 2011.
3. The Doctor doesn’t “have” any of those four girls, so your implications are rather erroneous. He has romantic feelings toward one of them, but his feelings toward the other three are strictly platonic.
Okay, sorry…. He does get sort of annoying though…….
He annoys me.
I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. Harking back to the age thing: People always guess that I’m 2-3 years younger than them. Example: Girl at party “I thought you were like 14 or something.” Woman at my capoeira class: “I would have guessed that you’re 25.” Both of these quotes are from the past months or so. WTF? Make up your minds, people! The general consensus seems to be about 18, usually, so why these sudden deviations? Of course, when I met the first girl I was 14 and she’s kind of a first impressions type, but this feedback is
swearworda wee bit confusing. The 14 I can ignore and 25 is probably exaggerated because said person is viennese, it would probably be more like 23. But being 15, I’m still going to inescurely ponder endlessly about my outward appearance.bookgirl: That’s kind of a crazy situation you’re in! It took me ages not to be confused and offended by people thinking I was 11 (although I’m 15 now, and considerably taller). Maybe you have a way of associating with people that makes them think you’re younger… Eh, I dunno.
Fiddler: Yes! I am still very into cooking! I’m flattered that you remember.
I have about a thousand and a half recipes that I’d love to share; are you a vegetarian?
Fiddler is vegan, THF. (Good to see you, by the way.)
It snowed today and it did stick! It was falling in the first few periods durring school and it was actually quite pretty out the windows.
Tomorrow I hear back from Yale…
Eep! Good luck.
Ooh, good luck! (Wait, you’re a senior?) Yale’s pretty awesome. It looks just like Hogwarts.
Some parts, yeah.
Good luck!
So for lit we had to write common app essays. I wrote mine on how I like spending time with people who share my interests, citing the other spellers at the spelling bee and the other math nerds at my school. I got an A on it, but my teacher’s comment at the end of the essay was “You’re doomed. You are a writer.” I don’t know what to make of this.
In fifth grade, we had to write a story using vocabulary words, and mine ended up being ten pages. Everyone else’s was one or two, tops. I remember I was so proud of mine, and then the teacher called me over to her desk and was like “You wrote a ten page story.” I said, “YEAH!” She looked at me over the top of her glasses and said. “You wrote a ten page story. For a vocabulary assignment.” Then she handed it back to me (with a check-plus but no comments or anything) and told me to go sit down. I was crushed…
ugh i know exactly what you’re talking about, stuff like this is why i hardly ever enjoyed english class in school, teachers never seems to actually appreciate creativity or doing extra :/ of course i’ve had teachers who did appreciate that i appreciated the class but ugh man…UGH
So do I. Also, English classes inevitably ruin books for me. And if it wasn’t a good book in the first place, I just end up making some crap up to get through the class. Or the essay. Gah.
I haven’t really enjoyed english since seventh grade. (9th now)
My English class is doing an Outside Reading Book project right now, which means that each student got to pick a Fantastic Book from a huge long list of Fantastic Books. There were so many great books on the list that I was really excited about what we could do with them. Unfortunately, the teacher is not good at all, and what counts as “analysis” is laughable. It’s all just a giant waste of time, which is a SHAME when the starting point was so Fantastic.
There is, however, one amazing English teacher at my school. I had him last year and I’ll have him again next year for AP English. I’m hoping that two productive years with him will make up for two years that could very well be worthless (my current teacher also teaches senior year AP English).
This is why I hate literary analysis. I’m just making cake up and overanalyzing and ruining any enjoyment that I may have gotten form reading the story. I love reading. I do not love having to break a story into its components and reading meaning into it that I’m fairly certain the writer did not consciously put in there. I mean, you can read too much into everything that way, and in real life it’s kind of an unhealthy habit.
And classics! Classics are the worst, because they all have these freaking huge essays in the beginning that spoil everything for you before you even get to the first page of the story. And talk about how significant the story is, and about the author’s life, and, and, and, etc. This is why I dislike reading classics. It’s a lot better reading them on the Internet though, for some reason.
Depends on the author. With James Joyce, for instance, whatever meanings he didn’t intend, he’d still be delighted for you to devote your life to tracking down.
Fraid that wouldn’t work for Huckleberry Finn, though.
“PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR,
Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance. “
I seriously love that beginning.
We just started Huck Finn in English. After The Scarlet Letter, I expect it will be a welcome change. Although I ended up rather liking The Scarlet Letter (until we had to read an absurd essay about the significance of the mention of a gold chain that was mentioned one. Time. It has no significance! The author was just writing a scene!)
Oh yeah, the ending is very happy, but the diction in The Scarlet Letter is hard going.
At Muse Academy, we plan our assignments very carefully so that students don’t have to say things they don’t believe. It’s one of our core principles. We think that studying literature should help you enjoy it more.
For some books I’ve read in English, I wouldn’t have enjoyed them nearly as much without analysis. To Kill A Mockingbird, for instance. I read it on my own and thought it was okay. Then we discussed it in class, and now it’s my third favorite book of all time, and Atticus… There are no words. Just, you know, oh, Atticus. And Catcher in the Rye is a book that deeply, intensely NEEDS analysis to be understood. Without analysis, I wouldn’t have gotten a thing. I don’t know if what I got was Salinger’s intent, but the essay I wrote had enough proof that I think I could conceivably back up my opinion against someone who disagrees, which is very important to me.
I think a lot of it depends on how a book is being analyzed. Last year, my English class read Night, The Kite Runner, and Things Fall Apart, all of which had significance that we wouldn’t have discovered if we hadn’t analyzed so thoroughly. We all analyzed each chapter by ourselves and then the class would discuss everything in a seminar the next day. While the teacher guided the seminar, he didn’t force us to accept his opinions and encouraged us to build on our peers’ connections and inferences towards genuine understanding of the techniques and themes. As hard as it was for me to not read ahead, I got far more out of the book with this analytical process than if I had been reading for pure “enjoyment” (quotation marks because none of those was exactly a happy book).
Same here! I hate those introductions that always spoil! I’m nearly done with Jane Eyre, but I already know who the main character will end up married to, because it’s in the bloody introduction that our teacher made scans of and distributed to us in class!
Still love Jane, though.
That happened to me too, but I don’t remember what spoiled it. It was probably some quote ( “Reader, I married him” ) that was in the introduction I was skimming.
Read the ending today. Even though I knew what was coming, I didn’t know the exact circumstances, so it was still surprising and happy. Also, St. John Rivers is CREEPY.
But Jane is beast.
I hear you guys. In my literary analysis class, the teacher gave me a 100 (Which, according to him, is very rare) for the paper I wrote a few weeks ago on irony in Ozymandias and The Sea and the Mirror, which I had a lot of trouble finding the right words for and generally felt wasn’t my best work. But when we had to do Ulysses, and I put my heart and soul in because, you know, it’s about exploration, and I pointed out the significance of the constellation, I got a lesser grade and no comments.
Good luck to everyone writing their college essays!
Just two more finals and I can go home! Ugh…Gotta get back to this essay and then outline potential essays for first final tomorrow/ yech :/
I’m sick. My head feels so gross. The rest of my body is fine, but my head just wants to cause me pain. Sore throat, runny/stuffy nose, headache, postnasal drip, etc. I would very much like to go to sleep now, but I have this darned essay to write, and I’d rather not get another 79. AP English recommendations are going in soon.
So Alan totally spent *way* too much money on me for Christmas.
I mean, I really like everything he got me, but I meant it when I said that he didn’t have to get me anything, and that he definitely didn’t ahve to get me multiple presents….
So I suppose I partly feel guilty because I spent less than a third of what he did on his Christmas present (a dagger sized, sword shaped dagger/letter opener with an elaborate intertwined twin dragon thing it hangs in), and also, seriously, he still has med school to pay for (hello, expensive), which is a caking lot more important than getting me presents just because “he likes to make me smile”.
I mean, again, don’t get me wrong, I really do like all three of my presents, but at the same time, dammit, save your money for important things. Like med school tuition.
Yeah, I kinda looked up on the internet how much the necklace he got me cost (because I’m bad like that. I know you’re not supposed to, but yeah. Me=bad, lol)….It’s a very pale aquamarine (my birth stone) with three white sapphires above it in a silver setting on a silver chain. $100
and he also got me a very pretty lavender plaid scarf and a hare charm that I can add to my HP charm bracelet. I’m sure you fellow pottermaniacs understand the significance of a hare….Yup, Luna’s patronus.
Gah, Alan’s way too sweet for his own good. Although I really do love my presents. Apparently his mother kind of encouraged him too, soemthing about he was getting Steph too many things and thus needed to get me more (yeah, because the fact that he got Steph a book, two colorful many side special dice, and a pack of Magic cards is really going to upset me if “all” he got me was, say, the necklace? Or, hell, any of the rest of it?).
How terrified he was giving me the necklace, though, was kind of adorable. He was kind of freaking I think that I wouldn’t like it, as the only other woman he’s gotten jewelery for is his mother. Yeah. Alan’s kind of awesome. and way too sweet.
*melts*
you are a lucky girl haha. the present you bought sounds really cool too though! dang…
that’s all so cute! the necklace sounds stunning and the charm is SO PERFECT!
Aww… You guys are adorable. That’s awesome.
Aaaargh!!! I got bitten by a mosquito that I’m convinced looked like a dengue-carrying one, but I already had the flu so any symptoms I’ve got right now could be from either one!
I hate not knowing.
On the bright side, according to my animal physiology class, if you are currently undergoing a viral infection (flu) you will not catch another viral infection, since the interferons produced by your viral infected cells provide temporary viral resistance to all nearby cells.
Or so we were told.
Does this mean that if you have the flu you wouldn’t get HIV or something? Is there potential in this for making antiviral vaccines by infecting someone with a less harmful virus than would otherwise be caught? I’m thinking something similar to how cowpox protected against smallpox, but more widespread, as a general antiviral…
I honestly don’t know enough about it to say….But that is definitely an interesting thought. But since the viral resistance is just temporary, I think you’d kind of have to be constantly infected, and I’m really not sure how that would necessarily work. *shrug* I really don’t know.
162~ First off, that is adorable. Second, I totally know what you mean about being “I love my presents but you really didn’t have to. No seriously, I mean that, you need to eat and pay for other things more important that buying me stuff and I will always smile at you even if you don’t buy me anything ever. But I absolutely love what you got me…..” I think it’s a guy thing, and it’s completely adorable. Thank profusely, hug, snog, and gently say that by simply being there he’s given you the greatest gift ever, and maybe drop a few subtle hints that you’re concerned he’s spending too much cash on you. And by subtle hints I mean just tell him so it’s not completely lost on his poor male brain. But he seems the sensitive type, so go gently, which I’m sure you will.
And AWWWWW at the necklace thing! :3
SFTDP
156 (Bookgirl)~ I get the same thing. I’m 18, but people generally guess that I’m in my early teens or already out of college. I have no idea. I guess because I have a fairly round face and I get excited about things easily that they assume I’m younger, but after talking to me they generally think I’m an adult. Which technically I am, but I’m talking like GROWN UP instead of like “whoo, legal!” I’ve also had people tell me I carry myself like an adult, whatever that’s supposed to mean. I’m more authoritative, I guess? Which is weird, because I don’t think I’m as forward as a lot of my peers. But whatever. You’re not alone in the business of baffling people when they try to figure out your age.
157 (THF)~ Great! I’m vegan, as Robert said, but there are such things as soymilk and margarine and seitan and tofu and suchlikes for substituting in recipes. That said, I’m still largely incompetent in the kitchen, but we shall definitely have to discuss cooking and recipes and food in general.
Is it time for a new Cooking and Food thread?
165.1~ Sure! How about a vegetarian cooking thread?
I just started The Hunger Games trilogy. (How the cake did I not find these books earlier? I always knew about them, I was just too immersed in re-reading Harry Potter/Percy Jackson to move onto it.) AMAZING.
I know! I want to read them, but my library NEVER has them.
Aw, that stinks. But if you can get your hands on one…definitely read it.
If you can find your library’s website, you can put a hold on them and just pick them up from your library later. At least, I think that’s available in all libraries.
It’s the best way to read any book which is new and popular, since most of the time there’s a long waiting list. And it’s really convenient, since they ship it to the nearby library of your choice, so you don’t have to go driving across town.
All this assumes that you’re using your city library, of course. If you’re using a school library or something else, I can’t help you.
It’s also worth noting that the Hunger Games are pretty mature and somewhat disturbing, so be warned. I don’t know you very well, so maybe you wouldn’t have any problems with them, but I would still think it over.
I am sitting in my beanbag chair with my feet in front of the heater. I’m wearing jeans with leggings under them, wool socks, long sleeved shirt and long fleece jacket and fingerless gloves and I’m still barely warm. :/
On the bright side I have Yan-yans!
Circles had to be taken to the vet today. He must have gotten in a fight, there was a hold in his ear, which I cleaned up as well as I could, but I thought it smelled a little funky and he acted a little strange, and since he was due from some shots I took him in. So I managed to get the cat carrier (borrowed from my aunt, I had to go crawling around the attic to get it), coax and shove him into it, and hopped in my car, drove to the barn to pick him up and the parking brake snapped. So I went back to the house to get mom’s car. By this point I was starting to be a tad concerned about time, since I’d made an appointment. So in the rush to get the cat out of the barn I managed to forget my purse (which was still in my car that I couldn’t drive because of the brake) and I drove to the vet’s without my license. When I got there and realized what I’d done, obviously, I felt pretty dumb. Thankfully though dad met me there and so I didn’t have to pay for anything or anything like that. So then I went home and fortunately didn’t get pulled over or in an accident or anything. Poor Circles cried all the way there and back though.
So as you can tell, today was interesting.
I got a nice sweater and vest though. Good thing, too. It’s SO COLD.
I like your cats name. A lot more original than my cats name (boots).
OMG
Doctor Who > Homework.
What does it say about me that I cried over the cancelation of Project Constellation but not over being rejected by Yale?
Don’t be hard on yourself about being rejected by Yale, it’s an extremely hard school to get into! You already knew that, but really, even if your application gets past triage luck plays a big part.
Project Constellation was cancelled after being approved, wasn’t it? The Yale app was never approved. So it makes sense.
It says you have your priorities straight. You’ll have chances at colleges besides Yale. Project Constellation is for permanent.
Yes, but long live Project Sagittarius! (My personal name for the new plan, I know the chances that they’ll go with that one are very slim because it’s something a random 17-year-old made up, but I have to call it something other than “The New Plan”.)
I’m afraid Project Constellation never really had a chance. While it existed, it was too underfunded to be more than a design for a space program. There wasn’t enough money to build and launch those beautiful ships, and there was no realistic way of getting more. I suspect most Americans don’t care enough about space exploration to make the sacrifices it would require. Maybe Chinese or Indian astronauts will be the first people on Mars.
The new space plan does need a name, though. Why don’t you send it to NASA? After all, a nine-year-old girl named the Mars rovers.
I love you, Mr. Coontz, but you cut me deep.
I’m sorry, KaiYves. Engineering is beautiful. Exploration is exciting. Policy is boring and frustrating and inelegant. But policy pulls the strings. If you want beauty and excitement, you have to make it smile on you or sneak them in when it’s looking the other way. If you were at Muse Academy, you’d get a whole unit on that in World Domination.
There was nothing wrong conceptually with Project Constellation. Its only flaw was that it cost more than Americans, and by extension their elected representatives, were willing to pay. I cried when they stopped the Apollo program, for the same reason. I fully expected to be living on Mars by now.
Emotion: ARE YOU TRYING TO MAKE ME FEEL BETTER OR NOT?
Reason: In all seriousness, I don’t really have much preference as to who’s first, because wherever they’re from and whatever language they speak, both they and I will be human. I have several friends from Space Camp who’d like to be on that first expedition, so I’d be very happy if it happened to be one of them, but if it’s not, I can deal with that.
I’ve seen pictures of people in sidewalk cafes in Italy huddled around portable TVs to watch the Apollo 11 landing. Because whatever the flag on their suits or the one they put up, the plaque told the deeper story. “Here MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH…”
Emotion: Hey! Now I feel better having reached catharsis through my writing! And sneaking in when it’s not looking… I like that challenge…
*Kai’s Emotion and Reason hug Robert, thank him, and rush off to World Domination Class*
Emotion and Reason: Bring it!
♥ ♥ ♥ to both of you for this conversation.
P.S. Yale should be kicking itself.
Oh, it will be, someday.
I’m laying my Wungbucks on India, just because everyone’s predicting “OMG CHINA WILL RULE THE NEXT CENTURY” and if reading Golden Age SF has taught me one thing, it’s that the future never turns out how we predict it.
Also, Angaraka and Mangala would both be awesome names for the first manned mission to Mars.
Good move.
On further consideration, I don’t think China would go to Mars unless there were some way to make money off it. India might be the same. And nobody else seems to have both the necessary romantic streak and enough money. (Brazil, might, someday.)
Americans really look like the best bet. The problem is that we’re going through a bad patch right now and aren’t feeling very good about ourselves. That could change, but not overnight.
I hope it does so, so much. I keep getting ridiculously overexcited about the idea of mars lately, what with all the terraforming articles they tossed out for us. Part of me wishes I’d set a track for astrobiology, even though I’m not entirely sure what that entails and if I’d enjoy it (currently a bio major, leaning towards the ecology/evolution/animals side of things). It’s also really nice to have deep philosophical discussions about this sort of thing with the people I’ve met in college, so yay.
But space ♥
To wax philosophical, then (*turns into Socrates*): What exactly do you ♥ about space, Jadestone? It’s unimaginably huge and mostly empty, and exposure to it would kill you almost on contact. Traveling through it is cramped, uncomfortable, and boring. Space clearly doesn’t ♥ you. What’s the appeal?
((Not Socrates, though, because (a) you ask better questions and (b) you’re actually interested in the content of the reply.))
I’m not Jadestone, but… for me, the appeal of space is that it’s the Great Unknown. Looking up at the stars gives me the same feeling that staring out across the ocean does — it’s a place filled with endless possibilities. Granted, space is mostly empty, but the key word is “mostly.” It’s the sparse sprinkling of utterly fascinating Stuff that makes me ♥ space.
Well said, POSOC.
Bowie’s in space…
Bowie’s in spaaayace…
Whatcha doin’ out there man?
That’s pretty freaky, Bowie…
I hear that space is a pretty… freaky place…
I’m also not Jadestone, but space is the last frontier. Space is the last place left to romanticize. It’s sitting in a field, looking up at the great and glittering tapestry above you, and promising yourself that you will go there. It’s looking through a telescope, and that irrational thrill you get in the pit of your stomach when you realize that you can actually see Jupiter. It’s the endless drive of humanity to go where no man has gone before, to fly through the stars, to set foot on virgin ground and declare that it is new and it is unknown and it is brilliant and we have seen it and we are always, always striving to see more.
This conversation makes me wonder why more people don’t frequent the Space thread.
I am inspired by the enthusiasm about space here to go to the Suggestion Box thread and repost my Yuri’s Night party suggestion.
*Goes to do that*
That you value real-world, interesting events over hypothetical situations?
My former English teacher is using the research paper I wrote last year as his example research paper for his class this year, which is great and I’m very flattered, but at the same time this last week has been so crazy I just don’t know what to do with myself… I’ve been making the final edits on my old research paper so he can use it (And I’m not really complaining, I mean, he gave me the option and I said I would gladly do it.) but now I have to dig through all my files from last year and get all the write outlines/drafts sorted through and it’s just being all suckish. In addition, I’m doing stuff for SGA (student gov) and that’s being all suckish too because I’m trying to type a letter and have no idea what-the-cake to say. Urgh.
And this isn’t including the fact that I have two tests tomorrow – although I’ve already studied for them earlier, I still don’t feel 100% prepared – and oh yeah, I still have normal homework too.
Plus I haven’t been getting any sleep these last couple of days. :/
SFTDP
*right. Not write. RIGHT.
Trying to learn the Elements song. I can’t seem to get past Rhodium.
My math teacher wants me to play at some kind of concert (on the violin), but I can’t think of a good song. I mean, the only current one I really like is La Folia, but that’s six minutes long. Any suggestions? Last time I played Kerry Slides by the Chieftains, but I can’t do that again.
You could try leaving some of the variations of La Folia out – especially since you probably won’t have piano and there’s a few where the piano has a tune. Otherwise, what level of stuff do you feel comfortable playing?
How about inventing your own divisions to La Folia?
I love La Folia(never played it myself, though), and would agree with both suggestions.
Can we have an AAAS Breakthrough of the Year Thread?
I’ve got some questions and comments!
One more semester of college over with. I just got back to my dorm after my last final. I don’t think I did well on it but, hey, at least I am done with Spanish FOREVER now. Yay!
So jsut got to make sure I’ve got everything packed, then going home with Alan tonight (as in, to his actual house where his parents live), and then tomorrow evening I fly home. *happiness*
Have you met Alan’s parents before? Hope that goes well.
Nope, I’d not met his parents before. They seem nice, from what little I saw of them–they went to bed soon after we got there, since it was late and htey both had to work the next day. His dad was asleep in the living room most of the hour or two before they went to bed, but his mom and I made a bit of small talk for awhile. They seem pretty nice. His mom apparently thinks I’m “very sweet”, or so Alan called and told me the next day after he’d dropped me off at the airport.
I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up spending a couple/few weekends at his place next semester.
Ooh, fast moderation today! Thank you GAPAs!
Today was a “snow” day (ha ha snow that’s a good joke) and we have a delayed opening tomorrow too. Normally I’d be thrilled about this, but I have two tests tomorrow, and my calc teacher is slightly insane and more than slightly sadistic, and I’m afraid he’ll make us cram our 50-minutes-if-you-work-at-top-speed test into half an hour. Ugh.
Yikes! You have my sympathy!
Could this day/week/month have been any more fantastic? Answer: no.
I’ve been listening to the new My Chemical Romance album on pretty much a 24/7 constant loop since Sunday. At first I didn’t really like it, but it grew and grew on me until it’s definitely in my top ten albums of all time. Also, I’ve been writing the lyrics to all the songs in cute little artistic word squares on my arms, which is awesome because I can make my body into an artistic canvas without it being permanent. Also, the music videos for said album are my favorite things since, like, ever.
Using my new iTouch bride, I have become ridiculously, embarrassingly good at Sudoku.
Today the Troubadors, an all-student group of singers who sing for money at functions around town, came round with Holiday-O-Grams for any student whose friend had paid for them to be sent one. My entire group of friends shelled out for Terpsichore to be sent one, plus a rose and a card that we all signed. She told us afterwards that she both loved and hated us right then for doing that to her. But I got a hug, so all’s good.
In English we watched How The Grinch Stole Christmas, which I’d never seen before, and it was… FANTASTIC. It was beautiful. It was the true meaning of Christmas. Everything about it was perfect, and at the very end I swear there were tears in my eyes. Also, this might just be the obsession talking, but does anyone else think that the Grinch is a lot like the Master from Doctor Who?
I am so sugar high. This post was so long. Homemade toffee if you read it all.
No, no, the Grinch is an eco warrior. He’s learned to live in harmony with nature in his cave, and all those who’s are eating up tons of fossil fuels with all their lights and such. The Grinch is just trying to reduce their carbon footprints. And Cindy Lou Who was clearly hired by Fox News to be evil.
My Ipod touch stopped working. grrrr…. And my brother, the computer genius, (sort of, in my house) won’t help me. The only explanation he has is “Apple is stupid, duh huh.” *sighs* My computer is failing, it won’t open new websites unless I have it bookmarked. I started writing a story, but I can’t think of a good name for the main character (or any characters names). I am still sick, and my head is killing me; sore neck, cough, headache, stuffy nose, fever-ish, tired. My dog ate half his bone that was supposed to last until Christmas. Good things: ………. I watched Star Trek: Enterprise….. Ate a popsicle….
I’d like to address the incident on the Poems & Songs thread a few days ago.
I said something stupid. It was an honest mistake and I meant absolutely no offense to anyone in any way. I just said was what on my mind, but phrased it poorly. So it did offend people. Then an enormous backlash flew at me. I tried to apologize, but no one listened. So I left for a short time. One comment that chided me in no uncertain terms for my mistake received almost twenty “likes”. A comment saying that the person hoped I would return soon received only two “likes”. To be honest, that hurt. I’ve been going through a bout of depression these past few weeks, and that hurt. An honest mistake and sincere attempt at apology, with apparently no forgiveness. I seem to do more harm than good.
So I’m sorry. As I said on that thread, I’ve always had problems communicating with people. I try. I really do, even if I seem like a heartless bastard at times. My brain just wasn’t wired for effective communication, and so I say things that seem fine to me but get me in hot water. I’m sorry. Please, just keep being patient with me. If I say something stupid, you can reprimand me, but please try to listen to my apology, even if it seems unsatisfactory to you. I really am sorry.
That was a truly sincere apology, and (although I don’t know if it’s really up to me to do so?) I for one forgive you completely. I’m glad you’re back, Piggy, I missed you!
i would like to say that i hope i wasn’t overzealous/unnecessarily belligerent in my response, it’s just that i felt you underestimated how personal a lot of people feel their poems are. this is understandable and i’m sure i’ve done the same thing with any number of other subjects. I don’t blame you and i’m truly sorry if i or anyone else made you feel unwelcome, as that is something you most assuredly are not (i hope the double negative doesn’t confused that sentence haha)
anyway the point is i don’t really think an apology is necessary since you were just expressing an opinion, but in any case that’s very nice and i think we all learned something from this. *pies of mutual understanding*
Welcome back!
Piggy, sorry if this seems off-topic, and I’m really glad you’re back as our favorite bartend, but…why is the text pink?
Because ten people or more “liked” the comment.
Proving that we do, in fact, appreciate your company. Besides, I like people who can argue with me. The world needs more people like that. And I think we’ve all said something we didn’t like on the internet before. That you can apologize for it is wonderful. Welcome back.
Macaroni and [not] cheese tonight! I’m ridiculously excited about this, I’ve been craving it for a few days. That and collard greens and tofurkey beer brats, at the request of mom.
Aaaaaand I have a HP band-aid on my finger. Yeah, it’s glow-in-the-dark even. I’m that cool. It makes typing difficult. I really hate how fragile skin gets when wet. :L I was just trying to tear up collards and the next thing I know I’m bleeding copiously. *sigh*
It snowed today, it’s lovely. Not a whole lot, but enough to be properly snowy and pretty. I should go sledding….sometime.
What kind of [not] cheese do you use? I have a recipe that makes a sauce with nutritional yeast. It’s not bad, especially with a few tweaks.
Midterms are over, I’m home, I’m sick, and I’m watching Genesis of the Daleks.
How many people are sick?! Ahhh… Extended winter break……
I’m a bit sick, sore throat and all, but I couldn’t afford miss any school.
Quite a few…
I’m sick too.
Add me to that list.
Wednesday it was a sore throat and dizziness, yesterday it was a sore throat and the beginnings of a cough, today it was feeling like cake with a cough, and I lost my voice.
I caught the same thing two weeks ago and am still getting over it.
Oh my gosh, that’s horrible! I really hope it doesn’t take me that long. I can’t deal with the incessant “Just go home already!” ‘s. *glares at friends that care too much*
I feel warm and fuzzy.
So, my class organized a Secret Santa exchange of gifts, where we would give our person a gift at two separate times. My person forgot, both times. This made me feel a little bad, because I put a lot of effort into my gifts(art). On an online drawing board I participate in, there was also a gift exchange, although it wasn’t secret since the board had no method of private messaging. I got home today, feeling very cynical(for several other reasons as well), and checked the board. The first thing I see? Art for me. Which, while not the best art in the world, had clearly been done with care. I looked at the timer, and it said four hours. Someone I don’t even know spent four whole hours of their life on something for me. faith in humanity has been restored.
Update.
A camp I go to is holding a contest to design a new logo. I was working on my entry when my brother walked by. He looked at it, looked again, and said, “Wow, that’s cool.” Me meant it. This is my irritating twin brother, who doesn’t like me much and would never compliment me on anything. So yeah, fuzzy feelings.
*Warm fuzzies*
180.1~ I used a nutritional sauce recipe, probably similar to yours. Garlic, thyme, some salt and pepper and vegetable broth (I used water because I didn’t have any broth), little flour and nutritional yeast. It turned out well, I was pleased with it.
WINTER BREAK! WINTER BREAK! WINTER BREAK! WINTER BREAK! WINTER BREAK!
Ah, life is good. When I got home I did a happy jig for almost twenty minutes and then started on the Christmas cookies.
We watched The Outsiders today. Truly one of the worst movies I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter.
And I have tons of new yarn! Wheeeeeeeeeee!
Lucky you. WE don’t get out until Christmas Eve’s eve (that’s Dec. 23rd).
Ugh, us too. But it’s not like we’re going to be doing too much work for the last three days, so… And then I get to make cookies.
LUCKY YOU!!! I HAVE A MATH QUIZ ON THE 23RD!!! MY ALGEBRA TEACHER IS CRAZY!!!
Wowwwwwwwwwwwwww. What if it’s a snow day? What will en do then? At least you have an algebra teacher, though…
The whole “you have to have 175 days of school” things sucks, though. Actually, I don’t know where you live/go to school, so I guess that might not be true for you, but here we have to complete 175 days, so they push things on holidays and stuff… last year we had a half day on Christmas Eve, though. My now consolidated school system is crazy
It never snows much here…
Mostly in February.
Aww, that’s sad!!! I love snow. *throws snowball*
Us three.
The Outsiders is the worst movie every made, I agree. I had to watch it in English last year. I just shredded paper the whole time, day dreaming….The book was pretty bad, but better than the movie…
argle blargle i should get up
looking at a house at 1 and a house at 2…i’m not a big fan of either of them just as far as pictures/location goes, but we’ll see
then i need to work and burn some CDs and then i am hanging out with bill until around 5:30 at which point tom is coming up and we’re grabbing dinner and heading to cleveland!
then we are going to crash a rave w00t w00t
we’re staying with ben tonight, then tomorrow during the day we’re gonna go see tron. we might watch the original in the morning since tom’s never seen it
then saturday night we’re hanging out with grant and his friend jim! yay, mini-kokon. jim, being the wonderful fantastic ever-so-obliging person that he is, agreed to let us crash in his house saturday night
and then we’re coming back sunday! at some point we also need to get to the ticket office and grab dropkick murphys tickets. i might also pick up a ticket for ensiferum if i can get confirmation from jade that we are for defs going (oh god i need to check how much money i have in the bank…helping tom out with gas, concert tickets, movie ticket, food…I AM POOR WHY DO I DO EXPENSIVE THINGS)
then i have a couple days at home to catch up with all the work i should have been doing before we go to my grandma’s for five days (she has no internet, but there’ll be plenty of uncles and cousins and aunts and card games)
then i am freeee! i have to figure out what i’m doing for new year’s, i’m sure someone is having a party here but if people want to go back to school early and have it on campus i might do that instead :-/ it’s sort of on the edge of the quarter, we start school again the 3rd and people usually come back over the weekend so they can buy books and everything.
i don’t have too many books to get this quarter though…waltrip and i are going to share an anthro book (cuz we’re in the same class and spend all our money on concerts) and then i have english 398 (writing for english majors) which i doubt will have much in terms of textbooks (maybe a course packet) and then architecture and band (band obvs no textbooks). anthro is about $70 (so about $35 for me) and i am going to look up architecture now…no textbook assigned yet :-/ but there probably will be one
urgh longpost because ebeth does not want to get up. but it’s probably time. bye all…
Christmassy times are here!
…despite the fact that I have a cold and that there’s no snow outside even though it’s about 15 degrees. We’re getting our tree tomorrow, though! And then we get to go to a Christmas party! Where we will eat eggnog and trifle and cookies and be awesome!
I should be working on my Christmas presents, though….I have three pairs of earrings to make, some things to sew, a painting to paint, and seven presents to wrap. And I should really be taking advantage of my mom being out of the house. But I’m too tired…ugh. And if I’m not doing that, I should be cleaning, or SOMETHING, because we’re having our annual Christmas Eve party in six days and the house is a complete and total mess.
Oh well.
Oh dear, GIFTS… I totally forgot about those. I think all of my friends are getting cookies/baked goods, but I need to find something to get my mom, at least. I like the making earrings idea, though. I haven’t pulled out the beads in a while…
Argh, I just fell down half a flight of stairs. About the only thing not hurting are my fingers. Banged up my left shoulder pretty badly, and I think I whacked a shin or two on the railing.
Awww! That sucks!!!! *cookies and pies and eggnog and choklit and more choklit and hugs*
:O I’m sorry! Feel better! *gives NSAIDs and cookies and maybe a small fluff of fur kitten, if you’re not allergic*
185~ For New Year’s you should come and visit meeeee!
186~ Eesh, I know what you mean. I don’t have anything for my dad, I do have one thing for my mom…..and I need to make a handful of friendship bracelets and other easily mail-able things for sending to various friends.
187~ Ow. Feel better soon!
Last night I dreamed that we had a massive Kokon in New York, I think, and there was a whole bunch of people there, though I don’t remember any names.
I don’t have a present for my brother, and have no ideas. Help? He is a computer nerd, plays video games all his waking hours, and I never talk to him. I don’t want to get him another computer game, something that needs two people to work or something…… Oh, yeah, he’s 16 and hates sports too….. Maybe he won’t get anything this year…… That wouldn’t be nice though……
I have been altogether too lurkish around here of late, so I have made a resolution to post at least five times per day. And not counting double posts if they are related.
Well, in other news, today was the last day of school before break (yay!) and the day of the Winter Wonderland dance. This involved a bunch of middle schoolers (what? schoolers is not a word? stupid spellcheck) standing around talking in a gym completely devoid of decoration, jumping up and down and maybe waving their arms every so often. So then I went to the movie they were showing in the auditorium, which was weird and somewhat confusing since I hadn’t seen the beginning. So, yeah.
i just went to barnes&nobles for christmas shopping and got ALL THE GIFTS (well, at least for my mom, dad, and brother). mom got a bottle of green tea (it’s teabags, but they come in a bottle? i don’t know how tea people do things but that’s what’s up) and i got my brother a book of interviews from a bunch of actors/directors from the golden age of hollywood, and my dad got a biography of the guy who wrote the first thesaurus
in other news i should NOT be online right now, i need to get some work in for the next hour and then i need to gather things up for the weekend and go to the ATM to get some cash. bill is supposed to text when she’s done shopping to hang out too which i’d like to do because she only just got back. mehh we’ll see. in any case i think she’s getting dinner with me and tom so if nothing else i’ll see her then
i’m uploading the original tron to dropbox but it’s taking -forever- so hopefully it will be there sometime before i leave :-/
I decided to let my dad read my NaNo because he wants to read it and I wasn’t going to let him because I hate people reading my writing and I most definetly don’t like people looking into my brain but I decided to do it so I’m sticking to my descision although I most definetly am not in any way agreeing to publish it and revise it and put it up for sale and I probably shouldn’t have but it’s Christmas, and so now I said that I would do the free proof copy thing because then it would look all official.
/run on sentence
If anyone knows what embedded text is and how to embed text I would greatly appreciate it. Merrye [All Winter Holidays].
Happy Non-Denominational Winter Holiday!
That’s my politically correct version.
Winter break! (Apologies to those of you who don’t have it, yet…
)
Happy (insert holiday)!
Well, typing is difficult at the moment because I may have broken my finger playing dodgeball today. Four of my fingers are currently wrapped together and are very cold because of the ice pack. Thus, this will be a pretty short post.
YAY FOR WINTER BREAK!
I’m alive! I made it through these past few days even while sick, and though I have a bunch of homework packets for my AP classes (other AP Euro-ites: are your teachers having you do as much as mine is!?) IT’S STILL WINTER BREAK and I’m kind of free.
So, yay!
Ouch! I hope it’s not broken…
Did my post last night not go through?
In a nutshell, yes, my finger turned out to be broken. The nurses at Urgent Care recommended that I refrain from playing soccer for 6 weeks, but that’s unlikely.
Which post was that? I see two comments from you from yesterday evening, here and here.
I thought that I posted another here in response to shadowfire, but I probably got distracted and forgot to hit Comment. It’s of no great importance.
Yesterday my friend and I walked calmly out of the school, turned a corner, and stood about doing a happy-end-of-school-jig for about half an hour. Imagine what we do for summer vacation.
Hahaha. When school got out last year, two of my friends and I walked home without any shoes on. They live only a block away though, so we usually walk home together. We also emptied or backpacks and had a crumbled paper war. My shoe also almost got caught in a basketball hoop…
Just got back from Wesleyan University interview on-campus, extremely tired, but Happy Wright Brothers Day, everybody!
A few things I have spent $10 on since coming to college:
-Ballroom Dance Shoes (found at thrift store)
-Ten D10s
Oh. My god. If I move another inch, I shall keel over and die a slow, painful death from exhaustion.
I was at the mall today, and for some reason all the noise seemed really loud (louder than usual, that is) and all the shops were blaring different songs, and random vendors were shoving stuff in my face and screaming, and the PA system was on full volume and making this horrible blood-red buzzing noise, and all the colors were SO overwhelming. And I had to stay there, because I had so much Christmas shopping to do, which I usually enjoy, and by the time I got out of the mall I was practically crying.
And now if I even THINK about the mall I can see all the colors and I feel like crap again.
Oh dear… *hugs and choklit and a quiet place to read*
*thankfully eats choklit and reads*
Wow, GAPAs, did you install some sort of instant-snipper? Because even when the comment read “awaiting moderation,” [pre-snipped] had been changed to [cake].
Cool.
Yes, we’ve activated a little word-replacement plug-in as an experiment. We can see the original text and override the change if necessary. It doesn’t apply to many words and phrases — just the most unimaginative ones.
So it’s not automatic, then(or at least you can see it before it gets posted)? That’s good, I’ve several amusing stories about the Scunthorpe Problem, and I’d like MuseBlog to not be a source of those.
Have you seen the ones I shared on the FAIL thread?
Probably. I can’t remember.
(You knew what I was talking about! *cackle* If only my life worked that way.)
An epic prank I viewed yesterday. Requires 2-3 people and a teacher, preferably one that is often late and roams the hall. Find a deserted corridor. Two people get down on their knees as if they were holding an invisible rope across the hall. The third person acts as (conspicuous) lookout. As the teacher arrives, the two people pretend to pull the rope tighter and the lookout stands back as if trying to look innocent. All three must not laugh and try to look confidant. Wait for the teacher to walk past and see if en steps over the invisible rope or hesitates. Yes, that’s the whole point of the prank. But if you can pull it off with a solemn face, it’s perfect because you can hardly get a demerit for crouching down in the halls. It’s also ideal for strict teachers, because they usually spend ages trying to figure out what the catch was and they have nothing to punish you for.
Of course, I suggested we improve this prank by repeating it twice with our math teacher and then using a fishing line the third time, but somehow there were no takers… You know, by the by I’m starting to realize why I have a B in comportment. And I didn’t even do the 7th of January plan…
Never mind, I have something really cool planned for next summer semester. I just need to figure out how to make it look like it wasn’t my idea.
Awesome! I must try that.
OHMIGEORGE! IT’S SNOWING! IT’S SNOWING! IT’S SNOWING!
Lucky you. All it’s been doing over here is blowing like crazy. I woke up at 6:30 this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep because it’s so loud.
Granted, my city completely shuts down when it snows(Pacific Northwest, we can’t deal with it) but I like it anyway.
Cool! The reports say we might get some tomorrow.
I am surprised that no one here is mentioning Project For Awesome… DO IT. DFTBA.
I’ve already been “spam wowing” a lot of the videos, heh heh.
(Basically commenting a lot so that more money is donated/more awareness for those of you who don’t know.)
DFTBA.
Wow. Urg. I woke up with my sinuses clogged and my head hurting, and I wondered if lying in bed was supposed to hurt. Later, downstairs, when I asked to borrow a blanket, my stepmother decided I must have a fever.
We got our tree! It’s really crazy though, because our friends built their house in a clearing, which had mostly stumps surrounding it, and in the several years they have lived there, now the forest has completly retaliated and so, so, so many evergreens have grown in it’s kind of funny. THEY GROW LIKE WEEDS. It’s good for us, though, because we have a much bigger selection to pick from for our tree. After we tromped around for a while and cut down our tree, we ate pizza cooked in our friends’ BRICK OVEN. That’s right, they have a BRICK OVEN. It’s awesome. I have a feeling my parents and I may be going over there more often…yum.
Watching Inception! IT’S SO GOOD!
I had a dream about Inception last night. There’s somethin strangely ironic about that…
Hi! It’s Keiffer coming to tell everyone some very, very, very good news.
Good news: Don’t ask, Don’t tell has been repealed! Now it just has to be signed by the President! Some hope in America has returned!
Shoot, I wanted to bring the good news!
‘Tis a good day.
I’m so proud of the Senate. This is brilliant.
Yay! My mom interrupted my math homework to tell me.
Hooray! I have at least a little faith in our country now!
HOORAYYY!!!!!!
Yes! One step closer to equality! Our country was really getting a bit ridiculous there for a second.
Take it back, it still is ridiculous until gay marriage is legalized.
YAYNESS~!
*cheers*
I hate to rain on everyone’s parade, but the fact that gay and lesbian people will be able to serve openly in the army before they can get married bugs me. But, it’s a step in the right direction.
HOORAY AMERICA.
ugh…. I have school problems……. HATE it…..
Today has been good.
At noon I went to the mall to sing the hallelujah chorus as part of a flashmob-style event. It ended up being more of a mob than flashmob, but oh well. A few people were surprised.
we actually did it twice, once at the food court and once at the “santa court”. The second time was exponentially better, the first time was rather dreadful, but fun nonetheless. I was near some really terrible tenors and basses who were out of tune and not on time. It made it a bit difficult, to say the least, especially as I’m not SUPER STRONG on my part (alto). But it was fun anyway, and the second time was good, even though I messed up again.
Anyway, after that I hung out with two of my friends and the boyfriend of one of them, who I guess is my friend too, but I’m not that fond of him or the fact that they’re dating, but that’s not really relevant for this story.
We wandered around the mall, got some blue comb-in hair dye and the three girls ran to the bathroom to put it in, unfortunately it didn’t work too well (blast you, Hot Topic!) but whatever, it was a noble attempt. It was somewhat awkward the three of us clustered in front of the mirror in the public restaroom getting strange looks from the people in line, but whatever. That’s why doing things with friends is the best, because then you’re not “that weird person” your “that group of chicks giggling and putting in hair dye in the mall bathroom and looking like they’re having a great time”.
Aaand *dun dun dun* I got my ears pierced today.
When I was little I desperately wanted to get them done, but my Dear Parents said that when, and only when, I turned 18 I could do “poke as many holes as [I] want in my body.” I almost did this summer, but decided against it, but today I did. Fortunately, I’m not in serious trouble. I consulted dad first (he said to do whatever I wanted and to make sure it wasn’t because of peer pressure), and couldn’t get ahold of mom. She just laughed when I told her and said she figured it’d happen eventually.
I chose very simple black studs.
Uhm yeah basically that’s it for what I’ve done so far. It’s been an interesting day. Now I’m tired and have a headache from not getting anything to drink earlier. >.<
I just went back and liked Axa’s old announcement that they’d repealed Prop 8.
Ooh MF now I want to make you earrings!
I just got back from a beading class where I learned how to make super shiny pendants and how to wire wrap and how to sculpt the wire. It was neat!
So out of the entire Muse board of Advisors (9 people). My mom knows one, one came to speak at my college, and another is Robert. I’ve also read Margaret Mahy’s books but that doesn’t quite count. Huh.
Now that I have an actual human being as my gravatar for the first time (save Mario) I actually am picturing myself as Billie Piper when I reread my comments. o.O
Spent nearly all day doing homework, but was able to take some time out to read the book about Scott and Shackleton I got from AMNH and watch Indiana Jones with my brothers.
Could we have a new thread?
211~ Ooh! Beading is fun. Or, it looks fun. I adore bead stores. I’ve never really done anything more advanced than just stringing beads onto whipping twine and adding clasps and charms.