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(no subject)

Things are a bit better. Although it's -11 f outside and it's sinking in that my first nursing class will convene at 8 am in the morning. :)

But that's nothing -- the last week of the course we'll be starting at 6:30 am. OH DEAR LORD

But here's a nice thing that happened Sunday. I was coming back to my car from a group snowshoeing thing and it was COLD. I dumped all by gear into the trunk, and just as it shut, I spied my car keys amongst my stuff. And of course I'd forgotten my cell phone at home.

I walked over to a service station and saw a public utilities truck outside. The driver was just returning with a cup of joe, and I hailed him, hoping -- feebly -- that he might have something to jig my car.

He did not. But you know what he did do? He called his boss, then gave me a lift to my house, waited while I grabbed a spare key, and returned me to my car. :D

Did I mention how cold it was that morning? How little I could afford to call a tow? That guy (his name was Todd) saved me a world of grief. He was just being nice. Super, super Midwestern Nice -- I snicker about Midwestern Nice but by gad it was welcome that day.

I got his name and his permission to write a letter to OPPD praising him. Just put the stamp on it. :)

Current Location: USA

Entry tags:

Hi climbimg wimmes!

I just found out about this comm from my bouldering ball Astrid.

I'm a newbie:

best
Cyn Martin

Oh! San Diego!

Another San Diego Comic Con has come and gone.

A whale of a pic post follows. San Diego? Sea World? Get it? *snicker*

( Read more... )

See you next year, everybody.

Where are their votes

Timeline and History of Protests in Iran

If anyone is still looking to make a 'why you should be paying attention' post to try and really show what's going on there - on the ground, and happening to real people -

copinggoggles has made a few chronological caps of some of NextRevolution's tweets, with names redacted.

( i am holding her little dress )

Another noteworthy stream of tweets from today:

# far as eye can see people in every corner people everywhere...revolution is close to end...ghandi would be proud #*****

# i can not count the numbers to big #*****

# when all these troubles behind us i will get my camera back and go to the park with my daughter

# i will bring my brother and girl friend and we will say mullahs are so old their ideas are not modern and we will laugh and be free

# homosexuals will not die woman will not be stone to death we will be friends with world

Flickr photstream of protest photos -- some are graphic and NSFW.

evilgmbethy:
I'm really sick of the debate on whether Mousavi is any different from Ahmadinejad, and I'm kind of peeved at Obama for bringing it up, because now cable news is all over this meme.

It's not about Mousavi. It's about the people's right to have their vote counted. And as the protests went on, it's about the brutality against those who dare speak out and stifling of voices.

(no subject)

Here's some Age of Sail artwork I did under the cut for Age_of_Sail. :)

(Just figuring out cuts and all. :)

( Read more... )

ROCK!

hack-hack-- HOORAY

I'm sick again. I simply can't believe this. BUT!

Maine and New Hampshire passed resolutions for marriage equality today!

So, what the hell. Still a good day even if I did nothing but creep around aching from head to toe.

(Oh wait: I got an email offering me two books, with scripts arriving in a couple of weeks. Also good! :)

Yay Marriage Equality Yay

Dancing birds from the BBC

Some birds have a remarkable talent for dancing, two studies published in Current Biology suggest.

Footage revealed that some parrots have a near-perfect sense of rhythm; swaying their bodies, bobbing their heads and tapping their feet in time to a beat.

( Previously, it was thought that only humans had the ability to groove. )

Snowball:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8027379.stm

Alex:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8027417.stm

Darn, I wish the video embed would work, it's the whole point. Dancing Cockatoo!

Oh, spring, spring, spring

*springs!*

There's nothing like living in the Midwest to make you appreciate spring. Now I understand the impulse of the populace to wear shorts the instant the sun shines. It beats the hell out of suiting up like you have to leave a science station at the bottom of the world, you know? Oh, god! less clothing! I'm into it now.

I've been thrashing about like a serf in my front yard. My neighbor Max hates this ritual too -- a treasured break from the Midwestern habit of greating everything, even tornados and blizzards -- with a stoic smile. We both hate yardwork. Our shared misery makes us stronger. Our labors have coincided in the last few days, and we pause occasionaly to pant and sweat and spit the crap out of our mouths and curse the neccessity of yardwork. I like Max.

The weather is so beautiful that yesterday, after hours of yardwork, I went to the gym. By god I did! (For my ill-advised heroism I got such a sore elbow I could hardly sleep. Note to self: No Heroics).

Today I delivered my yearly talk to the 4th grade class at the local elementary school, and they were darlings as always. One of the kids is perhaps a genius. She drew an on-the-fly sketch of me as I was talking, and her notebook is filled with art. She can't not draw. Excellent.

I wrote a fanfic for Henry Hellrung http://community.livejournal.com/henryhellrung/2001.html
and took a nap. And I made a deal. I got some things done today. I LOVE SPRING

EDIT: I cooked something the other day that didn't fail. SPRING IFLU

EDIT2: Damn you Deadliest Catch!

EDIT THE 3RD: Btw, since I started working out again my legs are kickass. YEAH! Some real evidence of the boredom and pain of working out. IFLU SPRING

whoa

Sonuvabitch. I was just watching Animal Planet and they had a sequence about bats: bats never attack people, bats eat bad insects, etc. All of which I agree with. I like bats.

For some reason, bats like me, too. Since I've lived here, in my rental and my house, I've called animal rescue several times to get a bat out and taken to the bat cave at the zoo. The bats here are very cute, btw -- they look like little pug dogs with wings.

Anyway, when my cat Harry got sick, me and the vets went nearly crazy trying to figure out the origin of his illness, cryptococcus. Harry was an indoor cat, see, and his exposure was a maddening question mark. I told the vets about the day I found a little bat head and part of a wing, but they didn't think it was related at all.

But on AP just now they mentioned that even non vampiric bats carry dangerous fungal infections, and mentioned cryptococcus.

Oh, Harry. You brought down a flying bat, and the bat killed you in turn. My poor crazy boy.

I miss you.

(no subject)

Well, yay, here I am. Now to figure out where everybody is...

(no subject)

Does anyone have a Dreamwidth account to give away? I keep seeing them on my flist and I'm always an instant too late.

EDIT: Got one! Thank you, droneish!

egg egg I just like to say egg

https://www.nationalparks.org/about/store/products/

I just ordered a green White House Easter Egg! Can't really say why. :D Sprrrrrrinnnnng!

And now I'm off to the gym. Have a wonderful weekend, all.

Aaaand this is me, being geeky indeed

http://community.livejournal.com/ontd_science/5871.html

Yes, this is science geek.

I think I'll just follow with some comics art. *blush*

film rec

Bottle Shock

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0914797/

Alan Rickman and the Napa Valley. As a Californian I may be biased, but I dug it. Kinda homesick now.

It's on Netflix, check it out.

Awwww

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7961208.stm

Thai 'Spider-Man' to the rescue

An unusual disguise has helped a Bangkok fireman rescue an eight-year-old boy who had climbed on to a third-floor window ledge, Thai police say.

The firefighter dressed up as the comic book superhero Spider-Man in order to coax the boy, who is autistic, from his dangerous perch.

Police said teachers had alerted the fire station after the boy began crying and climbed out of a classroom window.

It was reportedly his first day at the special needs school.

Efforts by the teachers to convince the pupil back inside had failed.

But a remark by his mother about his passion for comic superheroes prompted fireman Somchai Yoosabai to rush back to the station, where he kept a Spider-Man costume in his locker.

The sight of Mr Yoosabai dressed as Spider-Man and holding a glass of juice for him, brought a big smile to the boy's face, and he promptly threw himself into the arms of his "superhero", police said.

Mr Yoosabai normally uses the costume to liven up fire drills in schools.

I must say, that's a lot of my personal feel-good stuff folded into one story.

The last hard slog

Unnnnngh. This job will be done by tomorrow, but I can't do anymore today. I'm finishing the last three pages, two of them shoved to the bottom of the pile because of extensive and tiresome background work. One is set in an ancient Egyptian library and village... that's done, actually. Another is set in the bleeping Library of Congress and it's a two page spread. The last is just a page crammed with a lot of people doing a lot of stuff on multiple planes -- I can't face it today.

Maybe I'll just go see Watchmen finally. I was putting it off as my end-of-project-treat, but maybe I need it as my end-of-project last-effort rejuvenator. Or I could be virtuous and scan the pages that are already done? Oh God DO NOT WANT. I have cabin fever, I really do.

For grebo, from ontd_science, what I like to think of at Tony Stark's seventh grade extra credit project, revived by a rare Malibu lightning bolt and stuggling to find a place in the modern world (and prone to self doubt -- look at those last frames):

Is this as cute as monkeys flossing? Not to me, but then I'm a sap for animals. )

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2009/mar/13/floss-monkey

Craaaaaaamerrr! You short selling flossmonkey!

Hm, I may be weary.

ouch

Jon Stewart is beating the hell out of that Mad Money Cramer guy on The Daily Show.

*fascinated and uncomfortable*

I've lost the cooking mojo

That's flat. It's confirmed.

I used to be something of a fist at cooking, really. I learned to cook in the monastery and for several years after, I could make good food. Lately, however, I'm an utter failure. Nothing's going right.

Chicken stew: how hard is that? I googled a recipe and followed it. What I have is a massive fuckton of chicken soup. It's not stew.

ION, I cancelled my Friday therapy appt so I can finish this job. It involves mummies, and the ref provided was scant and blurry, and my googling raised nothing better, so I asked astrid_v (who did an Egyptian book recently) if she had any sources.

She responded with about a gig of fabulous ref that got me all enthused. :D I spent thrice as much time on that Egyptian segment, just because it was actually fun. :D Thank you so much, Astrid! It looks pretty fabulous, if I do say so myself. Looking forward to seeing you at SDCC.

Anybody else going to San Diego this year?

It's freezing, so I'm using my obscure Tropic Thunder icon. Bless.

I finished my taxes!~ cresendo

It's an ordeal if you're self employed, so let me have it:

OOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

*climax blues*

I did it: thus, I procrastinate

I'm about to start my taxes, but I shrink from the onerous task so I'm making an LJ post first.

Today I submitted an application to an art foundation here for a workspace grant. I did it! I don't know why I've always had a hangup about showing my personal work, but I have, and this is the first time I've sought an exhibit or whatever.

The application deadline was today, and I started doing the form and burning a CD of paintings at 10. Good God, that was fun. They wanted a CV, too. And then I realized that they wanted dimensions on all the originals, so I was running around my house with a ruler at 12pm.

The post office closes at 1pm on Saturdays, see.

So, I get all that printed and address an envelope and it's 12:05, and my car has a foot of snow on it, so I'm thrashing around trying to clear it off/make it driveable. Bless my neighbor who plowed the alley, or I'd never have got out. I left an envelope with some cash at his house later.

So I make it onto a real road, which isn't plowed but has seen enough traffic to be tamped down. I'm slithering, but I reach the main drag, hit every traffic light, and zoom into the post office parking lot -- and the damned place is closed. They close at twelve at my podunk neighborhood PO, see. Unlike every other PO in the nation. WTH. There's a mailcarrier-looking guy in the lot and I bleat, did I miss it? Are there any others? And he tells me the PO at Ames is open until 1pm. You can make it! he tells me. Go fast!

So I peel out, heading for Ames Ave. Ames is across town and it's all very Mr Toad's Wild Ride after last night's snow, even on the large streets. I don't have any clear idea where Ames is, but I follow my nose. I find the intersection but have to ask a gas station attendant where the PO is because it's on a side street and hidden.

Anyway I find it and fling myself into the place with about ten minutes to spare. My app is off to the Bemis Foundation, yay. That's one Rubicon crossed.

(At the PO I discovered that I'd left my wallet at home, which had my license -- and woe unto me if I got into a fenderbender without it, so the return leg was a lot slower, heh.)

And then I shoveled off my walks and my arms got all trembly from strain, so now instead of penciling I will do my *sigh* taxes.

It'll take my mind off the scans_daily unpleasantness, at least. *fistshake*

Edit: OH CRAP JURY DUTY. *groan*