What do I know of the World

*dusts off hands* So the hard part is done, and the three plants we got last week are in the ground. And as promised, pictures:



( More )

We've got a Hydrangea (that I nicknamed Hortense in an extremely lame pun, 10 points if you get why it's such a bad pun) Japanese Toad Lily, and Chinese Astilbe. When I put them in the other day it was apparently just in time since they perked up instantly and looked quite potbound at that point. I might go down to one of several local garden places later to find some (cheap) other things to add as well, and I know Mom wants to put some Lily of the Valleys in at some point, and we know someone who we ran into at one of said stores who said she had some we could take.

The stone wall is sort of based on the type we have around here, and just driving down our street you see a lot. Most are left over from the 1800s when people tried to farm this area, but like me they quickly found that after you dig about 6 inches down you hit slate, and assuming you get below that it's sand. The good soil is in the bottom of the valley, up here it's just leftovers from the glacier, and we happen to be the top of the ridge where the glacier scraped off a bunch of rocks.

And I'm glad to say that our horse manure makes excellent soil once it decomposes. The stuff I used on here is several years old, and it's obvious these guys love it.

Well, I got the check for the work I did last week that ended with me on the floor.

18 dollars.

FFFFFFFFFF...

Oh well, it's better than nothing (and actually a bit more than I expected, they must have counted the time I was in the ambulance). And my aunt is also having me feed her cats next week for a little more money than that next weekend, and just maybe the temp people can land me something else.

And since I'm a masochist the stone wall is coming along in the rock garden. I might have pictures by the end of the day since I know some people want to see it. I want to get the hydrangea and astilbe in the ground ASAP before it gets too hot.

Speaking of being too hot, I shouldn't have worn a white shirt while I was doing this. Oh well, at least I remembered to wear the ratty jeans with a hole in the knee instead of my good ones.

I've been looking for a bedframe over the summer for the new apartment, and as I looked online I quickly found they were really damn expensive. As in, $100 for the crappy ones. Yowch. Luckily Mom knew of a place called The Trading Post down by my aunt's house that sells cheap older stuff, and we found a nice twin headboard for $20. Let it never be said I'm not a cheapskate, because I am. I'll probably go back at some point to get some other good quality cheap crap and add that place to my list of good buys around here.

Our friends Ted and Elizabeth have a twin mattress and boxspring on a metal hollywood/hotel frame they're willing to give us, so all we need to do is attach this baby:



8 happens to be my favorite number. It needs a little TLC, but Mom has some stuff that you can just rub on that'll get the finish back in a presentable state.

I also looked at JC Penny online to see what they have in terms of sheets since I'll probably need some of them, and relating to a discussion I was linked to about how there's no way a guy would buy nice lavender sheets (I hope the sarcasm in that sentence comes through) I saw the JC Penny also subscribes to that bullshit with "girls'" and "guys'" bedding. Naturally the image for the girls' is a pink glittery thing while the guys' it's some sports team's colors. Screw you, JC Penny. This is why I hate gendered products that don't need to be gendered. Would it kill them to just make them in neutral colors and not do the "these are only for girls" stuff that reinforces stupid stereotypes (not to mention the fact that I hate pink)? It's a bullshit category in the first place since they contain a lot of the same stuff. Plus in my opinion a lot of it is pretty ugly. To quote my friend Krys, if your bedding glows in the dark and you're over the age of 8 you're probably overdoing it. (Hey, there's the number 8 again!)

Mass. files federal suit against DOMA

[State Attorney General] Coakley says DOMA interferes with Massachusetts's ability to define and regulate marriage; the commonwealth has allowed same-sex marriage since 2004. On a conference call on Wednesday, Coakley called DOMA "discriminatory" and says it undermines and complicates legal matters in Massachusetts because it often puts the state in conflict with the federal government.

Now that's getting a heavy hitter involved! It also helps counter the "states rights" argument for DOMA by having a state say that it actually interferes with their right to govern themselves, and it means they have a two-pronged attack against it by GLAD pushing it from a 14th Amendment angle while they're going at it from the 10th. If I ever get the chance to interview Attn. General Coakley I'll shake her hand and thank her, and the Governor while I'm at it since he no doubt told her to do it. Way to stand up for your people, Mass!

The rock garden is coming along, I'm mainly at the collecting rocks phase so I can build up the border. This is more or less what the farmers who came here in the 17 and 1800s did, only like me they found that you can only go down about 6 inches until you hit rock. Most of the stone walls around here are made of the stones people pulled up when they dug the soil, so I'm sort of continuing the tradition. I'm mainly looking for flatter ones, and there are plenty around here and around the house. I'll probably need about twice as much as I have now to make a decent wall in and around where the big stones that already form the circle are.

Mom and I went out to a couple different garden stores to look at things we can put in there, so we have a Chinese Astilbe and a Japanese Toad Lily so far. We didn't get one today, but I still want to get a hydrangea, preferably a blue one, and the fact that the soil there is very acidic should help it keep its blue color. I still have some crap to take out of the bed so I can lay down the top soil, but it's coming along. We also have some extra bleeding hearts from our own beds I can replant, and plenty of ferns that I can grab too.

Mom and I were both thinking of putting a Buddha in there once it's all finished, and at the garden centers I kept seeing Laughing Buddhas and wincing. I once read an article by a Buddhist that said that he winces whenever he sees one in a garden, which is supposed to be a protective place, because it's like letting a drunk guy guard your house. Americans apparently like that version because he reminds them of Santa Claus, but he's much more appropriate to have inside the house. The meditative one is more suitable for that space. Mom and I both saw a version of that one at this garden center that we liked, so we might get it later.

I downloaded the new version of The GIMP and have been playing around with it with pictures of my RP character. This is an RP that also has a comic that chronicles events, it's a fairly complex system, but the RP is more or less separate. I've been trying to get better at drawing both in general and on the computer, but I think I'm getting much better, the usual hurdles aside. I am getting better at doing figures and using the tools, though hands and feet still give me hell.

( Read more... )

Next, I've got another person's character to do. I originally did a base intended to draw Tor again, but I realized the figure looked more male so I said "hell with it" and started doing him.

As you can see he's had a very productive day.





Now I'm going to follow his example and actually try to get some sleep tonight.

Some people may remember the giant ice storm that made us lose power for 10 days? We're still cleaning up from it, and we had to down one of our big pine trees, which stood by the barn. Dad's been working through the wood pile and finally got it all cleaned up, and I happened to like how it was set up. We just decided to leave the circular pieces there, though Dad and I played with how the one on top should sit for a while:





Needless to say, this is enough firewood for about five years. And it's only one pile out of six (Correction: eight, and the ones pictured are the cherry tree, though the stacked pieces did come from the pine tree. Shows how much I know about this stuff). So if civilization collapses we'll at least have "act of God" firewood as my dad calls it.

And while I'm at it, more picture spam from today (Dad and I were screwing around with my camera for a while):

( Read more... )

I had one of those nights last night where your brain doesn't completely shut down and go into REM sleep, so I'm not completely with it. I'm not sure exactly why that happened, but it's unpleasant.

First I was woken up by a cricket in Ryu's terrarium (and by God those things are loud!) then Jesse, then another cricket. The crickets were put in the enclosure with the rest of them after I caught them, while Jesse was kicked out of my room. Still no luck falling asleep. I eventually decided to get up at 11 to try and have a somewhat normal day.

In short, don't trust me with anything important today. I probably shouldn't drive either. And it's the first decent day we've had weather-wise in a while too. Ugh.

I've been doing various projects since we got back. For the sake of not putting this off longer I'll just list them:

• Coleus plant I had at Suffolk has grown about half a foot since we left on vacation, need to put it in bigger pot sometime soon.
• Sweets peas have similarly shot up, twist-tied them onto trellises to help them catch onto them.
• Trying to start a couple of rosemary plant cuttings from our plant here (since they'd more or less be clones of the original) and a few have started to put out roots, so I'll probably plant them in about a week.
• Actually vacuumed the living room today, since chunks of Jesse-fur and sand from the beach have gathered and are probably irritating our allergies. Managed to terrify the cats with the vacuum, though it's partly their fault.
• Tried to put fly repellent on Pixel and Spirit yesterday, got hip-checked by Spirit and nearly reared at when I tried to get close to his face with it. For once Pixel cooperated, but Spirit did not like me doing that. In my haste to get out of striking range I forgot to latch the gate, and as a result the horses got out at 5 in the morning, but were caught by my mom. Mea culpa.

Said hip check by Spirit has left me pretty sore (what with him being about 5 times my size), but otherwise I'm doing okay. The weather is supposed to clear up tomorrow, which should be good after all of this rain.

And oddly, the woodpecker chicks in the tree in our backyard have stopped making noise. This is unusual since they had been going at it for days and hardly ever let up (seriously, it was like a car alarm). Hopefully they flew the coop rather than something eating them. *eyes Jesse suspiciously*

So yeah. I forgot to mention I was going to the Cape for a week. My bad, I meant to but it slipped by the wayside.

Here's a photo I took to make up for it:



Details later, right now too tired and busy checking on everyone else to do that much.

If people feel like telling me what's been going on in their lives feel free to comment, comments are screened.

Oh yeah. You know you've had glasses for a while when you have a recurring nightmare where one of the following happens:

Since I more or less consider them a part of my body this is a worrying concept, since it's more or less the equivalent of something happening to my eyes themselves. At a church picnic a few weeks ago I was a bit nervous that a kid I was playing with would hit me in the face with a ball and break them, since they'd break before my face did, which on the one hand is a good thing since it's not bone but also a pain since it would take a few days to replace them and in the meantime I'd have painful eye strain. In theory I could use the prescription sunglasses as a substitute, but for obvious reasons that might be awkward.

So that's the content of my anxiety dreams these days. Take from that what you will.

I actually took a nap today. This is a very rare event for me, since usually naps make me feel worse, but last night and today were rough enough that I just couldn't keep my eyes open and crashed for an hour and a half. I was mildly confused when I woke up again since I thought it might be morning again, and there was a weird whistling sound. The first one was because the light looked like early this morning when I had to wake up, and the second was Jesse snoring at the foot of my bed where I couldn't feel him.

Last night my dad started feeling really sick and had a fever, and sine this is uncharacteristic of him since he never gets sick we actually called the doctor to get a consultation. He appears to be fine, but he wisely took the day off and just got up for a bit. It sounds like he has what I got last November, which is a bug that hits you like a Mac truck with no warning and makes you feel like your blood is freezing. Not fun, but it goes away pretty fast, about 36 hours for me.

As for the temp agency interview, errors were made. Probably not by me, but it worked out in the end. I had to go to this place in Orange, a town North of here, and the first major confusion was that the location was identified as "Main St." Now the problem is that there are no less than four Main Sts. in Orange, North South East and West. All go different directions, and so far as I can tell there is no street just called "Main St." so I guess people there just know which one to use. It turns out I wanted West Main St., but I sure as hell couldn't tell that from the directions I'd been given, and in something that actually was my fault I failed to consult a map to figure out that there were four of them and then which Main St. I needed, given that one usually thinks that when you're told something in on Main St., you look for a sign that says "Main St." and do not expect to see four of them! Also, Orange sucks at labeling streets. However, knowing my past navigational failures I built time in so I could screw up and still show up at a reasonable hour. So I got to the right place at about 8:30, plenty of time for the walk ins they'd scheduled.

Except that they weren't there. I looked around, eventually asking someone where these people would be. Turns out they were on the second floor, room X, so I went up there. Only to find it deserted. Lights not even on. No signs of life. Thinking that they might just be on an extended bathroom break I waited around until 9, the end of this walk in period. I then tried to call their office to find out what was going on, only to find that I couldn't get a cell phone signal and naturally in this day and age there were no phone booths. So, dejected, pissed off hungry and on the verge of crying I carted myself back home, calmed down so I wouldn't rip someone's head off, and then called the office to find out what the hell was going on.

I got the woman who invited me to this thing in the first place, and she told me that I was actually supposed to show up tomorrow, the 11th. But in my initial phone call from her, where I was making notes while on the phone with her, she clearly said the 10th. 10th and 11th do not sound similar enough that I might have misheard. She apologized and sounded pretty sincere for the mistake, and told me to come to the same place tomorrow.

Which just means I have to wake up at the same time tomorrow (6:30 to be precise) and do it again. Ugh. Good thing I'm going on vacation next week.

I got Federal Work Study!!!

Seriously though, that makes it so much easier. It's only $2000 for the whole year, but compared to the $0 from last year it's a godsend. It also means that I have something to fall back on in case the co-op thing falls through (which it shouldn't, but after this year I've come to expect the worst). I've also got a "trustees' scholarship" "grandfathered tuition" (whatever that means) and a "president incentive loan" that becomes a grant as soon as I graduate. Also two loans that come up to quite a bit, but it's better than nothing!

*cartwheels around for a bit*

Since I have that work study I could theoretically work for the Restorative Justice center one of my former professors runs, and it would be great to work with her. She's also more or less a God in that area, and I remember really liking her.

So that's looking up very much. Yay!

I just had to correct someone who presented as a casual fact the idea gays are more promiscuous than straight people.

It is not true. The so-called "statistics" that prove this are not valid, collected from skewed sources (if you go to a gay sex club you're going to get people who have lots of sex, that would be like going to a brothel to get heterosexual sex statistics) and they're used by people who clearly have an agenda, mainly to keep people like me from getting the rights we deserve.

And you know what? I'm personally offended when people say that, because I'm not and I don't appreciate being shoehorned into a category just because of some bullshit statistic that's over 20 years old by now and was never valid to begin with.

I didn't expect to get as pissed off as I did, but in case this didn't make it obvious it got under my skin more than I thought it would.

(The sociologist in me would like to point out that bisexual people get similarly shafted when it comes to this, but thanks to the above mentioned bullshit no one has bothered to do a legitimate study for about 20 years to prove it wrong.)

The Problem with Skirts by ~AthenAltena on deviantART

Lately I've been drawing again, so I did my character Toreuol from Path to Power in an embarrassing situation. Even though she's "me" in the game she wears things I would never wear, and this picture illustrates why I would never wear them.

I think this turned out pretty well, though her legs are slightly screwed up. I just like how the facial expression turned out. I enjoy tormenting my creations. :D

So I got home from a trip in to Boston today for a mentorship training, and Stella had a very nice gift for me in the kitchen.

A mouse. Freshly killed from the basement. We can't fault the cats, though, it's what they do, and ours happen to be very good at it. I put it outside so she can play with it some more and so we don't have to deal with a dead mouse in the kitchen. She seemed very proud of herself and her catch and trotted outside to play with it some more.

Also, go New Hampshire. They also have the guy trying to override Prop 8 on the federal level on Charlie Rose tonight, but though I agree with his reasoning I think his trying to push this on a federal level could backfire spectacularly this early in the game. God speed to him, but if this does backfire he's going to become a very hated figure.

Nevada overrides governor's Domestic Partnership veto

The assembly voted 28-14 on Sunday to override the veto by Gov. Jim Gibbons, following a 14-7 vote by the senate on Saturday after an emotional debate. Legislators faced intense lobbying by the tourism industry, which feared a potential boycott by LGBT visitors if the veto was upheld.

Just shows that money talks, and that it works just as well as political leverage. Of course, now there are people suggesting that gays stop giving money to states like Florida because they have some extremely homophobic laws on the books, which I'd be all for. I think I'm under no obligation to give money to people who don't want to treat me like an equal citizen of this country, and there are plenty of other places to spend money. Like Massachusetts, or Vermont, or Connecticut, or Iowa.

We'll also probably see people "voting with their feet" now that more states have gay marriage laws. Something tells me that when these states see the economic benefit of having us there and throwing fabulous gay weddings the whole "moral dilemma" thing will take a backseat.

I found a website called "Screen It" that looks at movies and decides whether they're "family appropriate" and found a bunch of gems. This one in particular about Watchmen:

"The person responsible for The Comedian and others' deaths obviously has a bad attitude."

And no, I don't think they were being ironic. This site clearly takes itself far too seriously. Besides, any parent who takes a kid under the age of 16 to Watchmen in the first place deserves to get dropped down an elevator shaft, IMO.

They also said this about the new Star Trek movie under the category "Imitative behavior", after things like a kid driving a car over a cliff:

"Some kids might imitate the Vulcan hand gesture of spreading apart the two adjacent fingers on each side of the hand."

I get that the point of these websites is to prevent things like dumbass parents taking their kids to movies like Watchmen, but the unintended comedy is too much for someone who actually knows what these movies are about. It probably helps that I'm old enough that I can see any movie I want and have a healthy sense of humor about things like this.

Just a little gem from Monty Python I want to save for future reference (and philosophy department gatherings):

Immanuel Kant was a real piss-ant who was very rarely stable.
Heideggar, Heideggar was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel.
And Whittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nieizsche couldn't teach 'ya 'bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.
John Stewart Mill, of his own free will, after half a pint of shanty was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away, half a crate of whiskey every day!
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
And Hobbes was fond of his Dram.
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:
"I drink, therefore I am."
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed.

Also, this one, and I can tell I'm learning more and more about these guys so it becomes even funnier.