Saturday, December 13, 2008

Photojournal - continued

I got my hair cut and the color evened out, and my hairdresser blow-dried it straight. The first time I've ever had straight hair!


It was cute, but took her almost 30 min to do, so I don't think I'll be doing it myself! Ben liked it once he got used to it, but when I first walked in the door, he almost didn't recognize me!

We were supposed to go to a Christmas party tonight, so I baked a cake I will hereafter refer to as a Chocolate Ridiculousness Cake:


Yes, it has a layer of a creamy peanut butter icing topped with chocolate ganache dripping down the sides. Ridiculous!

But the party was canceled! So now I have a huge crazy cake we have to eat!


Ben and I split a slice, or at least that was the plan. He claimed the cake was much too rich as he finished the last of the icing :)

Thursday, December 11, 2008

7 more days til Christmas break!

The Shuttle flew over JSC! It's on its way from California back to Florida, and apparently when they fly over Texas, they circle JSC a few times, to let us see how cool it is. It's very cool!



I still can't believe that it's transported this way, it's crazy! Awesome-crazy though, not crazy-crazy.

I love seeing stuff like this over lunch. Totally worth standing outside for 20 minutes in the pretty-cold to see.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

It snowed!

It snowed! In Houston! And stuck to the ground, more or less! We got about an inch over a few hours. When I came out of work my car had snow on it, for the first time ever!


Luckily it didn't really stick to the roads, at least where they're not elevated, so I was fine driving my mile home after work.

Some people made a snowman than must have been 6 feet tall in the field next to my apartment, which was pretty impressive for an inch of snow on the ground! And when I walked into work, I walked over the grass and heard the crunsh crunsh crunsh sound partially melted and refrozen snow makes when you walk on it. I haven't heard that in so long! It made me remember trying to follow my dad's footsteps through the driveway after a snowfall when I was little, jumping and turning to try to land each foot in his footprint. Someone also built a little snowman next to my building, when I have no idea, but it's so cute!

Monday, December 8, 2008

One more Sunday

I only have to work one more Sunday and then I will be done! I will have all the comp time hours I need this Wednesday, then next weekend/week I am flexing one more day, and then I will be done! I can't wait to go back to having 2 day weekends! I didn't mean to work the last 8 Sundays in a row, excepting travel; I wanted to spread them out more but then we got a hurricane and it ruined everyone's plans. But it will definitely be worth it.

I also can't wait until I am down with class this Friday. It was a long semester for one that was broken up so much by the aforementioned hurricane and a decent amount of travel by my professor. It was an interesting class, I like orbital mechanics, but it was hard to follow when it seemed we were out of class every other week with one thing or another. Next semester I am taking two astronomy classes, which I am very excited about, I like OM but I love astronomy. One class is on the origin of the universe and one is on the evolution of the solar system. I love having classes like that!

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Diamonds, my opinion on

I don't particularly like diamonds. I don't usually tell people this, because I know a lot of people who wear diamonds and every one I've seen is beautiful and perfect for the wearer, and I don't want to foist my own tastes on anyone else. But I would never wear one. I have some moral issues with them, but also, I just don't really care for the way they look. I like rocks that absorb some light, rather than refract it all. I like amethysts, and opals, and sapphires, crystals with pretty colors and interesting stories about them. The word amethyst actually comes from the Greek meaning "not drunk" because they thought it would protect you against drunkenness if you wore it or had it embedded in your cups.

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Yay Thanksgiving!

We had a very nice Thanksgiving at the home of some of Boyfriend's friends from his internships. I made sweet potato fries, brown rice casserole, apple pie, and a cranberry tart. Everything was very well received, Boyfriend really liked the cranberry tart, which was nice because it was an experiment and I thought I might have burnt it a bit :)

His friends Kara and John have a really pretty house a bit south of here, and love to entertain and show off all the pretty dishes they got as wedding presents. They made a very moist turkey, awesome mashed potatoes, salad, rolls and cheesecake, and another friend provided stuffing, asparagus and pumpkin pie. I love Thanksgiving dinners like that, among friends who each bring something different. It'd be better with family of course, but since we're going up for so long over Christmas we just don't have time over Thanksgiving.

Also, poor Boyfriend had to go to work at 7 pm, and the woman who provided the stuffing was working that day until 4 pm, so we kind of had to squeeze dinner in when we could.

Kara has been doing archery for fun, she's participated in some competitions and is really getting good. She showed us her set-up, she had a very modern looking metal bow and target arrows, with about a dozen little bits of leather that you wear in various places to protect yourself. Boyfriend shot off 6 arrows and hit the target 5 times, though he was shooting left-handed when he's used to right. I shot off 4 before my arms got too tired, and I managed to hit my arm with the bow string on one shot and give myself a gigantic bruise there. I got used to a tradition of propelling pointy things at targets on Thanksgiving at my Uncle's, so it was nice to uphold the tradition :)

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Travel

We had a very nice trip to Nebraska. The car ride is long, but I've always liked roadtrips. We switched off driving and sleeping. We left Thursday at about 7, stopped for dinner at Cracker Barrel so I could eat macaroni and cheese and mashed potatoes, and arrived in Omaha about 12:15 pm on Friday.

We visited with Boyfriend's family and friends, it was very nice to see them. On Saturday we went to Des Moines for his cousin's wedding. The actual ceremony was nice, and since we had about an hour and a half until the reception we visited Iowa State University, half an hour away in Ames, where Boyfriend went to school. He had kind of mentioned it, but I hadn't really realized it: his campus is huge! Riddle was about a mile across, and then connected to the airport, but it could have fit inside ISU's campus several times. I don't know how he walked across it to go to class. We drove around it for about an hour or so, and I don't think we saw all of it. We did get to go inside his major building, and passed the dorms and apartments where he lived. It's always strange to me to see places that I personally have no connection to, that someone I am so close to has such strong ties to, so many memories of. It's odd the other way also, showing places where I have walked hundreds of times and experienced so much to someone who is seeing it for the first time.

It was a beautiful campus, full of old brick buildings and parkland. It seemed to be focused on the football stadium the way Embry focused on the airfield.

Then we went back to the reception, and I gummed some more potatoes and we danced the night away. I forgot my camera so I'll have to hope someone sends me some pictures to post. Apparently everyone liked my purple dress. Boyfriend said they don't give compliments directly in the Midwest, they give them to other people who then give them to you, which seems odd, but you know.

It is definitely a different world out there. I read an editorial in the paper on Sunday complaining that leftist college professors were leading kids into Communism, and that they should be watched more closely. Communism? Really? There are still people worried about that?

Speaking of being in a different world, on our drive back to Houston we decided that Italian would be nice for dinner, since I could definitely handle pasta by then. We were going to stop when we saw the lights in Wichita, which I still have a hard time thinking of as an actual place, but we missed it. There were no lights. I didn't have enough cell phone signal to search for a restaurant with it, so we asked for the closest place we could get pasta at the next gas station. The attendant looked confused and said, "Pasta? Oklahoma City, I guess." We had just passed a sign for Oklahoma City. It was 136 miles away! 136! I never in my life thought I would be over a hundred miles from an Italian restaurant! It was terrifying.

We ended up stopping at a very strange looking diner type place because we were hungry. There was a man wearing a huge cowboy hat sitting at a table with a straight face. I'm not sure how they do that. The food was actually ok though, I got roast beef which would have been really good on a hoagie roll with provolone but was still good over white bread.

We ended up coming through Houston at 6:30 am on a Monday, which was as much fun as it sounds. I had no idea traffic would be that bad that early, and I would never commute there.

The Kitten was extremely happy to see me, she meeped until I put down everything and picked her up and let her knead and roll around and purr on me to her heart's content. I hadn't thought to turn the heat on before I left, so it was 63 degrees when I got home, and she was a cold Kitten, poor thing. She was so cold she crept under the blankets with me and curled up against my stomach when I went to bed. She poked her little nose out so she could breathe and we slept the rest of the day. It was very nice to be home.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Solid food

So after 2 days of tomato soup, yogurt and applesauce, today I ate solid food! Yay! I had leftover raviolis for lunch, which I cut up into teeny tiny pieces. After an hour I wasn't finished them yet, but I called it a good effort. My stomach was a bit weirded out that I was suddenly asking so much of it, but it was nice to eat more than 90 calories at once.

My mouth feels ok, it was a bit sore after all that chewing but feels better now. I'm ok as long as I don't talk too much at once or chew very much.

Also, ice cream is a bad idea. It seems like a good idea, and it was even on the list of recommended foods, but it is not. The retainer in the roof of my mouth changes size ever-so-slightly with temperature. With warm foods it's fine, it just presses more securely against where the graft came from, but with cold ice cream it got a bit loose and moved around a bit and that was bad.

Aside from needing a nap, I'm doing well though.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Gum Surgery

So I survived my surgery. Boyfriend drove me around afterwards for an hour to get the drugs they'd prescribed and then home. Then I slept til he got home from work. I feel ok now, jaw a little sore and it hurts a bit to talk. I'm gonna try some tomato soup and chill on the couch. Very glad it's over with!

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Ren Faire Pics!

Ben is adorable!
I got a spiffy new shirt! And I like to twirl in long skirts.
Us together, very cute:

Chad and Deedee:
Deedee, Chad, me, Ben, Em, and Alex:


It was a beautiful day and we had a really good time. I got a new shirt, which is pretty spiffy, and I'm going to build a druid costume around it I think. Ben got a very nice belt pouch you can see in the first pic of him, and Chad got a new boots and a sword. Deedee couldn't wear her corset this year, so she wrapped a cord around her belly and tied it with a bow, it looks really cute. And Alex and Em got matching bracers and belt pouches, they look very nice.

Friday, October 31, 2008

Ren Faire this weekend!

Tomorrow we are waking up at an ungodly hour and driving 45 min to our friends' house, and then joining up with them to drive 2.5 hours to where the Ren Faire is, to be there at 9 am when it opens. You know I really want to go somewhere if I agree to wake up at 5 am to go.

It should be so much fun!

It was cold last weekend, for Texas, it got below 70! Like to 65! It was so cold I turned the heat on and put the flannel sheets on the bed. Mmm flannel. They do make it much harder to leave the bed in the morning though, and the Kitten agrees.

But of course it didn't last, and it's back up to 70 today. But it's bright and clear and sunny and breezy and not too hot, and hopefully tomorrow will be the same. And I'll actually get to spend more than 5 minutes outside!

I've been working as many hours as I can to save up time for Christmas, so I haven't really gotten to go outside very much.

And today is Halloween! I think we're going to celebrate by going to bed early. We don't get trick-or-treaters at the apartment, unfortunately.

Happy Halloween anyway!

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

No Ren Faire this weekend either

So I just found out that I won't be going to Ren Faire this weekend either, and possibly not ever. I thought this weekend was Pirate Weekend, and Boyfriend and I really wanted to go. But for some odd reason, the Ren Faire people chose to have Pirate Weekend on Halloween weekend, and Halloween Weekend the week before Halloween. Neither of had a burning desire to go to Halloween Weekend (especially the weekend before Halloween) and our friends can't go this weekend.

They want to go next weekend, but I have to go to the periodontist tomorrow so he can tell me when he do the graft (I started writing out what that actually entailed, but I got nauseous and dizzy and had to sit with my head down for a minute). I want to do it on a Thursday or Friday so I can take the weekend off to recuperate and feel sorry for myself, but I can't push it too far back because I'd like to be able to talk by the time we go up to the wedding in November. So next weekend was pretty high on my list of when to get it done.

Stupid Ren Faire. I also made Boyfriend cancel some other plans because I thought we were going this weekend, and that's at least the second time I've done that, so I don't think he's very happy. Stupid Faire, stupid lack of gum tissue, stupid lack of memory. Stupid lack of sleep and lack of time to go home and nap.

No sleep for me

Last night I mostly just chilled at home, and went to bed with a book around 11:30. I didn't intend to read that long, but the book was really good (Last Argument of Kings) so I didn't end up turning out the light until about 1:30. The Kitten was curled up next to me and we were drifting off when suddenly there was a Noise. It was a scritching sort of noise that sounded like it came from close to my window, and the Kitten meeped and jumped over me to check it out. I didn't hear it again, but it was exactly the sort of noise a giant (shudder) cockroach would make if it was walking across the wall, I thought.

I grabbed my glasses and turned on the light, but I didn't see anything. The Kitten was still staring fixedly at the wall above my bed, however, her pupils dilated. Maybe from the light, maybe from her predatory instinct to hunt and kill whatever hideous monster we'd heard.

I regretted then having so many things hanging from my walls, all providing spaces for things to hide from the light. I looked (very bravely) behind the wall hanging and curtains, shook out the pillows, even moved the blinds.

Nothing.

But the Kitten was still staring at the wall. I tried staring at the wall for a while,
but nothing suddenly leaped into view the way it does after you stare at a 3D hidden picture long enough. Which is good, because no one should ever make a hidden picture of a giant cockroach 2 feet away from where you were trying to sleep 2 minutes ago.

I debated sleeping on the couch, but was determined not to give in. If I gave the cockroach my bed, it would want my bedroom, and then my bathroom, and then my whole apartment, and then maybe my whole life! Hopefully someone would notice if a giant cockroach came into work one day instead of me, and didn't just think I was trapped in Kafka's head.

So I turned out the light and tried to sleep, but the Kitten was still fascinated by the wall. For the next hour. It made sleeping a bit difficult, so I didn't get very much last night.

I've heard cockroaches don't like the smell of bay leaves, and they don't seem to be poisonous to cats, so I may recarpet my apartment in them.

It could be worse, I guess, I could be living in Papua New Guinea. No, on second thought, I would never live there ever ever ever.

Friday, October 17, 2008

House Season 4 and yay Friday!

We finished watching season 4 of House last night, and I think I could have stopped at season 3. It was an odd season, they got rid of half the characters, but not really, and brought in a whole bunch of new ones and slowly whittled them down til they had almost exactly the same distribution as before. House's doctors went from a cute white woman, a black man and an ethnic white man (Australian) to a cute white woman, an Indian man and an ethnic white man (Jewish).

Last night we watched the last two episode, a two-parter which ended extremely, unnecessarily sadly. It seemed like the writers just wanted to make me cry as much as they could. Luckily my boyfriend didn't mind me sobbing all over his chest over a TV show.

I really like the character House, and the show has been really interesting, but I'm definitely not as motivated to go watch the 5th season now. It could be worse, I guess, they could have ended the season after the first half of the two-parter, as Boyfriend pointed out, but the writers may have been afraid for their lives if they did that.

But it's Friday now, which is awesome! Tonight I'm going to make a Joseph's Trifle to bring to a woman I work with's son's first birthday party tomorrow. Tomorrow we have the party and we may go to a soccer game with some of Boyfriend's coworkers afterwards. Sunday I will be back at work (sigh) making up more comp hours for Christmas. Somewhere in there I'll try to find time to sleep and snuggle with the Kitten.

It's finally cooling off here too, it almost feels like fall! Except without the leaves changing colors or the clear October sky or the crisp feeling in the air like you get in a real state. The humidity is still 90%, but the temperature is down to like 70! I take what I can get.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

A morning with the dentist

So I went for my semi-annual teeth cleaning this morning, and I have no cavities! Yay! All that brushing and flossing is working! Except as the hygenist was poking around with her little metal pick, she poked a sensitive spot and said that my gum is receding from one of my teeth in one spot. She had the dentist look come and look at it, and as soon as he saw it he told me I need a graft. I asked what caused it, and he said it might be a reaction to the braces I had taken off a year ago.

So, ick ick ick! I can't even think about what a graft entails. I'm just going to demand to be unconscious for as much of it as I can, including the entire healing process. Just wake me up next spring, really, I'll be fine.

I mean, it's not like I have a lot of extra gum tissue just lying around, where is it going to come from I don't even want to know don't tell me la la la .

And it's not like I can even ask for that much sympathy, my poor mother has had a root canal, a tooth break off at the gum line and two crowns put on this year.

I hate dental work. Although I like having teeth.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Home!

I'm home! And I have power! And the kitten looks as if she may forgive me one of these days, if I keep the treats coming.

I cleaned out five very heavy garbage bags of food from the fridge, and cleaned the inside. It was pretty gross. The plants are back on the balcony and looking, well, not quite dead yet. The wall hanging is back up, my quilt is back on my bed, and I have internet! As you've probably gathered by now.

As soon as my belly is full of soup, I'm going to bed. We left at 2 pm yesterday and got in about 8 am this morning, so we made good time, but he got about 4 hours sleep and I think I got 2 or 3.

Yay for being home! I'm so glad to be here, safe and sound with the cat, and I'm so glad it's still here!

Friday, September 12, 2008

Evacuation

So, since Hurricane Ike is apparently going to roll right over Houston, Boyfriend and Kitten and I evacuated,... to Nebraska. We wanted to be sure to be out of the way, but the hurricane actually looks like it will end up following us here. By then it will be mostly rain though, so we should be good. It looks like there will be a lot of flooding where we we live, but we both live on upper stories and Boyfriend moved his car to outside a friend's house which shouldn't flood too badly. We're keeping an eye on the Weather Channel, but we are extremely glad to be at Boyfriend's parents', safe and warm and full of his mom's meatloaf, which is second only to my own mother's :)

Getting out of Houston was orders of magnitude better than for Rita. We went around most of the city on Highway 6, which was not very crowded at all. We left at 10 am, stopped by our friends' to drop off the car and help them move some plywood around, and then left and were at the border of Texas by about 10 pm. We made pretty good time until shortly after we entered Kansas. It started to rain, and it rained like there was already a hurricane on top of us. Also, apparently the last one to leave Kansas at night turns off the lights, so it was dark, darker than I think I've ever seen. Add that to the fact that reflective paint hasn't made its way there yet, and I could see about 3 of the dashed lines from the median ahead at any time, so we lost our 70 mph average (that was actually the speed limit there). We switched off driving and the one not driving tried to get some sleep, but after straining our eyes for hours neither of us could take it anymore, so we pulled over to a rest stop and got a few hours sleep before we continued.

The Kitten was amazingly good the entire time. She spent most of the trip on the floor behind the passenger seat, and when we checked on her (about every 10 min the entire trip) she meeped at us and butted against out hands.

But almost exactly 24 hours after we left home, we finally made it to Boyfriend's parents' house! Kitten went under the bed at first, but soon emerged to eat and use her litterbox, and when I came to bed she crawled in under the covers with me and we slept for a few hours. It
was a very long journey, but I'm very glad to watch Ike do his damage from a safe haven.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Sister?! Sister!

My little sister has gone home now, and I am back to the work and school round. Her visit was so much fun! We went rock climbing at a gym in Houston, where she scampered up the walls faster than I've seen squirrels climb; stayed up late watching the girlie movies 27 Dresses and P.S. I'm Dead Now (AKA P.S. I Love You, but I like our title better); rescued Stan the tiny gecko from certain death and voyeurism (he tried to watch us pee, but we thwarted his plan!);
went to La Madeline's 3 times in 4 days; bought more bath products than you would think any 5 people might need; and generally bonded very sisterly. It was an awesome visit, and like all visits went by much too quickly.

So, now back to work and school and such. I will write up our San Francisco trip when I get a chance, but in the meantime, if you haven't seen the pictures and want to, let me know. I took enough that if you scroll through them really fast it's like a flipbook video of our 8 day trip!

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Boyfriend's Birthday!

Months ago Boyfriend asked me, pretty much joking I think, to make him a Lego cake for his birthday. I agreed, but haven't said anything about it since, hoping he'd forget about it. He did, so was very surprised when he saw his birthday cake!

He liked it so much he refused to cut it! He said he couldn't disturb it, but I had no such qualms.


I got the recipes from my new favorite cooking blog, smittenkitchen. The cake is Chocolate Butter Cake and the icing is Swiss Buttercream, so a lot of butter went into this thing, which of course works out well. The pegs are marshmallows!

Boyfriend brought the leftovers into work and reported that his coworkers were very happy, and he seemed very happy with it last night, so I think it was a success!

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Travelogue: San Jose, CA

I now understand why anyone would choose to pay ridiculous amounts of money to live in California. As the plane was landing, the pilot announced that the temperature in San Jose was "a balmy 72 degrees, winds at 10 mph out of the northwest," and my reaction was, "72? What does that mean? Celsius?" It hasn't been 72 in Houston since January, and that was the low! I stepped outside and could breathe, it wasn't like walking into a used sweat sock at all, it was glorious! I ate lunch outside on a patio surrounded by flowers!


Mmm delicious almond apple tart thing with vanilla bean ice cream.


Walking through downtown Mountain View, where I stayed, I was surrounded by flowers, there were mountains in the background (the name of the town isn't sarcasm!) and I found a bookstore with more books than I have! Even counting the 30 boxes still in my parents' basement!

Also, while driving around getting myself throughly lost (it's my hobby, that's why I'm so good at it) I passed a Yahoo building, an AMD building, a Microsoft building, and a Google building! I was hungry at the time I passed the Google building, so I considered sneaking in to try their food, but unfortunately I think it was after lunchtime.

My company put me up at what may be the best hotel I've ever stayed in. The bed was soft and cushy, the bathroom arched and with glass shower doors, and the wireless internet perfect for playing World of Warcraft on for far too many hours.

My favorite part was driving around with the windows down the entire time, with the fresh air in my hair and on my skin. Luckily I'm going back on vacation! And this time I will get to hike and eat in more places and see old friends and meet their families and see the coast, and best of all, Boyfriend will be there to see it with me.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Frank R. Lopez

Last Tuesday my great-uncle Frank lost a long battle with cancer and died. He had the cancer for years, but in the last few months it became too much for him to handle. He was hospitalized, though he hated the loss of his freedom, and a week before his death he stopped eating. I knew a soon as I heard that that the end was near, he had fought the good fight but there's only so long anyone's body can last.

He's not in pain anymore. He's not regretting the loss of his freedom anymore. He's not waiting anymore.

He was 76, and saw a lot and did a lot while he was here, and had his independence up until the last few months of his life.

He was the last male in my family of my grandparent's generation that I grew up knowing. My father's father died over years, and it was hard on the him and on the family but we all had time to say good bye. My mother's father died suddenly, quickly as he did everything. He never was big on goodbyes. I've thought a lot about which way was easier, on the person dying and on the family, and I really can't say. No one gets a choice of course, and there's nothing you can do either way, but still I'd like to go out like my Grandpop Joe, catching squirrels and up on the roof one minute and then gone the next.
I'd like to leave people laughing through their tears.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Pater et Mater in Houston

My parents came to visit me! My mom flew down, and my dad took a train. Several trains actually, and a bus ride, but they both made it here safely. My mom arrived first, and we had a very nice lunch and took a nap (it's our family hobby) while we waited for Dad to come along. He was very hungry and tired by the time he made it here, so we had dinner at Frenchie's, which is the only place I've found in Houston that makes gnocchies. They are excellent comfort food after traveling for 3 straight days.

The next day Boyfriend and I took my father on a very nice tour of work so he could see what we do all day while Mom went out to lunch and on a tour of Webster's quilt shops with friends she knows from her quilting message boards. When her friend picked her up from my apartment, we invited her to come see all the examples of my mother's work I have in my apartment. I didn't realize how much I had! We showed her my gorgeous quilt, my pillowcases, my 2 wallhangings, my afgans, my table runner, and all the table cloths my mom has made me. I also have things made for me by my father and given to me by my sisters in my home, so I get to live surrounded by beautiful things given to me by people who love me, and every time I see them I am reminded of that. I'm very lucky.

A friend of mine invited me to take a Summer Pies and Tarts cooking class at Sur la Table with her the weekend my parents were here. At first I was going to decline, but then I asked my mom if she'd like to take it with me. Somewhat to my surprise, she accepted. My friend was sick and ended up missing the class, but my mom and I had a really good time! The class split into 4 groups and each made a different pie or tart with a very nice pastry chef telling us her tips and tricks. Once they were baked, we got to sample each one, and they were all delicious. I could tell my mom had fun because when she got home she found a Sur la Table not far from her and she and my sister immediately signed up for classes!

It was so nice to be able to spend time with my parents. They're very easy to entertain, they like to eat and nap and play with the Kitten and talk and that's exactly what I do! My father says he's going to try to come down twice a year now that he's gone part-time, which is awesome. That will almost double the amount of times per year I get to see him!

This is weird for me, but since I've been thinking more that I might have children one day, one of the things that worried me was how I can raise children that only see their grandparents and great-grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins once or twice a year? How can they grow up not knowing their family? But if my father, and probably my mother, come down so often, they will have a better chance of knowing their grandparents as they grow up. It's not the same as growing up 3 blocks from them, I know, but it's something. That won't be for a few more years yet, of course, but I wonder about stuff like that. I want my kids to know how awesome their grandparents are. Honestly, the older I get and the more people I meet, the more I realize how amazing they are, both as parents and as people.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Travelogue: Omaha

I flew back from Florida to Houston on Wednesday. I had an hour to wander aimlessly through Houston Intercontinental and then I boarded a plane to Omaha, Nebraska. Boyfriend's best friends were getting married, and they had done him the great honor of asking him to be their best man. He loves them both to death, and he was very excited about the wedding.

Before the wedding Boyfriend wanted to show me Omaha's zoo, which competes with San Diego's to be the best in the country. It was a huge zoo, we barely covered a third of it in one day. We saw a small fuzzy creature that made me miss my little sister and how she would squeak over it:
Omaha has a new butterfly exhibit that is amazing, there were butterflies and moths everywhere, sitting on flowers, fluttering about our heads, having dogfights, strafing each other, and taking a breather on a convenient tree.

Now, I have heard of Tornado Alley and understood that this was a problem in the Midwest, and I understood that at the time, I was in the Midwest, but this didn't really come together for me until Boyfriend and I drove to his friends' house and halfway there he looked out the window and remarked, fairly calmly in my opinion, that we should get there quickly as it looked like tornado weather. The sky, which was already cloudy and threatening rain, began to get a greenish tinge I found extremely alarming. I have been in the same county as a tornado before, when I was 6 or so, driving to Florida with my parents. We pulled over the side of the road and they tried not to panic in front of the kids. Not exactly an auspicious introduction to them.

Just as we arrived at the friends' house, it began to hail. This storm was not joking with this hail, it wasn't just thinking about hailing, or tossing a few ice cubes down. This was serious, golf-ball sized, hope-you-parked-in-the-garage, chunks of ice being thrown from the inexplicably green sky! We ran down to the basement, where everyone else watched tv and I panicked to myself. Apparently imminent death from above is common enough to not warrant interrupting the movie there.

Luckily we survived the night, and the next which featured tornado sirens at 3 am which were pretty ineffective, as I was the only one who woke up and I had no idea what they were or what to do about them, or if I was in fact actually awake or just dreaming of panic.

But we survived long enough to make it to the wedding!


The bride was beyond beautiful, the ceremony gorgeous, the pastor funny and fairly brief, Boyfriend managed to not lose the rings, much to his relief, and everyone was happy and crying at the same time, as they do at weddings.

On the way to the reception we stopped at a lushly green park for more pictures. (Girl note: my dress was blowing in the breeze, it didn't hang like that constantly. I got so many compliments on it!)
The reception food was good, Boyfriend's best man speech was perfect, very funny and he made fun of the bride and groom just enough, the bride's father's speech made everyone in the room cry, and I added two more people to whom I can say, "I danced at your wedding!"

Friday, June 20, 2008

Travelogue: Florida

I got to go to Florida on a business trip! It was my first work-related travel, and I enjoyed it very much. The strangest part about it was staying in a hotel room by myself, I've never done that before.

The hotel I stayed in was very nice, very family-oriented actually (the hotel where the conference was held was all booked up by the time I went to make my reservation) but the first room they gave me was on the second floor, which was accessed by an exterior elevator next to a hallway with a lot of bends and nooks, and was the last room down a fairly long, shadowed hallway. When I got to the door I discovered the hallway did not actually end at my door, it made a sharp right immediately afterwards and connected to other side of the hotel. It seemed like there were entirely too many places for people to hide (rapist nooks, as I call them) on my approach to my room, and I knew I would be coming back to it after dark each night, so just to save myself the worry I went back and requested a room change. The front desk was very nice, they hadn't really thought about where the room was, so they moved me to a room on the first floor in the middle of the hallway, where I could park 5 feet from my door and see all around me. The hotel was very nice and all, they had a security guard at the entrance to the hotel, but just for peace of mind and paranoia it was well worth the move.

The other major benefit to business travel in Florida is that I got to see my Uncle and Aunt! I went to school in Daytona, and I used to visit them at least a few times a semester, and I haven't been back and spent time with them since the year after I graduated, so I enjoyed catching up with them. Perhaps because they live so far away from where I grew up that they weren't as used to me being a child, and that I saw them more as I was growing independent and getting used to this whole being-a-grown-up thing, they were the first adults in my family whom I felt like an adult around. It was really nice to see them, we played dress-up (I'm all grown-up, yup yup) with the clothes they wear to the Scottish/Irish festivals they go to frequently. This is my Uncle and I preparing to defend our lands:
And my Aunt and Uncle being silly:
My Uncle has that social gene that my sisters have and that I seem to have misplaced, the one that allows him to have a conversation with anyone, anywhere. He's genuinely interested in everyone he meets, what their background is, where they've lived, what they've done in their lives. He has also rather inexplicably turned into a redneck despite growing up 3 blocks from where I did!

Driving back from their house in the dark along the same highway I used to drive back to school on brought back lots of college memories. I lived as a child in Jersey and as an adult in Texas, but I did a lot of my growing-up in Florida.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Traumitized

I've had some rude awakenings before. My alarm has gone off before I thought possible to get me up for school the first day back after summer break, I've had people apparently not believe me when I tell them they're dialed the same wrong number for the third time, and even just last month I woke up to my toilet overflowing. That was a fun morning, frantic calls to maintenance, covering the floor with towels, trying to reassure the Kitten that she could still reach her litter box.

I would take a month of mornings like that rather than the way I woke up today. Possibly more. Really, if I could trade, however many were needed, I'd do it. I would enjoy my toilet overflowing every day if I meant I never had to wake up the way I did this morning ever, ever again, ever.

It started off innocuously enough. Boyfriend's alarm went off ridiculously early, as it does, and he got up and did his thing. Kitten crept up next to me and snuggled into the curve of my arm, and I pet her without really waking up. I was warm and comfortable, the Kitten was soft and sleepy, and I had at least 45 min before I really had to wake up. Boyfriend came along to kiss me goodbye, and the Kitten moved out of the way, then jumped over me to the other side of the bed.
Then.

Then the horror began.

Boyfriend flipped the covers off of me and said, "Come here, right now." I could tell by his face he was serious, so I climbed out of bed and asked "What? Why? What's wrong?" "There's a huge bug," he said, and I grabbed for my glasses because everything was a blur. The Kitten was on the bed looking up at the wall over the bed, directly over my head where I had just been sleeping, and it was not a bug, I wish it was a bug, I was prepared for a spider, maybe some sort of weird stink bug like we get here, a pincher bug, anything but what I saw, because I saw on my wall of my BEDROOM where I SLEEP all the TIME oh god i can't even type it a giant gigantic full grown hideous freak of nature COCKROACH CRAWLING up my wall not two feet from my pillow and oh god it was huge, I think it could have taken the Kitten back to its dank sordid lair and it was in my BEDROOM, which I may have mentioned that I had just been SLEEPING in.

Oh god oh god
oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god

Words cannot describe my terror and loathing of those foul things whose name I can't even type again. Boyfriend grabbed a tissue and went for it, and I left the room before I began shrieking in fear and outrage. He came back holding a pillow, yes it was that big that he apparently needed a pillowcase to restrain it, and asked me something, I'm not sure what, but it seemed the thing was INSIDE the pillowcase, so I pointed at the bathroom and managed somehow to convey that he must flush it down the toilet immediately, I don't think I was speaking English at this point but he seemed to understand, so he went in the bathroom and closed the doors and somehow wrestled the minion of hell into the toilet and flushed it away. It took a few minutes, it apparently was putting up a good fight, oh god, and then he came back and in the same hysterical language I told him he had to burn the pillow immediately, and possibly the toilet and my bedroom as well, but I don't think he understood that. I managed to mime that he had to put the pillowcase in the washer, the only reason I didn't throw it away immediately is that my mother made it for me, but I may have to wash it a few hundred times before I can use it again, and made him wash his hands a few times. Then I collapsed against him and sobbed in terror and horror for a while.

I was petrified that there may be more of these disgusting creatures, some sort of dark foul legion of them underneath my bed, maybe inside my mattress! Or behind the wallhanging my mom gave me! Or underneath my pillow oh god oh god. I hid in the living room with lots of clear space around me so I could see if any more spawns of satan were trying to sneak up on me and the best Boyfriend in the world took my bed apart and searched it for monsters.

It was clean, but I may be sleeping on the couch for a while. And people wonder why I'm not a morning person.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Beaches, bonfires and butterflies

What a good weekend! Saturday we loaded up both my and Dave's trunk's full of firewood and went to the beach and had a bonfire! Look at all the wood that fits in my trunk!
It was a beautiful night, the fire burning brightly on the beach, a full moon casting its light onto the rolling waves, just a few clouds obscuring the stars. Sirius is huge now, and Orion was about halfway above the horizon. He's a winter constellation, so I won't be able to see him for much longer. Dave brought his mechanized telescope, and it gave us a tour of the skies. We got a gorgeous view of the moon and Saturn, good enough to see the rings clearly! I brought marshmallows and roasted and ate them with brownies, better than s'mores!


Sunday we went to the Songkran festival, a Thai New Year's festival at a Buddhist temple in Sugarland. We met up with some friends I used to work with, and enjoyed delicious Thai food with them and their family. One of my friend's Aunts, who is Thai, was surprised that I ate all the authentic Thai desserts. I said the key word there was "desserts" lol.

After we ate we lined up to be blessed by the monks for luck in the New Year. We filled golden bowls with water from an urn filled with water and flower petals, then poured the water over a statue of the Buddha and over the hands of monks who held their hands over flower-filled glass vases. They sprinkled us with water in turn, blessing us and wishing us health and luck in the New Year. There was a lot of running around sprinkling water on each other afterwards, it seems like a fun tradition. Then there was a cermony releasing 99 doves for world peace, harmony, and love. It was a beautiful ceremony, I wish more people could see it. Maybe if everyone could spend a sunny afternoon eating good food with their friends, being blessed, and watching doves fly, there would be a lot more peace in the world.
We also released hundreds of Monarch butterflies, to remember lost loved ones. Everyone in the audience got to hold a box with a butterfly in it, and we released them right after the doves were released. I thought about my grandfathers.
It was really a very good weekend. Exhausting, though, we came home and took a 4 hour nap. Back to work tomorrow, and homemade pasta and roasted tomato sauce for dinner tomorrow night.

I took all the pictures here on my phone, they came out pretty nice, I think. There were a lot of people taking pictures, and the whole ceremony was filmed, so I didn't worry about offending anyone there.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Bah, politics

The reason why I may be voting Republican this year, if the primary doesn't turn out well for Clinton: Obama wants me to lose my job. He's obviously timed this announcement well, most of the states with large space programs have already had their primaries, and many of the remaining states aren't doing so hot in the education department.

Some numbers provided by Ben:
States remaining to be decided in democratic primaries: Oregon, Montana, South Dakota, Indiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina
Discredited States: Florida, Michigan

States with NASA Centers: California, Virginia, Ohio, New York, Maryland, West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico

Rank of expenditures per student for states left in democratic
primaries:
Oregon: #28
Montana: #26
South Dakota: #35
Indiana: #22
Pennsylvania: #21
West Virginia: #15
Kentucky: #30
North Carolina: #41

School Teacher Salary Rank:
Oregon: #14
Montana: #46
South Dakota: #51
Indiana: #17
Pennsylvania: #10
West Virginia: #42
Kentucky: #34
North Carolina: #24

Only one of the states remaining has a NASA Center. The majority of the remaining states are in the bottom half of salary and expenditures per student.

It is very rare for NASA to compete with education for money, because they're separate issues, both of which deserve a lot more money than they ever get. But his plan would put us without human spaceflight capability for almost 10 years! Not to mention how many thousands of NASA employees and contractors will be laid off in the states that had their primaries before he came out with this plan, and it's not like there's that much commercial spaceflight going on yet to pick up the slack.

People, we will never have colonies on the moon if all of our engineers die of old age before we get around to going back, and everyone knows it won't be the future until we have moon colonies. Apparently Obama just doesn't want it to be the future. I guess we shouldn't even bother asking him for funding for flying cars or hoverboards.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Libraries

I greatly approve of the idea of libraries, in principle. Everyone should have access to a wide variety of books, and they have entire teams of people who seem to find great satisfaction in helping you find something to read. Libraries are places to collect knowledge and distribute it to anyone who asks for it. Their function seems to epitomize the concepts of freedom and equality, where anyone can read any book they choose, freely, and then pass it on to someone else, sharing knowledge.

But they have one flaw, in my eyes. They want their books back.

This is necessary for the whole "sharing" part of the sharing knowledge thing, I know, but somehow it feels like every book I read becomes a part of me, and I don't want to let that part go. I was never so happy and comfortable in my apartment as when I got more bookcases and could finally look at all of my books at the same time. This fulfills some deep-seated need inside me, for which I have no explanation. My mother and sister are perfectly happy to read a book once and release it back into the wild, never to be seen or heard from again, here one day and then gone, like the wind. (Possibly with,..)
I am perfectly happy to lend books out for extended periods of time, like foreign exchange children, sending them out to see the world, knowing they will come back one day enriched and wise from their travels, eager to share their journeys with the stay-at-home books still on the shelves. But I might want to read them again! Or lend a particular book to someone who absolutely has to read it, in my opinion. (There are a lot of books a lot of people absolutely have to read, usually starting with the last one I just finished.) Plus I feel like I've just won something when I find some old, out of print SF book I-just-realized-I've-been-looking-for-my-whole-life in a back corner of a used-book store, how could I let it go afterward? SF readers tend to be hoarders, it's not just me. I've heard from used-book store owners that the only way they get large collections of SF is when the owners die and can't complain about people giving away their books anymore.

Maybe my problem with libraries is I don't own them. Maybe I should have been a librarian. Maybe if I continue accumulating books, I can just open my own library,..

At any rate, I now have a library card for the Harris Country Public Library and have requested about 50 things from their online catalog. They actually have a very good selection of movies and TV show seasons on DVD, which are much easier to return after watching. And I finally requested Your Money or Your Life, a personal finance book I couldn't bring myself to spend money on but have been wanting to read.

So hopefully I will be able to overcome my squirrel-like hoarding instinct and Charlton Heston-like resistance-to-having-things-pried-from-my-warm-and-living-hand instinct and give them their books back when I'm done reading them.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Crazy Ferret People

So on the plan this week was goulash and corned beef and cabbage. I made the goulash yesterday in the crockpot but it didn't turn out very well, for some reason. I had made some creative alterations to the recipe, which may have had something to with it. I also made Irish soda bread which came out much better, I love soda bread. I'm making corned beef and cabbage today, for St. Patrick's Day. I'm not Catholic so I'm celebrating it today lol. Hopefully it will come out better than the goulash.

We saw the craziest show ever last night, it was so ridiculous. It was called Ferrets: In Pursuit of Excellence, (no, really!) and it was about these people who are completely obsessed with their ferrets. It was so funny! One lady made up songs to her ferrets, and sang to them regularly, and another said her family knew that when she came home from work, she had to play with her ferrets for a minimum of three hours before they could talk to her. She had a entire floor of her house devoted to them, that no one else was allowed in! And I'm not talked a few ferrets here, she had like 20! And they'd all scamper all over the place, which was very cute, but these people were seriously crazy. When the ferrets died, a lot of people said they had them cremated and kept them in little boxes around their houses, with the ferrets' names engraved on the lids. I was like, where do you get ferrets cremated? Then it cuts to a lady standing in front of a chest-type freezer, and I was like, oh, no, you can't be serious, and she started talking about how it was cheaper to get ferrets cremated in bulk so she kept all her friends' dead ferrets in her freezer until they had 25 lb worth! She said she sometimes had more dead ferrets in her freezer than food! This lady had children! And was married! And these were not attractive people, in case you were wondering. It was the craziest show ever. The whole thing lead up to this ferret show in Ohio, which some of these people drove 500 miles for, and they were all acting like winning was a life-or-death thing. People cried, there were some people who said they got into fights with judges, they were way into it. After the judging, while they were waiting on results, the camera panned over the crowd and it was more strange people clutching ferrets to their chests than I thought existed. And at the very end, after all the drama about winning a ribbon, it said: 327 ferrets were in the show. 400 ribbons were awarded.
These were some lonely, lonely crazy ferret people. Just when i thought the world was weird enough, people who sing songs about ferrets come on tv.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Kittens and Nieces and Cooking

I was looking for my Kitten, I could not find her, so I called her name and she meeped at me from her hiding spot, somewhat annoyed to be disturbed:
I keep telling her, but she is the cutest thing ever!!

Well, maybe an extremely close second to my niece, Julianna:
Yay pictures!

So Boyfriend and I are trying to eat at home more often, because it is healthier and will hopefully be cheaper. He is saving to put a down payment on a house, at some point, I'm saving in case someone unfriendly to the space program gets elected and I get laid off. Not really, but it seems like a good idea to have a nice emergency fund anyway. We've been sharing the grocery shopping, but since he is in class every night until 7, I have been doing most of the actual cooking. (It doesn't hurt that I can reliably boil water, also.) We've been planning out a week's meals, dinners and leftovers for lunch, on Sunday and then going grocery shopping to get everything. It was surprisingly nice not to have to worry about what's for dinner every night! And awesome not to have to stop at the grocery store after work before I can go home. I do most of the prep work Sunday, and throw things together when I get home from work.

Last week we had my mom's chicken enchiladas, which I think Boyfriend could cheerfully live on for months, shrimp pil-pil, a Spanish dish I got from Rachel Ray's magazine, chicken casserole (which I narrowly avoided burning the house down making) and pizza with as many vegetables as will fit on top of it. We're also having the frozen veggies you can microwave in the bag with every meal, which has to be the best invention since sliced bread, I swear. We went the entire week without eating out! I don't think I've done that in years!

This week we are having chicken enchiladas, the rest of the shrimp over angel hair with tomato sauce, chicken creole from a Zataran's box, and pizza. I made the shrimp tonight, along with garlic bread the way I like it, i.e. strong enough to knock out a vampire at 20 paces. It was a bit strong for Boyfriend, I think, he is apparently more used to garlic bread that has maybe been introduced to a clove of garlic, maybe just waved at one in passing. Kind of like I like my steak to just wave at a fire in passing, maybe say hi, but definitely not get to know it well enough to ask after it's health, or it's children, or anything.

It is surprising fun to be able to put together a complete meal from ingredients you have in your house. And it doesn't hurt that Boyfriend is very obviously delighted to come home after a very long day to a "restaurant-quality meal, with lovely company and a charming ambiance," as he tells me. He's very sweet, and smart enough to know that the more he praises them, the more dinners he'll get :)

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Scary

Get Rich Slowly had a very good article yesterday about how a woman taught her children about advertising by asking them if they thought the product really did what the commercial claimed it did. It was very interesting, and the comments to the article had a link to an paper about the subject, which, among many other interesting and scary things said:
In 1978, the FTC formally proposed a rule that would ban or severely restrict all television advertising to children. [31,78] The FTC presented a comprehensive review of the scientific literature and argued that all advertising directed to young children was inherently unfair and deceptive. [31] The proposal provoked intense opposition from the food, toy, broadcasting and advertising industries, who initiated an aggressive campaign to oppose the ban. A key argument was First Amendment protection for the right to provide information about products to consumers. [31] Responding to corporate pressure, Congress refused to approve the FTC's operating budget and passed legislation titled the FTC Improvements Act of 1980 that removed the agency's authority to restrict television advertising. The act specifically prohibited any further action to adopt the proposed children's advertising rules. [31]
That's our government at work, protecting our children by "improving" the FTC out of authority to change things. It concludes with

Children, especially young children, are more susceptible to the effects of marketing than adults. Numerous studies have documented that children under 8 years of age are developmentally unable to understand the intent of advertisements and accept advertising claims as factual. [22] The intense marketing of high fat, high sugar foods to young children can be viewed as exploitation because they do not understand that commercials are designed to sell products and do not have the ability to comprehend or evaluate advertising. The purpose of advertising is to persuade, and young children have few defenses against such advertising. [...] [24] It can be argued that children, especially young children, are a vulnerable group that should be protected from commercial influences that may adversely impact their health, and that as a society that values children, there should be greater social responsibility for their present and future health.


Ok, end rant.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Sweet Tea

My sister is back from Canada! She survived! (narrowly). The pics from her trip are insanely beautiful, all crystal clear blue sky, white snow-topped mountains, and perfectly symmetrical conifers. I really miss snow, I haven't seen it in years. Every time I go home it gets too warm for it. I'm really more of a lounging-on-a-tropical-island type of person, but I love the hush that falls over the world with a fresh snowfall, and watching big fat snowflakes drift down from a dark sky into the light before disappearing again into a blanket of snow is a pretty good definition of peacefulness.

Maybe that's one reason Texans seem so foreign to me, they don't really understand, at their deepest levels, the ebb and flow of seasons. Where I grew up, there are 4 distinct, individual seasons, which balance each other and share time equally. I've always claimed summer as my favorite, but living in it year round just isn't right. It needs to be balanced by a winter, and separated from it by a spring and a fall, each in their own time and each with their own personality.

On the other hand, man do I hate the cold! I've considered moving to the equator, Texas is too cold for me sometimes. Like today, I think it got below 60! In February!

Although today was a good day, I got a free cookie! I went to pick up lunch with friends at McAlister's, they have sweet tea! We were getting it to go so I gave them my name and then we hung out for a bit. A few minutes later, a guy called my name and I started to walk over but this lady got there first, grabbed the bag, and like booked it out of there. So I was like, that's weird, maybe another me?, but my friend was like, we should check that out. So we went up and asked, and they didn't have another me, so one of the guys who worked there ran outside and almost threw himself in front of the lady's car to stop her, and talked to her, and got the bag back. Her name was like Lauren, she just really wanted my lunch I guess. But I go there so often (they have sweet tea!) most of the guys there recognize me, and the manager felt bad and gave me a free cookie. And more sweet tea!

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Strawberry Perl

Are you tired of plain old vanilla Perl? Try new strawberry Perl! Garenteeded to make your day a little sweeter ;) Have I mentioned lately that I love Perl? That it is the coolest language ever? And that I have admin rights on my computer at work?

So this is my new workout schedule:
Monday - Stretch class, lots of yoga poses
Tuesday - Belly Dancing class, followed by Kickboxing if I have any feeling left in my legs (not today)
Wednesday - Step class, since I do need remedial lessons in it
Thursday - Ballroom dancing class with boyfriend!

I will be so active! I miss how good I used to feel when I was kickboxing, so now this gives me lots of stuff to do. I'm not focused on losing weight per se, it'd be nice but I just want to move around after sitting in a chair for 8 hours every day.

My little sister's new house. Yes, that's her name over the door. Because she is actually an incarnation of Strawberry Shortcake. (She should really like strawberry Perl then!)

Friday, February 1, 2008

Links

This is an awesome idea: a playground for septuagenarians. That's the cutest thing I've seen all day.

This is also an awesome idea: Don't shoot wolves, President F*ckhead. Can it be clearer that he wants to destroy the world? Seriously.

In better news, my mom is doing great. She was shocked with a defibrillator this afternoon, which put her heart back into its normal rhythm right away. She'll be in the hospital until Sunday or Monday, so they can make sure it stays that way and get all her meds straight, but she should be fine. My sisters said when they went to see her, she proudly proclaimed, "Look! I've got rhythm!" and sit-danced to prove it, so she must be feeling better lol.

In other good news, my sister found a great house in North Carolina! It's huge, beautiful house, 4 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, 2 stories plus a basement, on 4 acres, on a mountain, across the street from a lake, close to places they can work, and 10 minutes from an Applebees. Many of the other houses they had looked at were right across from trailer parks, or 30 miles from a gas station, so when they saw lights on the way to see this house they were very excited to be back in civilization. They will be moving as soon as they can sell their current house, which is also beautiful so hopefully it will go quickly.

My family reminds me of this fabric. We are very easy-going and loose, until one of us is hurt or threatened. When that happens, we all band together instantly, to protect or support as needed, until peace is regained. But I'm far away, still affected by every major creasing, but unable to lend my support and be supported in turn directly.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Lousy Day

So my brilliant system of 3 interlocking alarms completely failed to wake me up this morning. I didn't wake up until 9.05, when I had intended to be at work by 9, so I could leave to go to class at 5. So, not going to class today, not a huge deal as I'm still seriously considered dropping it.

At work I was waiting on someone to look at some data, to make sure it's ok, but they couldn't see my directory for some reason (on a unix system.) Yesterday I had played around with the permissions to try to give them access, but managed to completely break everything I was doing. So not only can they not see what I need them to look at, I can't see it anymore. Apparently the admin may be able to fix it, but he's awol, so the only thing I can do is recreate the work I spent most of last week doing. So once I get back to where I was yesterday, I'm still stuck cause he still needs to check this data! So, not the most productive I could be.

And I kind of wanted to go to class today, I remembered I like physics after reading this article about a paper AIAA published on research that connects gravity and electromagnetism.

Summary:
The standard model of physics, … is incapable of predicting a particle's mass. …when researchers ... implemented Heim's mass theorem in a computer program, it predicted masses of fundamental particles that matched the measured values to within the accuracy of experimental error.

….From this, Dröscher claims, you can derive the four forces known in physics: the gravitational and electromagnetic forces, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. But there's more to it than that. "If Heim's picture is to make sense," Dröscher says, "we are forced to postulate two more fundamental forces." These are, Dröscher claims, related to the familiar gravitational force: one is a repulsive anti-gravity similar to the dark energy that appears to be causing the universe's expansion to accelerate. And the other might be used to accelerate a spacecraft without any rocket fuel.

… if this happens, it would be possible to reach Mars in less than 3 hours and a star 11 light years away in only 80 days, Dröscher and Häuser say.
That would be so incredibly, ridiculously awesome. It will probably not happen, but the future has to come sometime, right? Maybe I read too much, but I spend so much time in worlds that are much better than ours, it really sucks sometimes to come back to reality and realize that no, the world is not that amazing yet. I wish it would hurry up.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Learned Something Today

My car's turn signal clicks in time with Nine Inch Nails' "Closer". I thought that was cool. That song is 14 years old now, which isn't as bad as I was afraid of, at least.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Memories of Christmas

Heather telling us a story about my 4 year old nephew Eddie: He came into the kitchen and asked for a cookie without saying "please", so she asked him, "Have you lost your manners?" He said, "I've lost them! I've lost my manners! I need to go to the store and get more!" and proceeded to run in circles around the dining room table shouting, "Manners! Where are you manners? I need to catch you! I need to put you in my mouth and eat you! Manners!" until finally coming back to her and saying, "I've found them! May I have a cookie please?"

Playing Hullabaloo with Eddie, my sister Stephie and our friend Jay. The game has 16 plastic tiles which are different colors and shapes, with different pictures on them, and a speaker. When turned on, the speaker gives directions such as, "Swim to a circle!" or "Hop to a triangle!" After so many tile-swappings, the game says, "Freeze! If you're on a blue triangle, you're a winner! Winner, do a funky dance!" The winner got a hug from Eddie and then everyone danced, and if you've never seen a 4 year old do a funky dance, you have not lived.

Holding my 10 month old, little fat doll of a niece Julianna, in her adorable Christmas dress, and posing for pictures with every combination of my family we could think of. I even managed to keep my eyes open in some of the pictures! Not many though lol.

Coming home from Target with my Mom and Dad and Heather and the 2 kids, and when it was time for them to leave, I asked Eddie for a hug. I had been holding the baby, Julianna, so he said, "You've had enough hugs!" So my Mom asked for one, and he said, "Ok, but I only have 3 left after that!" After he gave my Mom one, he deigned to give me one, but then "I only have 2 hugs left!" He very graciously gave them to my Dad and my sister.

Walking around New Hope with Stephanie, I love that place! It's in PA, a very cute little town. It's almost a tradition now for us to go and have lunch someplace nice there, then walk around to all the shops. It's funny, we fought like cats and dogs when we lived together, but since I've moved out she's my best friend.

Heather's excitement when my dad and I opened one of her gifts to us, personalized doormats with our latitude and longitude printed on them! She made us open them at the same time, so the surprise wouldn't be spoiled, and we both loved them!

My mother lying to my face when I asked her if she had had time to finish the wallhanging she'd promised me! She said "Oh no, it's on the list somewhere" when I asked about it before Christmas. I was so surprised when I unwrapped and opened a box to see the gorgeous wallhanging completed on Christmas I almost fell over!

I love my family! I wish I got to see them more often. The kids grow up so fast! Luckily Steph is planning come visit me in March, so I just have to wait til then to see her!