Been a while since a proper update! This is not quite a proper update, but at least it's substantial?


"I found whistles, maracas, 5 hour energy, coffee mugs, headphones, and a cellphone charger, but I did not find the other webcam."


Faceblindness! It's fun for the whole family! I'm not sure if I've properly told the "some woman" story about my faceblindness on DW as yet, but it's become my go-to story for "no, really, Rev. Lunatic is faceblind" though to be fair, Mama says that it took seeing Tay walk (well, bounce) in the airport to recognize her, since she's changed a lot.

However, in compensation, I have a small non-face-related superpower. I had a really fun encounter in the past year-ish where lb showed me some photos from his mid-90s college crew, and I was able to identify lb in a group photo where lb himself wasn't quite sure which of two people he was. This was based on my knowledge of how lb stands, and another photo which established what lb was wearing. ( Read more... )

I cannot perform this party trick with just anyone, but I can usually spot Purple in very large group shots if I know vaguely where he was in the crowd. Sometimes it's based on a sneaker. (Purple wears white sneakers that trend increasingly towards grey and ragged until he gets replacements. He also lounges ostentatiously, Kirklike/catlike. I find both somewhat endearing, but I would.)


One of my forms of comfortgoogling is chicken pictures. Current small pet peeve: when any old picture of a hen on a nest is used to illustrate "broody". Broody is a very specific state of chicken, generally characterized by unwillingness to get off the nest and hoard eggs, and sit there until the chicks hatch. Broodies are cranky, will cut you, have flattened themselves on the nests with wings slightly out away from their sides, have their necks pulled way down into their feathers and their tails raised so usually the tail-bump is higher than the head. They make a characteristic rhythmic "clook ... clook ... clook ..." noise (similar to the syllable of the rapid "buk-buk-buk" tidbitting noise but more spaced out, and more relaxed than any part of the "buk-buk-buk-buk-ba-DAWK-et!" alarm call which often follows egg-laying, fox sighting, bush rustling, or Disturbance in the Force). If you try to steal their eggs, they will growl/roar and also try and cut you.


Fishie is finishing up sophomore year at college. (OMG, how time flies.) She'll be 20 soon. She's majoring in computer science now, and doing things like acing the midterm where the median grade was ... not super great. The teacher for that class will be pleased to write her an academic recommendation, and says that she'll be able to do anything she puts her mind to. I am so proud of her. She works so hard, and she's getting so much better at picking her battles. She has been figuring out her summer activities: after finals, she goes to her internship Down South. After that she may wind up going to see her grandma, and after that, spending time with a friend in San Diego.

The concept of "like 5, 6 nice" has entered our dialogues because Fishie's Terrible Mom #yamappendix would make a big deal like "I AM BEING THE NICEST PERSON EVARRRR BECAUSE I LOVE YOU SO MUCH" when doing normal and expected things. So when Fishie encounters people who are being genuinely kind, she is equally floored by small kindnesses that don't inconvenience others, and big kindnesses which do inconvenience others. It's all pegged at like 10 nice for her, when someone with a scale that isn't at "Mommy is an abusive fuckwad ( Read more... )" might view it as maybe a 3,4 nice.


For those who don't dwell anywhere near Silly Valley and also aren't tapped in to the latest tech tat, "hoverboards" have been A Thing for a while. It used to be that there was just the one dude at work who rode one around, and he was proficient and discreet except for how he was going pretty fast and kind of gliding. Now, of course, many tech bros with more money than sense either have one of their own, or have access to one. Thus it was that one dude who I IRC with wound up in the ER one fine evening after doing a wipeout on his hoverboard while at work. In a subsequent all-hands at his company, there was a safety admonishment about unwise hoverboard usage.
Tech Bro 1: "haha bet I know what happened."
Tech Bro 2: "hahah yeah I heard about that."
Tech Bro 1: "sucks that K had to go to the ER tho."
Tech Bro 2: "wait, K had a wipeout too? I was talking about X."
Tech Bro 1: "Oh, what happened with X?"
Multiple hoverboard collisions in one week: not a good thing.


One of the best days of my young life was the day my father brought home a label-maker. It was a about the size of a large typewriter. I recall it having a few large font wheels. We started labeling everything. We kids dubbed it "The Advance", because it had a large key labeled "Advance" in place of an Enter/Return key. The key fed blank tape.
One of the most tragic and terrifying days of my young life was the day when the label-maker caught on fire. I saw black smoke rising up out of it, and immediately began screaming and jumping up and down. Fortunately it was winter. This meant that the appropriate response, which my dad immediately took, was to unplug it, pick it up (it was smoking, not flaming) and hurl it out the front door into a convenient snowbank.
After that we didn't have a label-maker anymore.


"I feel like both of these perspectives are valid, but they're not compatible."


Being around a whole whackton of other non-binary-gendered folks has helped me focus my gender identity feels some. It looks like the identity that best fits is agender. Non-male-identified, though sometimes I present masc and sometimes I present High Soft Femme. Though maintaining High Femme feels kind of like the thing where you're clamping down in the vain hope that you won't bleed all over everything before you get to a bathroom with supplies.

"... a bit of a radfem (without the skateboard)" (said of a radical feminist who might not so much be the "raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadical, duuuuuuuude!" kind)


Hard problems in gender, privacy, and community safety: where is the line between outing and community safety, when you happen to know that someone who has Caused Problems Before is in a community [a different one] under an identity that is at least slightly discontinuous with their old one, and the new identity is tied to a gender marker change (and the old identity is really most sincerely dead)? (Tentative answer: take it case by case and hope you get it right.)


Once upon a time, Reverend Lunatic gave themselves hiccups as the result of an orgasm. Once not that long ago ... ( Read more... )


I have started watching the Great British Bake-Off, finally. It is so charming! I appreciate that all the contestants and guests are treated respectfully by the editing and camera, in a way that US television rarely does. And it's just so amazingly sweet!


Now that the conference is wrapping up, I'm down to just job-searching with a side of wrap-up work, not job-searching AND ALL THE CONFERENCE. This makes more time to tidy. Last fall, I'd decided to re-arrange my apartment. It got halted halfway through, and the result was nothing short of chaotic (though better arranged for certain things like sleep and computer). I decided that enough was enough, and I would work slowly but steadily in the direction of making it guest-appropriate. It's been coming along nicely, though it still is like a bit of a wacky game of 2048, where you have to calculate and carefully merge two things into the same space without upsetting anything else or making anything important too hard to reach quickly. This has resulted in random acts of mending, because part of this is seeing problems and fixing them.


My favorite hair ornament is a little basket of wires that's secured with two long metal spikes with glass knobs at the ends. Unfortunately, our relative heights are such that when I wear it, I spike Purple in the face with it when he hugs me goodnight. I have determined that I will seek alternate updo-securement, and have located a thing or two which should work better. Purple was a little "but you didn't have to -- it didn't draw *blood*!" when I showed him. :>

"Marge, I think our chickens are Democrats."
"How come, dear?"
"I go out into the henhouse, and they're all standing around saying 'Barack, Baraaaaaaack, Baraaaaaaaaaaaaack.'"

This was one of the newly-hatched chicks at the MSI. I watched it come out of the shell. It still hasn't got the hang of how to move. The other chick is a little older and has grasped how gravity works.

Wednesday, went to an interview that I had thought was for an office job (possibly telemarketing). Turned out to have massive Craigslist fail and was in fact for a door-to-door outreach to existing customers; they'd listed it in Customer Service and hadn't mentioned the door-to-door part. Finished packing. Didn't sleep.

Got picked up by uncle and aunt. Hopped on plane with aunt. Napped a very little bit on the plane but then I was all wound up after they came through with the juice and dried cranberries. (Uncle said to return anything with prayers on it explaining that we're atheists. (I'm pagan, actually. (Fortunately this pronouncement didn't come into play as I don't think I got prayed at on my napkins or whatever.)))

Landed Seattle. Social ensued, in the form of Fairlight & Tay et al. Met Tay's consort, finally (they have been together some years). By this time I was not much good for anything and may in fact have completely stopped making sense, the 24 hours awake mark having been passed some time ago. Tay made me coffee with non-lactose milk; I had two cups. There was park and picnic AND PIE!!!, then Trader Joe's. At length there was car. [see tiferet93's profile if certain elements of this paragraph make you look at me in vague or not so vague alarm.]

Drove in the general direction of Sequim (pronounced Squim, btw), as narrated by Riddle. The best route included a ferry. This was about 1600hrs on Thursday, which marked 31+ hours awake. Thus the sudden explosion of Twitter and text messages re: my being ON A BOAT MOTHERFUCKER DON'T YOU EVER FORGET.

( Read more... )

We each get to work with 2 loaner chickens. The chickens are mostly rescues, and are mostly running unnamed. She is a middle-aged white leghorn who used to be a battery farm hen. She is fluffy and light and stuff. (She also looks like she has a bit of a wing injury from some of the staining on her feathers.) At first she was reluctant to be fed but she got over that; she's getting better about being held too. The second is a brown leghorn hen, who has beautiful layered golden stripey hackles. I have dubbed her "Piper", because I caught myself calling her "honey" (endearment, not name) and thinking she had honey-colored hair. (TOS fans, plz commence your ROTFLMAO now.)

( Read more... )

Had dinner with aunt at http://www.alderwoodbistro.com/ (trio of cheese & Wascally Wabbit (special) (shared); simple salad & pear & blue; chicken saltimbocca (shared); creme brulee (shared)).

I was falling half asleep three hours ago. If anything important happens, you know where to find me; if it's note_to_cat, look at the maintainers list for someone who is not me or a legacy personality fork of me.

ursamajor picked the following interests of mine to ask about:

poodle! stop humping!, yeeth, Cordelia Vorkosigan, duct tape sword guys, ectogenesis, egyptian fayoumi, Liquid Satan, Malkavian

She mentioned that most* of them sounded as if they were fantasy-related. In actual practice, the links are often tenuous at best.

( Read more... )

Curious about some of my other interests? Ask away! Want to have something to write about? Say the word, and I'll pick a handful of yours for you to post about.

Here we have Cello and Larkspur, two of the roosters my family had when I was younger. I was in my mid-teens at this time. Cello is the tall Black Langshan (same breed as Xiao Ji); Cello was named by one of Dad's little friends who had just been learning the cello. Larkspur was my sister's rooster, and a particularly sweet little fellow. He and Cello were the best of friends.



Much to everyone's dismay, Larkspur was carried off by some predator or other. My sister was heartbroken. She got a replacement rooster of the same breed, and he was named Snapdragon.

( My sister and Snapdragon. )

I thought pet weddings were for, you know, people under the age of ten. My family held two pet weddings -- one for one of the roosters and his #1 hen, and one for my sister's duck and her hapless drake. My baby sister was the driving force behind all of this. Since I was 12 or so, my sister must have been about 10. These are as I remember them, so, like any good story, they will have gotten better in the telling. But I think these are close to how they actually happened.

The chicken wedding was a lot of fun, because everyone involved was treating it like the elaborate joke it was. It followed hot on the heels of my baby sister's favorite violin teacher getting married in an elaborate swirl of pageantry. In retrospect, I can see how the adults were treating it as a much-needed venting of all the things they couldn't say about that wedding. (The chicken couple actually lasted longer, because they were fundamentally compatible, both full adults of their species, and he didn't wander off any more than usual when one of her eggs hatched. By the time the Bantam Bantam was widowed courtesy of a hungry dog, the human couple had dissolved in a storm of parenthood and irresponsibility.)

It went off beautifully -- the bride was radiant in the lovely cream and white dress that Mama had made for her (and too cooperative to try and back out of it -- it was basically a fabric funnel with enough room for her head to stick out the front, and lace around the edges) and the groom was not actively flapping and squawking (disgruntled but too dignified to make a fuss), and ever so handsome in a black felt vest that fitted neatly under his wings.

The ceremony was held outside, in our clubhouse/stage. (Mama had built it some time previously; it was a little shack with a side that could be lowered and propped on a bench, forming a platform suitable for dramatic performances. There were even curtains.) Decorations consisted of a piece of metal wiring conduit, bent into a crude arch, secured at each side of the stage, and festooned with tissue paper flowers. "The Arch of Happiness," Dad called it.

Dad pronounced appropriate vows for chickens (the rooster had to keep a watch out for stray dogs and goshawks, and when calling his hens over for food, he wasn't supposed to eat it all himself; I think the hen was supposed to stick close to the flock and not wander off into the woods and get eaten and a few other appropriate things), and the happy couple ate a cornbread muffin and we humans used it as an excuse for a summer party.


In contrast, the duck wedding was not quite a complete fiasco, but it came close a few times. The little round brown hen had been my sister's special pet once the chick had hatched, but then my sister got the idea of ducks in her head. So there were ducks. And then, after one of the ducks (mine) died, my sister decided we needed two ducks, and since she was going to be wanting to breed ducks later and have ducklings, wouldn't it make sense to have a drake? And why, our virtual aunt had one! And then once there was the drake, my sister set her sights on a wedding. And not just any wedding. She was determined that while the chicken wedding had been Good, this Duck Wedding would be Perfect.

Now, a few words about my sister. The phrase "give an inch, and they'll take a mile" was invented to describe her. She had decided at an early age that she was going to try to use debate, logic, and pure filibustering to get her way when it wasn't given to her immediately. She had learned her lesson about whining (don't), but she would bring up the same topics again and again, talking about the benefits of giving her what she wanted in such a pleasant and reasonable tone that it actually started to seem like almost a good idea, for the hour you were listening to her talk to you. You'd remind her of past disasters, and she would tell you, with the conviction born of true belief, that such a thing could never happen this time after all the lessons she'd learned from the past disaster. (The possibility of different disasters never seemed to occur to her.)

She was a born saleswoman, and would soon have you agreeing that yes, that made sense, and that, and that -- never noticing that the slippery slope that she was leading you down was actually the way to you giving her what she wanted. And then once you were out of range, you realized what a stupid thing you'd just agreed to. My parents followed the admirable and honorable idea of treating us like human beings, so once they said yes to us about something, they would not take back their word unless it was for a very good reason -- the same courtesy they'd extend to another adult. My sister wound up getting her way a lot. And when my sister was on a Mission to accomplish something -- once she had the go-ahead -- all pretenses of rationality would drop, and she would become a singleminded demon in pursuit of whatever the hell it was that she was trying to accomplish this time.

The duck wedding was no exception. My sister proceeded to make the lives of the rest of us fairly miserable in classic Mother of the Bridezilla fashion. Nothing was too good for her precious duck and the Ducky Wedding. A simple cotton print funnel with lace edges would not be good enough for Her Duck, so Mama struggled with uncooperative synthetic satin to produce a creation that wouldn't trip the bride up by hanging down too far in the front, but hung flatteringly over the duck's broad feathery back. There was a veil, too. The groom's costume was more of a pain, with something like a tail coat and a shirt front attached to a collar with a bow-tie. Also slippery evil satin stuff. Mama's patience wore thin. Tay-Tay's patience wore thinner. There was snarling and snapping. I probably didn't help much, hanging around the outskirts and making sarcastic commentary.

This wedding had specifically invited guests, rather than just whoever wanted to show up for the party. The chicken wedding could have easily been rescheduled in case of natural disaster; there was just a cake and some cornbread. The duck wedding somehow wound up with the sort of lavish preparations I associated with one of Mama's all-out holiday parties. I kept my head down and watched from as safe a distance as I could manage.

And then -- on the eve of the wedding -- disaster.

It's relatively easy to corner chickens and make them dress up. Not so with ducks. Ducks are grimy and like mud. Tay-Tay was going to go corner the duck and bring her inside in the cage for the night, so she'd be ready in the morning when it was time to dress her up and start the wedding. Now, ducks are notoriously flaky creatures. The duck had a history of maneuvers like this, so it just figured that on the eve of her wedding, she would have to go and sneak out of the pen somehow, and completely disappear.

My sister was ... distraught. To put it mildly. There was weeping and wailing. My sister's entire LIFE depended on the Duck Wedding going perfectly, and the Duck Wedding would do no such thing if the bride was not there -- lost, fled, DEAD... The night was dreadful. Once Tay-Tay had decided that something would be Just So, then woe awaited anyone or anything that thwarted her in her plans. This conspiracy of nature against her carefully-plotted wedding was an order of magnitude above the usual histrionics. I fled the scene in terror.

We were all up early the following morning. Despite my irritation with my little sister, I was worried about the duck too. She was a nice enough duck, and it would be a shame if something had happened to her. We stomped around the edge of the woods calling the name of her duck. (What self-respecting duck comes when called?) Just as we were about to give up, we heard a muffled quack from the tall weeds at the edge of the woods. There was my sister's errant duck, sitting quite comfortably on what was clearly a nest. My sister snatched up the duck and began lecturing her about running away and getting everyone worried.

The wedding proceeded mostly as planned. Granted, the bride refused to wear her veil, and the groom was inattentive and flappy, and I'm sure my sister melted down at least once. But then it was over. Mama put down her foot at that point, and there were No More Critter Weddings. (Even though our two roosters Cello and Larkspur should at least have had a commitment ceremony or something, because they were always together and ignored the hens, even though with their relative sizes it never would have worked out physically.)

Sony Online Entertainment and Penny Arcade have a go at each other. The mere description of the comic was enough to turn Stressy College Chick off from Krispy Kreme forever. I must say that was a sharp PR move on the party of SOE. There is immense media power in hearing a company's product dissed by Penny Arcade. But to quash the fine fellows from stating their (caustic) opinion would be a worse media move. So. 1,200 doughnuts are hilarious, and not easily ignored, and are a gesture of reasonable goodwill akin to that of a ... bouquet of flowers? (Heh, heh, Jack.)

Via dduane: Hen and cat are friends! (The video says it's a rooster, but whoever tagged it that does not know chicken gender very well.)

New Orleans wants books for the public library!

I wonder if there are any studies on the effects of personal web surfing sponsored by entities other than internet lockdown firms?

MyRoomBud: costumes for Roomba!

House: Pain management vs. drug addiction! Now with more ataniell93 willing to slice a clueless fandom a new one!

mock_the_stupid: ZOMG BLUE HAIR! Is that natural?

Pi
When ink and pen in hands of men
Inscribe your form, bipedal P
They draw an altar on which
God has slaughtered all stability
No eyes could ever soak in all the places you anoint
And yet to see you all at once we only need the point
Flirting with infinity, your geometric progeny
That fit inside you oh so tight
With triangles that feel so right

(3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459)

Your ever-constant homily says flaw is discipline
The patron saint of imperfection frees us from our sin
And if our transcendental lift shall find a final floor
Then Man will know the death of God where wonder was before

(It's, like, geek monks chanting. So hot.)

This got written up and tacked in a place where it could not be missed after a discussion over a notable disaster of a gift. (I'm still sifting through a pile of papers, and the easiest way to dispose of old papers where the information should be kept but the paper could be tossed is to type them up for LJ.)

( Read more... )

Of course, I'm not at all sure that what I possess is really grace under fire, and not just a blockheaded refusal to actually give in to panic. I can feel it there inside me, trying to chew through to my core, or chew out of the containment it's inside, or something. I did not get anything Tuesday-wise done, not seriously. Yes, I did pick up a bit, and kitchen stuff like getting the cherry syrup into bottles and getting the sugar-sludge from the bottom of the cherry jar into the other cherry jar, and the boozy cherry liquid out of that cherry jar so that the sugar-sludge could go in.

Boy oh boy, I'm specific.

It occurs to me that I probably want to point out that yes, things in this journal do get locked, and I don't automatically friend back, though most who've stuck around for any appreciable length of time will notice that. There's no hard and fast rule about when I do and when I don't, but some sort of pre-existing relationship tends to be a rule, either that or interaction, and it takes a really significant amount of niftiness for me to add someone without either of those. And I have not much spare time these days. I have over 50 recent messages in the inbox waiting for attention of some sort. I don't mind it when people read me, though, as long as there isn't any creepy-stalker thing going on. (To date, I think one LJ person has tripped my alarms on that front, and they're quite tidily banned. And out of a rather intimidatingly-sized Also Friend Of list, that's really not bad, just the one!)

I finally managed to put things in the formerly empty cupboard over the refrigerator. It's a really awkward one to get at, if there's stuff on the top of the refrigerator. I wound up putting the great huge pot in there, the spare tea jar, the glass cake plate, and the container of paper plates up there, all together. I don't use those, any of them, not regularly, and they're all large enough to take up cupboard space that could be used for something more frequently used.

And Lady Malfoy has started sitting near my heart and cooving softly to herself. I have not heard much from Darkside. I wouldn't expect that I would. (Cooving is an onomatopoeic word from a dialect of the chicken language; it refers to the loud worried calls of a hen, especially a broody hen, and especially especially a particularly worried grey mother-hen of my family, named Chickabird.) ... I think it's bedtime. (Oh, no, I've said too much.)