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You are viewing the most recent 20 entries February 8th, 201011:59 pm: A week in the life of Yonmei: Monday
Meme: A Week In the Life rules if you want to join in, but basically - 6 to 8 photos a day, every day for a week, each one labelled (at least) with time and place it was taken. All of these photos were taken at Edinburgh Zoo, today (Monday 8th February 2010) ( Noemie the Sclater's Lemur )( Perfectly Ordinary Squirrel )( Ring-tailed Lemur Matriarch )( Baby King Penguin )( Painted Hunting Dog: Will Lurk for Food )( Painted Hunting Dog: if this were an archived fanfic, it would probably have to have a warning on it )( Emu! Dinosaur bird )     Current Mood:  tired , birds, edinburgh, penguins, photos, redbubble, zoo
05:12 pm: Zoo. Snow.
I went to the zoo. It snowed. It also hailed. WTF? (The red river hogs were outdoors when it started to hail, and had what looked like a panic attack, running round and round their enclosure until they figured out where the exit was.) Current Mood: amused , zoo
February 7th, 201012:03 pm: Plans for next week
Each day: take six to eight photos for a week in the life meme. Each day: write something complete. A drabble. A flashfic. Something. Monday: Edinburgh Zoo. Tuesday: Support Mohammed Atif Siddique - Appeal Court Hearing on Tuesday 9 February. From 9am. Wednesday: Do a Glasgow Art Galleries day? (Could also take the Renfrew-Yoker ferry, which I have never done. Further planning seems indicated.) Thursday: "My Name Is Khan". Thursday or Friday: Out to Queensferry Museum (53 High Street, South Queensferry, Edinburgh EH30 9HP) Thursday, Friday and Saturday 10am–1.00pm and 2.15pm–5pm, Sundays 12 noon–5pm. Needs a sunny day, so if Thursday is sunny I may just go see Khan the next day. Saturday or Sunday: See the Documentalist exhibition at the Collective Gallery, Cockburn Street. Before Sunday: 'Painter' and The Studio | Paul McCarthy and the Myth of the Artist at the Gallery of Modern Art. (Nicely combined with a river walk. Also with doing a flyer for BP's involvement in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and other human rights abuses and leaving it in the Dean Gallery with the BP Portrait exhibit. Nominated for the 2009 Greenwash Awards.) Royal Mile and just off it - depending how long and how involved the Mohammed Atif Siddique case takes, this is doable Tuesday. Drawing for Instruction: the Art of Explanation at the Talbot Rice Art Gallery Toby Paterson exhibition at the Fruitmarket Gallery Writers Museum. The People's Story: The Museum of Edinburgh. Means giving the queen £5.50 The Heart of the Great Alone at Holyroodhouse. (Plus mug-buying mission for ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) threeoranges!) Saturday: launch of Femstruation Week. Many fun activities at the Big Red Door or the Forest Cafe. (Should I go? Will it become obvious I find the whole concept both touching and amusing: I want to giggle and at the same time feel that would be Very Mean. Is this the right frame of mind? Er. OMG, if my cycle remains on schedule, I will be starting my period on the launch day. How ... appropriate.) Saturday, 11-4 at the Forest: Front of house are having their 3rd meeting this time we will sand our dirty tables and make them new nice and shiny witht the help from you! so step by this week if you have ideas for some nice designs for tables! We will also make some nice preparations for valentines day to help the forest love bloom! Taking a holiday ideas. (This is all awesomely ambitious but designed to try and stop me from the "oh I'm on holiday I don't have to go anywhere, whoops, where did the day go?" feeling.) Current Mood: hopeful , bloody bloody bloody, glasgow, to do lists, working at the forest
February 6th, 201009:53 am: Taking a holiday
I'm not going anywhere. But I'm not going into work, either. Properly speaking my holiday does not start today, because I am doing a half-day training course with someone from one of our sibling organisations this afternoon (nine baby activists, want to learn how to use web tools to promote their work). Tomorrow, however, I'm on holiday. Well, it's Sunday. I'm not going back to work till Monday after next. Suggest something interesting or different (and inexpensive ... stares sadly at bank account) that I could do this week. Current Mood: awake February 5th, 201006:41 pm: Passive aggressive for the win
Not really. I just noted to TS#1 that it's funny how you can tell when an e-mail or a survey response begins "I am curious why" or "I am puzzled that" - you just know what follows is going to be a passive-aggressive complaint. They're not curious or puzzled. They just want you to know they're pissed. Without actually being unladylike and saying so. Current Mood: assertive not aggressive , hitting my head against the wall
10:53 am: Some people are SCUM
I just got one of the fraudulent Haiti appeal emails. I forwarded it on to fraud @ redcross.org.uk, with the message headers in full. But argh. Some people are such scum. :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( Current Mood: aggravated February 3rd, 201009:46 pm: Snow pretty!
Temperature, zero. Tomorrow it's supposed to get warmer again. Also, sunny. I shall be worrying for the rest of the winter (technically, it will soon be spring) that BBC Weather has got everything horribly wrong and in fact we are going back into the Arctic. I made myself a big pot of what might be called dhal except it was made with onion and grated carrot and rosemary, as well as a chilli or two. It is quite tasty and very nice on a snowy evening. I shall fry some garlic (and more chilli) and swirl it through the almost-dhal for more flavour. The snow is very pretty. Current Mood: pleased , weather
06:42 pm: Racist: I do not think this means what you think it means
Poll #4877 American confusion
Open to: All, results viewable to: All"American" is not a race *sigh* --- Update, 6th Feb 2010 Anonymous commenter: 76.232.121.66, apparently in Valley Village, California: believes "American" is a race. Isn't it odd (she says snidely) how these people are never willing to make comments they sign their names to? Current Mood: annoyed , polls
February 2nd, 201010:13 pm: Signal boost: shout and shout until someone responds
Ou mèt chita. Li malad, menm jan avek nou: I want to write everything down – those mundane remembrances of how life was before -- because as time passes I am afraid that people will become fossilized, that their lives and identities will begin to be knowable only through the facts of their deaths. My field notes are buried in that collapsed house. Those notes are an artifact, a record of a lost time, stories about people when they were just people -- living, ordinary people who told dirty jokes, talked one-on-one to God, blamed a fart on the cat, and made their way through a life that was grinding but not without joy or humor, or normality. I don’t want my friends to be canonized. Read the rest, repeat, respond In the UK: Donate now to the DEC Haiti Earthquake Appeal Current Mood: thoughtful January 31st, 201006:07 pm: Parties, loud music, cake, and family stuff
The party last night was OK, except that by about 10pm (I'd been there since 7pm) the loud music was doing my head in. The birthday girl (her 70th) had got a DJ to come and do a mini disco, which was great for those who want to disco (there were all ages on the floor, from 3 to 80) but not so good for those whose idea of a great party is one where you get to meet / talk to people, which is me. (I overheard a couple of people trying to get the DJ to turn the music down, but he evidently had his music-for-the-night planned out, and wasn't about to change it just for party-goers who wanted to talk.) So I left. Need to go pick up the boxes and such I used to transport the cake and such: it'll be at the partygiver's house. I was not in a good mood for a party anyway, with family stuff and such: my mum had got a definite plan for the weekend, and not only spent ages on Friday night lecturing me on how I had nearly spoiled it for her, she'd also sent me a lengthy text message about how my behaviour was Not On (I'd suggested we switch a walk up Arthur's Seat from Saturday to Sunday) she'd also got everything to happen her own way anyway (the walk up Arthur's Seat didn't happen). On the good news front, my dad's much much better - he's progressed to a single cane, and he can go up and down stairs without immediate support except the cane, though so far he's only done so with someone else immediately in front (or behind) of him for support. Current Mood: tired , just my life really
January 29th, 201009:20 pm: I feel so proud of myself
The rope on my pulley broke. This was a rope I had bought in September 2006. It broke in December 2008, and as my tall brother and taller nephew were visiting at the time it broke, the two of them rehung the pulley from the reknotted cord back then. (It's a primitive yet effective device that hangs from my kitchen ceiling (which is about 10 feet high) and takes advantage of the fact that hot air rises to dry my clothes. Or anything I hang up there.) So, anyway, this 4-and-a-half year old rope broke, was reknotted, and broke again on 19th January. 10 days ago. I normally don't let 10 days go between laundry-loads, but I had literally just done two loads - bedding and clothing - and I had to buy new rope (which I did - bright blue polypropelene, thicker and I hope stronger) and I had to fret, panickily, about how I couldn't re-hang a pulley on my own, it was a two-person job and, um... work colleagues also busy and besides, work colleagues: other friends living minor to substantial distances off: not wanting, in an Edinburgh sort of way, to invite a neighbour in to help me hang it... But tonight. I thought. Okay. I really can't let the weekend pass without asking someone over to help me re-hang it, and there are options: Ajay, First, TS#1, people I can ask. But, I realised: I'm not going to be able to ask unless I can truly and honestly say that I tried to rehang it single-handed and I just couldn't do it. Also, I thought, if I can do it single-handed, then it's done, and I can wash my whites and my towels and my t-shirts and my sheets and pillowcases (not all at once, obv). So. Well. It took me three hours, though that included several mindbreaks where I went elsewhere in the flat to watch TV/glance at a book/read House fanfic. I didn't even need deepbluesquee's parrot (though the loan was much appreciated): I just had to keep moving the ladder from one end of the kitchen to the other as I rethreaded, knotted, got it wrong, took down and re-rethreaded and re-knotted, a 15m length of bright blue rope through those two little wheels at one end and the one little wheel at the other, so that I can raise and lower the pulley to dry my washing. Several times the pulley, lacking the second person to hold it steady at the right height, flew off sideways or downwards, but nothing got broken. I did it. All by myself. I feel so proud. Current Mood: accomplished 02:42 pm: Spirit: not forgotten
dust under my wheels
dry dust everywhere
i roll through emptiness -- not even death
no sedimentary formations
no spherules
no water
my world is null
--- Spirit's last poem, Thursday, March 4th, 2004 ( as much as i enjoy the isolation here, it's really nice to know that people are reading me. i should really post more often )On 26th January 2010, 2274 Mars days into the mission, NASA declared Spirit a "stationary research station" expected to stay operational for several more months until the dust buildup on its solar panels forces a final shutdown. ( XKCD, 29th January 2010) "There's a class of science we can do only with a stationary vehicle that we had put off during the years of driving," said Steve Squyres, a researcher at Cornell University and principal investigator for Spirit and Opportunity. "Degraded mobility does not mean the mission ends abruptly. Instead, it lets us transition to stationary science."
One stationary experiment Spirit has begun studies tiny wobbles in the rotation of Mars to gain insight about the planet's core. This requires months of radio-tracking the motion of a point on the surface of Mars to calculate long-term motion with an accuracy of a few inches.
"If the final scientific feather in Spirit's cap is determining whether the core of Mars is liquid or solid, that would be wonderful -- it's so different from the other knowledge we've gained from Spirit," said Squyres. Now a Stationary Research Platform, NASA's Mars Rover Spirit Starts a New Chapter in Red Planet Scientific Studies Current Mood: sad , let's all be outcasts together, life on mars, weird stuff, xkcd
January 28th, 201012:30 pm: Does what it says on the tin, but I don't like it...
Last time I had dinner at a local tapas restaurant, I ordered Calabacines Rellenos from the fusion section of the menu. ( Afterwards, I wrote this e-mail ) At dinner last night (a different restaurant) I mentioned this, and some people said they agreed - they probably wouldn't have complained either, if they'd just disliked the dish but it hadn't been wrong - but one man said definitely that he would have complained because he feels you always have a right to enjoy a meal in a restaurant, and if you don't, the restaurant should know about it. Politely and mildly, he said, but he always would say he didn't care for it when asked. (It came up because I dined off two side-dishes last night: the vegetarian mains was the blue cheese and pear ravoli, which someone else in the party had already ordered on a previous visit, and she'd loathed it: too much cream sauce and not enough flavour in the ravoli. She'd complained about it, and they'd taken it away and not charged her for it.) What would you do?     Current Mood: hungry , edinburgh, writing complaining letters
January 27th, 201004:24 pm: Going out to dinner
Meeting up with a friend to celebrate his partner's birthday (which is today; and his partner is dead; but as he said, it seems a bit shabby to let it slide for that reason) and besides finding out what a sweet Manhattan tastes like (he's a very bad influence) I discover that the dinner menu there is, um, delicious but limited. There's one starter: savoy cabbage & pearl barley risotto, with toasted almonds; one main course: pear ravioli, blue cheese & walnuts; and a host of delicious desserts, but. (On the other hand: the side dishes look awesomely nice, and I may just make a meal off one or two of them, given there will be non-vegetarians present with a bigger menu to choose from): roast root vegetables; potato pave (whatever); lentil & spinach dahl; carrot puree; stilton, walnut & chicory salad. Current Mood: amused/sad , drunken adventures in drinking
01:08 pm: I need more coffee
Also, more superglue, lunch, and more sleep. None of these things connect with each other. Current Mood: weird January 26th, 201012:12 pm: Curious curing curia
With one exception all the subjects were overt homosexuals who applied for treatment for various reasons. Four subjects accepted organotherapy by compulsion—that of a court order in the case of G.W., and by the parents of the three adolescent homosexuals R.R., A.D.2, and F.G. The other seven subjects sought treatment because of a desire to live heterosexually—some for social or economic advantages and others because of a desire to marry. One was a typical bisexual who preferred a heterosexual role. -"Limitations and Complications of Organotherapy in Male Homosexuality", S. J. Glass, M. D. and Roswell H. Johnson, Ph.D., © 1944 by the Endocrine Society. Therefore, our scientific efforts in regard to homosexuality should be to identify genetic and uterine causes, as well as environmental and social influences [Q.V.] that put their children at greater risk of this reproductive dysfunction so that the incidence of this dysfunction can be minimized, and where it occurs anyway its negative effects on the individual and the rest of society can be minimized.
Yet this very suggestion is invariably seized upon by normalizers as an attack on homosexuals, a desire to "commit genocide" against the homosexual community. - "Science on gays falls short", Orson Scott Card, 2008   Current Mood: unamused
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