| The Waiting |
[Dec. 4th, 2009|02:21 am] |
My birth Uncle is hosting my birthmother for a few days. She does not know that he and I have been emailing each other daily, for months. He has not talked to her in over 25 years, and because of me writing him, and telling him who I am, he has decided to reconnect with his sister.
He told me he will find out as much as he can about my brother I never knew about.
I am wondering if my brother knows of me, and my/ our sister.
The waiting..... |
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| Exquisite Corpse V84.1 |
[Dec. 3rd, 2009|10:44 pm] |
Time for another round o Everybody's Favorite Online Collaborative Poetry Game™ - Exquisite Corpse! Let's do a Winter Haiku. I'm going to provide you with the second line of a 5-7-5 haiku, and you'll each provide the first and third lines. Easy!
[your first line goes here]
Warm Gingerbread Men Baking
[your third line goes here] |
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| First Maine, now New York |
[Dec. 3rd, 2009|10:18 pm] |
We just saw a short period of expansion of our rights, and now there’s some push-back. We need to push back even harder – I hate to have to feel like I have to become a single-issue voter, because the world is so much more complex than that, but human rights are at the foundation of society. I will not support any candidate who does not support full equality for gayfolk, and you shouldn’t, too, no matter how otherwise qualified he or she is.
Let me say that again: human rights are the foundation of society. They underpin all transactions that people can perform. We know all this already, but one cannot hear it too many times.
I will not volunteer for or donate to any candidate who does not support full equality for all people. I don’t care if they are the perfect abolish-corporate-personhood-single-payer-healthcare-withdraw-our-troops-from-everywhere-let-the-teachers-teach candidate. If they do not support full civil rights for gayfolk, including full marriage, employment, housing rights, then screw them. I will not support apartheid. This is the absolute highest priority issue for me. Even though I don’t want the government in the marriage business at all, if a government sanctioned institution is available to some, it must be available to all. |
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| It's all about the Suite, Sweetie |
[Dec. 3rd, 2009|07:49 pm] |
When wandering through the local library how can one NOT pick up a book with Louis XV settee on the cover? I mean, really?!
DeJean is a trustee of UPenn and has written a series of books on French life, letters, culture from the 17th and 18th centuries. Her central argument in this work is that the French court of Louis XIV witnessed the change in decor and lifestyle arrangements from formal public display to one which emphasized the need for private comfort as well. Hence the bifurcation of Versailles corridors, as well as subsequent royal, noble and mercantile homes and palaces. New styles of furniture were invented: sofas! comfy chairs! As well as new home conveniences, the flushing toilet! Sadly the French did not also invent the shower or the bath.
Fun book. And pretty pictures. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 3rd, 2009|04:17 pm] |
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Jesus was no saint. I even double-checked on www.catholic.org. Just sayin'. |
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| TGIT |
[Dec. 3rd, 2009|03:34 pm] |
Almost Friday. I can feel it.
Two of my co-workers separately inquired about Steve this morning. The gay one said that they've never been introduced. The pregnant one said that she missed him, LOL.
So who meets me for lunch today? My husband. I did introduce him to the gay co-worker. Steve and I went to Eliza's for lunch. It's just a few blocks away, but I had never eaten there. Inexpensive chinese food that is far better than the other places around here. Yum.
Tonight is my last "active" potions class. Tonight is digestion of proteins and fats. I think it would be better if they served food. Next week is the final exam for lab. I'll be so happy to be done with it! |
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| This is timely: Google DNS |
[Dec. 3rd, 2009|01:52 pm] |
Google launches public DNS: http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/intro.html
Given that I don't use my personal domain for anything but hosting stale web pages these days, I think I just might give this a go.
If I need to, I'll poke a mini-hole in the firewall here at the house and move those stale old webpages here too and host them on my Personal Web Server (what goes around comes around, eh?). And for domain mail, well, I can just use Google Apps too. |
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| The world without us |
[Dec. 3rd, 2009|07:23 am] |
Finished reading "The World Without Us"... a book that was slow to start, and then piled up a huge sad mess of the garbage pile and damage that humans are doing to the world. It's not a huge preachy book at all, one that makes up new deities like Gaia or shouts like some Naomi Klein manifesto.
I've started to realize that in my short life I've seen some things that already have gone extinct, places and wildlife that don't exist anymore, and that as I get older more and more of the world I knew won't exist anymore.
Some things I will not see again, and you won't see now either:
- Kakadu National Park. In 2002 when I visited, it was without cane toads. Now they've arrived.
- Tasmanian devils in the wild--or as semi-frequent early morning road kill as they scavenge the other, overnight roadkill. The devils are afflicted with a contagious face cancer... and also, foxes in the past couple of years have established themselves in Tasmania for the first time
- Horny toads in my southern California backyard, which have had a population crash
- The extensive pine and oak forests of eastern San Diego County. It all went up in smoke in 2003, and with today's more frequent burning cycles it won't come back.
- Chilean sea bass and orange roughy on the menu. Both species are slow to reproduce, and tasty. I feel a bit guilty because I didn't know it at the time (Chilean sea bass has a real name of Patagonian toothfish, which isn't really marketable).
And more things that I expect will not be around in the future.
- Tuna sashimi. This will all go away in the next decade. No more.
- Rhinos. The Asian trade in rhino horn as a sex medicine for men has dropped the rhino population 96% since 1970
- Cheetahs. Not much hope here.
- Madagascar. With last year's coup by a 31 year old DJ, Western aid has been pulled. The Chinese have no such scruples, and have filled this vacuum by ramping up their logging of palisander and rosewood for perfume and furniture. http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-lemurs23-2009nov23,0,3940315.story?page=1
- Close to home, the Laguna Mountain forest and the Palomar Mountain forests. More people living in the brush-filled East County means more fires, and more demands for fire suppression, which paradoxically leads to large intense firestorms. (A few miles away in Mexico, northern Baja California does not have the intense fires that southern California has, though it has the exact same environment.)
- San Onofre State Beach. Orange County *will* push a freeway through it to accommodate their pro-sprawl mentality, and then spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a fake park. It just takes a Republican administration and an upturn in the business cycle to get it done.
Part of me just wants to travel more, to get out and see it all in some mad frenzy before it all goes. And I see it all as sad--the destruction of ignored beauty through both carelessness and deliberation. |
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| First Christmas present ... |
[Dec. 3rd, 2009|09:19 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  bouncy | ] |
An early pressie has arrived from Gwynfor and Ceri. When I stepped outside the back door this morning I found that a delivery driver had left two polystyrene crates containing frozen meat and dry ice.
Bambi and Thumper have been successfully relocated to our freezer. |
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| Star Trek/ Fireball XL5 |
[Dec. 3rd, 2009|01:15 am] |
We just watched the latest Star Trek movie on BluRay. Loved the film, and loved all the references if you caught them all. I heard "That does not compute" from "Lost In Space", "I'm a Doctor Jim" from the original "Star Trek" , and others. What I really liked was the end credits visuals.
Both John and I said, "That's the end credits for "Fireball XL5!!".
So if you have seen the film, and remember the camera flying through space and stopping at various planets, and moons during the end credits, you'll see another scifi classic had done the same in it's end credits.
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| 213,500 |
[Dec. 2nd, 2009|09:25 pm] |
213,500 - thats how many pounds I lifted at the gym in November.
I go to the YMCA in Palo Alto - and they use the fitlinx system. The Computerized workout system connects to all the cardio equipment - to monitor your performance on the machine (whether I do a HARD CARDIO day on the Arc Trainer or an easy elliptical day watching television (tonight was the 2nd to last episode of the latest top chef while ellipiticalating. (is that a word?) LOL. then I move on to the Cybex circuit. I enter my code and the machine tells me what weight to set things and the back rest or leg rest involved in the machine.
Three days a week I do two sets on 12 stations - and it records my reps - and collects my work out - then I get an email about two hours later showing me a summary - and suggesting where I might up the weights if I'm lifting for several workouts at the top of the target (12 reps +). It also rather bluntly points out days when I don't finish the circuit - or when I shyly try to shave 5 minutes off the 30 minutes of cardio I agreed to in the workout plan. its a good thing the automated messages are type only. They are only a little shy of saying "All this weight you've lifted is useless because you wussed out on the ARC trainer last Saturday morning - what a loser" (laughing)
I've been really pleased with my workout progress since I moved to Palo Alto in July. I"m lifting weights hard three evenings a week - and doing Body Pump class. I finally feel like I belong in the BodyPump class rather than the newbie in the back with bad form. (giggle)
While I do miss "the gayest gym in the universe" at SOMA Golds in the city - my workouts are a lot more focused in a gym full of college girls and family age kids. The atmosphere is much less party all the time (imagine a gym where they don't pump a porno soundtrack.....) So I am getting more WORK done. I guess I'll have to flirt more when I'm in the city to make up for the times I'm not at the SOMA Golds. (wink)
on another topic - one of my tactics for getting through the darkness of wintertime? (that thankfully starts turning the other direction in just a few weeks) FRESH FLOWERS - particularly tulips. I adore tulips (having grown up near the LaConner Tulip Fields and marching many-a-time in Oak Harbor's Holland Happening Parade) So Sunday at the store I picked up some gorgeous fresh red and yellow tulips and I thought I'd share them.
Beautiful traditional yellow and red tulips for the market
when I get home from the gym at night - Miss Kate shadows me - and always like to sit under my chair while I work on my writing. :) |
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| It's official |
[Dec. 2nd, 2009|08:28 pm] |
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| |  happy | ] |
Working again! |
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I saw this and thought of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kiltbear :) |
[Dec. 2nd, 2009|08:15 pm] |
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tired
