Should be interesting!
January 2005 Archives
Just saw these Schonbek Geometrix chandeliers on an HGTV show. They're being touted as "task lights for the kitchen." Well, la!! I want these in my kitchen for sure!
I spent several hours yesterday entering data from research on the LAIDIG family that a cousin (first cousin, twice removed) had done previously, and before I knew it, I ended up with eight generations! I've only entered two or three pages of Jere's research so far--there are many pages to go.
And then I have research on the HELZEL line from an uncle, and research on the WELLINGTON line from another cousin (also a first cousin, twice removed in the same direction--that generation must have been particularly into genealogy!) and as-yet unacted-upon contact information for the DEAM line that should lead to a wealth of data there as well. Whew!
PS - Just in case you're curious, here is a page that explains how to determine cousin-ness. In both of the cases mentioned above, the common ancestor is my great-great-grandparent and the cousin's grandparent. Thus first cousins, twice removed.
Great. My husband is an Evil Genius. That shouldn't surprise anyone ;-) And I'm a Hippie, which shouldn't surprise anyone either....
Wackiness: 50/100 Rationality: 44/100 Constructiveness: 66/100 Leadership: 14/100You are a SECF--Sober Emotional Constructive Follower. This makes you a Hippie.
You are passionate about your causes and steadfast in your commitments. Once you've made up your mind, no one can convince you otherwise. Your politics are left-leaning [ed. Huh?], and your lifestyle choices decidedly temperate and chaste.
You do tremendous work when focused, but usually you operate somewhat distracted. You blow hot and cold, and while you normally endeavor on the side of goodness and truth, you have a massive mean streak which is not to be taken lightly. You don't get mad, you get even.
Please don't get even with this web site.
Of the 83392 people who have taken this quiz since tracking began (8/17/2004), 10.5 % are this type.
Following the advice on the results page, since my wacky-factor was exactly 50%, I also looked up WECF.
You are a WECF--Wacky Emotional Constructive Follower. This makes you a Candle burning at both ends.You work until you drop, and you play until you can stand to work again. [Ed. This doesn't always sit well with employers.] You have so much enthusiasm that you can find it hard to control on your own, and you appreciate the guidance that channels your energy and lets you be your best.
In a relationship, you require lots of attention and support. You often over-contribute and end up feeling depleted and cheated. You may benefit from more time alone than you grant yourself.
Your driving force is the emotional support of others--especially affection. You can run on empty for miles if you have positive energy behind you. Without it--as it occasionally must run dry--you are depressive, listless, and difficult to motivate.
You need a lot of affection. Get it any way you can, but never at the cost of your self-respect or well-being.
Of the 83397 people who have taken this quiz since tracking began (8/17/2004), 7.5 % are this type.
Quiz here. Apply grains of salt.
I don't remember exactly how I found scribble, scribble, scribble (and I don't suppose it matters) but this is a generous and tempting offer. He's going to post the contents of the Contemporary Nonfiction course that he's teaching at Johns Hopkins University.
I think drugstores and grocery stores should let me, the customer, benefit from those frequent shoppers cards they use to learn all about me. Here's how it would work.
They already keep track of everything I buy, right? I want to log into a website where I can manage that list. In particular, I would check off items that I want to purchase the next time I'm at the store. When I get to the store, near the door where I pick up my cart or basket, there is a little scanner/printer. I wave my card under the scanner and it prints my shopping list for me. Arranged by aisle according to the layout of that particular store. I get a couple of coupons at the end, based on what I'm buying. Once I go through the checkout line, my "selected items" list gets zeroed out, ready for next time.
It might even print the whole list, showing x's or quantities next to the items I indicated I wanted to buy, and blanks next to the other stuff. This would serve as a reminder of all the stuff I normally get, in case I've forgotten that I need something. If I haven't selected anything to purchase, then it definitely prints the whole list.
One key is that this list needs to be legible, but not too long. Some of the grocery receipts today are just ridiculous--miles of paper touting all sorts of stupid savers programs that I'm not interested in. The shopping list needs to be fairly succint. And there should be a trash can at the checkout so I can throw it away. Or shred it! (Way more fun.)
I'm sure I'm not the only person who habitually forgets to bring my shopping list to the store....
Mr. Wisdom offers a mad-libesque formula for generating a fearsome war cry. So far my favorite example (in the original context) is skinbad's (11th comment) but it seems to me this is kind of a multi-purpose tool. For example, the saucy squirrel in Kim's reader's story yesterday might have considered
We the cleverly scurrilous fluffy-tailed brigade of nutmunchers are eagerly looking for the big clumsy hairless ones to come to our impenetrable and cozy winter hideout for a biblical-style ass whoopin' since they are petunias and will be weeded out of the garden of warmth like the trembling flowers they are by our long-toothed big scary squirrels of fear.
That would be the royal we, of course, in this case.
Now this little exposition about dashes contains just the sort of nitpicky detail that fascinates me. I particularly like knowing how to use an en dash in certain compound adjectives. Now I can have top-notch-letter-perfect descriptors :-)
[via Coudal Fresh Signals]
Update: Except that apparently the HTML endash tag is just a big fat lie, which kind of ruins my oh-so-clever example. Pbbbbt.
- I finally spent some time over the weekend exploring Technorati, and now that I realize what it actually does (at least in part), I'm hooked! I found two links that I didn't know about, one from Vandal with a Handle, who approved of my Christmas present, and one from Modulator, placing my first robin o' the spring in the Friday Ark last week. How neat! Thank you both :-)
And even better, I can make the list of inbound links into a "watchlist" and put it in FeedDemon via RSS, which is just plain fun.
- I signed up for the Amazon Associate program, not because I expect to make a fortune hawking books to my throngs of admiring readers, but so that the Man and I can put book covers in our posts. Also very neat, although I wish the pictures were a bit bigger. I may switch to the "basic display" which is more of a pain-in-the-butt because you have to host the picture yourself, but you do get a bigger image.
In an email from Prime Time Lou to the Man, regarding his reference to me as "the Mrs.":
Couldn't you just romance Darcy's handle a bit and call her Swampthinghoneysnookumsbeadbaby? After all, you're getting ready to celebrate 2 years of matrimony.
My sentiments exactly ;-)
(Actually, I don't particularly mind "the Mrs." although that title is already quite established in the blogosphere and I have no illusions that I'll ever be playing in Connie's league! (That was a compliment--I hope it sounds that way.) And, well, "the Man" isn't really very imaginative either. We'll see what transpires as he gets into this blogging thing. Does anybody have any brilliant ideas?)
Here's a great streaming source from The Grand Staircase: Radio Paradise - eclectic online rock radio. Based on the four or five songs I've heard so far, this is less edgy than KTRU, but entirely enjoyable. After all, KTRU does dissolve into unlistenable noise experiments on a fairly regular basis, and there's always the insufferable reggae show (aaaaaghhh kill me now!) on Wednesday afternoon (during my drive home! why????).
Update: MUCH less edgy. My husband should not go here.
Apparently we grow cats.
Carnival of the Cats this week at Music and Cats!
Yesterday's Bead Party was sooo much fun!
To lend an air of respectability to all the mimosa-drinking, I used the beautiful white table linens that Just Joe and Marianne gave us for Christmas.
The Man was in full chef mode, and insisted on plating the potato cake before fleeing the growing atmosphere of estrogen.
We had a very productive day--everybody made something, and most of us had time to make several pieces. Here Ann models her dangly earrings and I show off two of my necklaces:
And here is a round-up of the first set of bracelets:
TFLIH and I were last women standing, and we finished the afternoon with a lot of laughing as we tried to make beaded rings following instructions from a Japanese beading book. (Yes, the text is all in Japanese. Luckily, it has lots of pictures.) The results ranged from "Hey, that's pretty cool!" to "I'm just going to send this to my mother and tell her I made it. Then she'll have to wear it."
This morning I still had beads on the brain, so I got that book back out and tried one of the necklace patterns. It took for-frickin-ever but I like the results!
I do believe that The Magpie Instinct's motto, "All that glitters is good," has once again been proven true.
Undoubtedly not really the first robin around here, but definitely the first one I've photographed. I kept waiting for him to get that wing feather back into place, but he never did. Hope our neighbor didn't wonder why I was taking pictures of the side of her house....
I've been having a great day! I took a spur-of-the-moment vacation day and cleaned the house (Bead Party tomorrow!), ran errands (fresh flowers!), ordered an anniversary present (ooh ooh wanna link but obviously cannot), did a crossword puzzle, and had a glass of wine all before quitting time. I didn't even turn on the computer til after 3 pm, and then only to order the present. Turns out the Man was in the same frame of mind, as he came home with a present for me :-)
Wheeeee!! This is fun! Haven't looked at the results to see how easy it is to apply to an existing site, but I like seeing all the different color combinations. I'm getting bored with Gettysburg even though I usually only see my RSS feed....
In no particular order:
- Search Plugins for Firefox via Research Buzz. The WhoIs Source plugin is very cool. (Check your domain, Dad! You might be surprised at what's available ;-)
- Whether it's Philosophical Bill and Mathematical Bill, Bill's Comments are usually highly engaging.
- The Coudal Partners site is a smorgasbord of goodness. You can get a separate RSS feed of the "Fresh Signals" section that will keep you supplied with more links than you possibly have time to explore. These snippets aren't individually archived, but here are the endpoints of two recent examples: Fire Requiem, billed as "Carl Orff meets the power chord" (you know that caught my attention!) and Maritime Postcard Galleries, a likely candidate for The Museum of Online Museums.
- Found out that other people are intimidated by the gym as well. My biggest opposition to starting regular workouts was the idea that someone might see me exercising. I got over it.
- A dictionary that's fun to play with but hasn't made it on my list of "oh yeah, gotta remember to go there" sites yet. (Also from Research Buzz)
- I've heard about this file transfer service but haven't had an opportunity to try it yet.
- And also from Josh Rubin: Cool Hunting, what looks like the perfect chip clip.
Whew! Go. Surf.
That's my standard request of the grocery bagger, and sometimes it helps a little bit. I'll end up with five paper bags instead of 10 plastics (although one will inevitably be double-bagged), and three items per bag instead of two. But tonight the bagger took me seriously! He filled those bags to overflowing. An older man, he looked at me doubtfully, and said, "Are you sure you want these this way? They're really heavy!" I assured him I'd be fine and happily took my TWO, count 'em 1, 2, FULL paper bags home. One immediately went out with trash in it and the other is currently waiting under the counter for whatever scraps and wrappings result from tonight's dinner. Perfect :-)
There were some old Army camels in San Antonio, but Ford left these behind when it was discovered they did not thrive on corn.
"Lone Star, A History of Texas and the Texans" by R. R. Fehrenbach, p. 379
Even in context, that sentence struck me as amusing. On its own, well, I thought it was good enough to share with the world ;-)
Here's another neat color tool, ColorMatch 5k, via The Ultimate Insult. Use RGB sliders to set one color, and it calculates 5 other coordinating colors for you. Very K.I.S.S.
Update: Doesn't seem to work in FireFox :-(
Dinner tonight with The Fastest Lawyer in Houston! Here's the story on the marathon: Cousin Kirst and her friend had originally signed up for the full marathon, but decided "on game day" to just do the half. But the computer didn't know that.... So their times went against the full marathon. They finished the half-marathon in 2 1/2 hours, but they had on full-marathon bibs, so when they crossed the finish line, apparently the press went nuts and got all excited about "two local lawyers" with astounding times. (Sadly, the official website has since been updated to show the half-marathon times--her pace was just over 5 minutes/mile yesterday. Why didn't I take a screen shot then???)
Anyhow, Aunt Maureen was in town for the occasion and tonight we had dinner with our California kin, friend Cindy, and Just Joe and Marianne. In virtual attendance was The First Nephew, whose fierce sports-face is completely at odds with his incredibly sweet nature (sorry for telling on you, LG ;-)
As The Man sez, that boy is gonna be a lady-killer....
Well, I have been just SO productive this weekend, I can hardly stand it! Here is the next set of cards for Carey:
I made my task much easier by deciding to use the same layout as the previous set, and just change colors and motifs. These came together in just a few hours! I got to use one of my Dover books and I must say that having the art already scanned and on the CD is worth every penny! I already covet all the Dover clip-art books, and now they've come out with a new series that looks even better than the "CD ROM & Book" titles they already have....Oh, to have unlimited funds (and shelf space)....
Wine glasses are not supposed to explode when you wash them. Ouch.
The Houston Marathon is occurring as I type, and HP has a bunch of cool tools to help spectators track their runners. So from the comfort of my home, I can see that my trainer (the green dot) is kicking @$$ (she reached mile 18 just while I was cropping the screen shot and typing this), my cousin (the yellow dot--now at mile 13) decided to run the full marathon instead of the half like she said yesterday, and my co-worker (the blue dot) appears to have stalled at mile 9 of the half. He's been having knee issues, so I hope he's just tired and not hurt.
Update: Hmm, there must be something I'm not understanding, because now the "Live Split Updates" page is showing Cousin and Coworker as finished, but the Map page still shows their dots in the middle of their respective courses.
Update 2: Okay, I think I get it. Cousin ran a half-marathon but on the full marathon course (her last checkpoint is at mile 13). Coworker just stopped early :-(
When Kim wrote his super-nice post about Chester (see next to last post on the page) and linked to my story, I have to admit that I checked my log files on my server several times to see if I could detect an effect. It didn't seem like there was any extra activity, so I kind of forgot about it. However, in the last few days I've been doing research for the Man into such arcane blogstuff as sitemeter and the ecosystem, so I thought I'd go look at my statistics again. I guess the updating takes a day or so, because now it shows a definite Kimalanche!
I've no idea why Sunday shows zero activity. All my Sundays look that way, so I suspect it has something to do with the backups that my host runs. I'm usually doing maintenance on Sundays, so I know there should be at least some activity! Anyhow, it looks like things are back to normal, so I guess I won't bother registering in the ecosystem after all ;-)
In December, Carey asked me to make another set of cards for her. She said she had used all but one of the last set I made! How flattering :-)
This time around I decided to make sets of three or four instead of trying to make 12 all the same. Making that many of the same thing was reeeeeaaaaally boring. So I've been thinking about designs and materials for a while, and finally all the bits and pieces came together today and I made a first set of four:
I'm terrifically pleased with how they came out. I may need to add an insert of writing paper--the handmade paper I used for the body of the card is fairly rough. And I need to find or make stickers for the closures. But both of those are quick tasks. The bulk of the work is done.
I used both drawings and text from a wonderful old book about fossil shells that I rescued from the library sale a couple of years ago. The pages are foxed, the binding had completely disintegrated, and it looks like it got burned (!) somewhere along the line, but the paper is wonderfully smooth and pretty shades of brown. The drawings are attractive and the text might as well be lorem ipsum for all the sense it makes. I put the drawings on the fronts of the cards and used the text for envelope liners. (Just went searching for the last time I used the shell book--I had forgotten that I watercolored the drawings that time. I'm pretty sure I've used it for some other project between now and then, but I don't remember what.)
I also used some wallpaper from a sample book that I snitched from the trash at the Decorative Center, and I discovered that with a little fudging I can get two envelopes out of a single sheet of 12x12 scrapbook-sized paper, so I was able to finally dig into a stack of paper that I picked up on sale at Michael's ages ago. It's a little thicker than regular bond paper but thinner than cardstock (what I used last time), so it made nice envelopes.
All in all, quite a successful day! Now I just need to come up with two more designs so she'll have a set of 12 :-)
The Diplomad has really been on a tear about the UN's response (or lack thereof) to the tsunami relief efforts. There is a whole string of posts detailing the good work that the US and Australian armed forces and other non-UN organizations are doing, and exposing the bureacratic goings-on of the UN machine. The Diplomad has been on my daily read list in FeedDemon for a few months now and is always very interesting reading.
I heard a bit of this on KTRU on the way home today. Sounded kind of like R. L. Burnside.
[pause for research]
Here is a website with some samples (try All Hands Against His Own). And well whaddayaknow, look who else is on the label! (Wish I Was in Heaven Sitting Down is one of my favorite records of all time.) I swear I didn't look it up first :-)
Oh yeah, this one goes on the wish list. And I have a lot of exploring to do on the Fat Possum website.
The Carnival of the Cats is up at Leslie's Omnibus. Lots of kitties along for the ride this week! Enjoy :-)
Update: The other feline New Year's Resolutions are VERY funny....
My wonderful husband makes his internet debut tonight :-)
I think I'll be playing with MovableType quite a bit in the near future, as I'm managing his site as well as my own. In anticipation of one of his requests, I finally built a link module and implemented it here (see Daily Reads, Art and Technology, and Current Events sections on the sidebar). I'm very proud of myself, although this has been on my to-do list forever.... I built my lists from my FeedDemon opml files and it was quite a surprise to realize how many sites I only visit via RSS. I only go to the actual sites if they don't have full text RSS, so I had completely forgotten what some of these sites really "look" like. Maybe that's why it doesn't bother me that I still have a default template here ;-)
Future projects include del.icio.us links (for me) and sitemeter and ecosystem setup (for him). I'm feeling quite confident, since I managed to get MT running on my local machine for testing (thank you wampserver) so I don't have to worry about crashing my real site while I try stuff out. We'll see how long that confidence lasts....
Apropos of nothing whatsoever, here is a pic of the current contents of our freezer:
Although that bottle of wine has since been opened and is now in the fridge (except for the part that's in my glass, which may have something to do with why I'm posting pictures of the freezer).
Lorax: "I resolve to sleep as much as possible. Preferably near the Man. I also resolve to pester him for petting at least half my waking hours. And shed. And pounce on Melvin whenever she least expects it, which is pretty much any time, because she forgets, you know...."
Melvin: "Ummm, well, I guess I'll continue to be cute and clueless. Is that a rezzawatchamallit? Isn't it great how my eyes coordinate with the dining room walls? And how I look so nice next to flowers? I love to eat flowers. Hey, is that a buggie down there?"
Put this in the "why don't I have my camera right now" category. On the way to work this morning, while I was waiting at a stoplight, I saw a grackle eat a Cheeto. The bird was on a low railing that usually hosts one of the roster of "hungry god bless" sign-holders. The last human denizen abandoned a bag of Cheetos there (what, not that hungry?), but this bird was not letting the trans-fats or chemical colorings put him off. Since my car is low to the ground I was about eye-level with the fine feathered fellow. He had this big ol' cheeto in his beak cross-wise, and bit by bit he worked it around til it lined up--it was about twice as long as his beak--and then he just... swallowed it. None of this pecking stuff. Apparently that's for wussy little birds like the sparrows at outdoor cafes. This guy was all about the Big Gulp. The light changed as he was tackling the bag looking for another one.
Oh, it would have been such a great picture. The grey dreary day, damp concrete and metal rail would have just fuzzed into a neutral unobtrusive background. The glossy black and blue bird would have filled the frame even with just my 2x zoom. His bright yellow eye and the shockingly orange cheeto would provide the graphic punch. Sure, it might not have turned out as well as I'm imagining it, but sometimes they do! And when am I ever going to see THAT again? (Well, I suppose I could go to a park and bait the birds with junk food, but that doesn't seem fair somehow.)
Okay, I can't resist this, courtesy James Taranto/Best of the Web:
...Bush won fair and square, but it was an illegitimate election anyway. This is the "moderate" Democratic position. The extreme position is that Bush "stole" the election by getting three million more votes than Kerry. An outfit called United for Peace and Justice is actually planning an Inauguration Day protest. And if you can't make it to Washington, you can still join in:UFPJ also encourages everyone to wear a white ribbon on January 20, no matter where you are or what you are doing. In many cultures, white is the traditional color of mourning.
Of course, the joke is on these losers, who apparently are unaware that in our culture, white is the traditional color of surrender.
That's one group that certainly isn't "moving on."
Just got the latest flyer from Nice People and they're not coming to Houston this time around. Austin, San Antonio, Midland (?!) and Dallas, but no Houston. So the good news is I won't spend several hundred dollars on beads this month. The bad news is I won't spend several hundred dollars on beads this month. Sigh.
I've proved to myself that I'm not really awake for the first couple of hours that my eyes are open. One of my regular morning tasks is to scoop the catbox. I use those little brown lunch bags and toss them in the outside trashcan. This morning it was cold, so I figured I'd wait til I was ready to leave to throw it away so I wouldn't have to go outside twice. While I did manage to remember to pick up the bag on the way out the door (I've left more than one real lunch at home), apparently I forgot about it between the back stoop and the car, because when I parked in the garage at work and reached over to pick up my purse, well, there it was. I'd just transported a bag of cat poop across downtown Houston.
I dreamed last night that Melvin and Lorax were swimming. On purpose. And they liked it. More like dog-paddling (cat-paddling?) really, since they weren't putting their faces under (obviously my dream--if it had been Mark's dream they'd have been scooting around underwater like porpoises). I was trying to get a picture of Melvin for the blog, but the light was reflecting off the water and all my shots came out as just a Melvin-cat head floating in a white glare. I guess I'm feeling guilty for not joining the Carnival lately?
Here is a pic of one of the necklaces that Mark gave me for Christmas. The centerpiece is very cleverly put together! Each flat pearl is on a headpin, which is wrapped around an armature that has little pegs sticking out for that purpose. The pearls completely cover the armature from the front, and even from the back it is very neat and smooth. As you can see, it lies well on the neck. I love to see inventive ways to use new bead shapes....
What? It's a secret. Duh!
No, I'm not pregnant :-p
I'll tell you next week after it's happened.
Lileks is doing something brilliant AGAIN. He's concocting a story based on a matchbook collection. Every day he adds a scanned matchbook and adds to the story, plus sometimes his own tidbits about the artwork or whatever catches his fancy. We're only three days into the story and I'm already hooked. I've always liked picture books :-)
Mark is making stock again, this time from the bonz of nearly an entire wild pig. That makes a lot of stock.... He started it late yesterday, simmered all night, and now he's skimming and straining. We put it in 14oz tuppers and freeze them--that makes it easy to measure when you want to use it (1 tupper = 1 can of broth from the store, in case you're as kitchen-knowledge-challenged as I am). So the house has smelled heartily meaty for two days and soon we'll be restocked with stock, which means all kinds of yummy treats will be forthcoming as he figures out what to do with it all. Oh, it's just SO hard to live with a culinary genius :-)
$700.
Dead fuel pump.
Waaaah!!!
I must have been a very good girl last year :-) My Christmas stocking truly runneth over. Since we spent Christmas weekend in Florida with Mom & Dad, we had a second Christmas on New Year's Eve with Mark's family. That's when my even-more-wonderful-than-usual husband trotted out the Big Surprise Gift:
Needless to say, New Year's Day was spent at the range, getting acquainted with Chester.
Ever since I fired Kim's M1 in September, I've been raving about this gun. Until then, I hadn't "got" the rifle thing. I was perfectly satisfied with Maggie (my shotgun) and then delighted with Ivan (my revolver) and didn't think a rifle was at all necessary or even interesting. Well, a combination of sentimentality and exhilaration changed that. I'll assume that the exhilaration part is obvious ;-) and just post this picture and this link of my grandfather to explain the sentimentality:
Of course Chester is not the folding-stock paratrooper version that my grandfather carried, but it is a 1944 M1 .30 carbine and I am now officially a member of the Nation of Riflemen. Thank you, Kim, and extra-special thank you with-sugar-on-top, Mark. I am a happy woman.
