A surprisingly girly Monday
So apparently I spent the whole weekend reading Regency romances and not sleeping. The reading thing I would have been happier about if I'd spent more time reading on my netbook so I could knit plain stockinette and less time reading on my Blackberry so I couldn't really do anything else. The not-catching-up-on-sleep was kind of a pain -- I dozed off with the lights on in the wee hours on both Friday and Saturday (though at least I managed to fit in a four-hour nap right in the middle of the day Saturday), but last night I made a point of using part of the time Mom was watching basketball instead of anything I wanted to see to get a lot of my Sunday-night computer stuff taken care of. Around about 8:30 I gathered up, went to my room, and pulled up the GoT recording on the DVR and watched that, and then took two knitting photos and uploaded them and did my last backup. I could have been in bed by 11:30 last night had I not A) finally felt hungry enough for dinner around 11pm and B) been proceeding through my pre-bedtime routine in slow motion because I was reading again. Ah, well.
Here we go, shoulders bound off. Next weekend I cast on for the first sleeve -- and probably make a special point of getting past the fiddly bits at the bottom edge, so I can be on to the teal-dots-on-white portion when I reach the last week of this month and start spending all my free time with my nose in a book Kindle app for a few weeks.
Several nights without knitting last week, didn't touch it at all Saturday night (in fact, I was so late in reaching the knitting portion of the evening, I didn't even quite finish the amount of my sweater I'd wanted to work on that night), but yesterday evening I found out I was indeed at the point of switching to the final ribbing. I'm maybe halfway through with that, and this pair will be done. I can finish up tonight, possibly, if I come home and watch something with Mom like I probably should.
Happily, with what I managed to get done Friday before leaving, I don't have a lot of actual work to be done today. Which is great, since I'm still running low on sleep and Tumblr is a bitch to catch up on after a weekend away from the computer. At least LJ shouldn't be too busy.
Because Mom was more interested in seeing the Mavericks play last night than watching anything else (she pointed out to me that she doesn't normally care about basketball, but she got pissed by the way the Mavs had been written off as having any chance and the announcers were basically cheering for the Heat), she hasn't seen last night's GoT yet. And I'm kind of looking forward to her reaction to the ending, since she's basically my stand-in for the audience-members-who-haven't-read-the-books. So, I think I'm going to lean towards watching that tonight when she gets home. Probably have the pizza we didn't have last night, and it'll be like our usual Sunday night thing pushed forward a day.
Tumblr / Twitter / Facebook links:
Inside the Ghost Ships of the Mothball Fleet -- "For decades, dozens of forgotten Navy and merchant ships have been corroding in Suisun Bay, 30 miles northeast of San Francisco. These historic vessels-the Mothball Fleet-served their country in four wars: WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and Desert Storm. After a decade of impasse, the ghost fleet is slowly dwindling as the ships are towed out one-by-one for scrapping. About 15 retired ships are already gone; by 2017, the entire fleet will be just a memory. Over a two-year period, several close friends and I gained unprecedented access to the decaying ships, spending several days at a time photographing, documenting, and even sleeping aboard them-often in the luxury of the captain’s quarters. Sneaking on-board required months of planning and coordination, and it involved taking significant risks. Of course, things did not always go as planned, but despite several close calls, we were successful in all of our attempts to infiltrate the ships while evading round-the-clock security patrols."
The most secret secret in the history of secrets -- "You don't actually need to wonder what that is. It's the Teller-Ulam design for compact fission-boosted nuclear missile warheads. It became a huge fucking deal in the late 1970s, when a magazine called The Progressive published a series of anti-nuclear articles that speculated on how the design worked, specifically for the purpose of blowing the lid off the biggest secret in the world. What makes it the biggest secret in the world is a clause in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, called the 'born secret' clause. It's unique among all the laws governing national security and secrecy in the United States. It says, in essence, that certain information is so secret that even if you manage to figure it out completely independently, you are still guilty of espionage merely for knowing about it. In other words, if you just happen to be a genius or whatever, and you independently figure out on your own how to build a hydrogen bomb, you're guilty of espionage and can be prosecuted for it. That's how secret that information is."
Video of fruit bats fighting over a sweet potato.
Fright Night trailer -- not having been following any news about the project, watching this vid on Saturday was the first I knew that Anton Yelchin was in it. Also, includes David Tennant shirtless and wearing eyeliner. Yep, going to have to see this one...
Cleburne hot dog shop's owners take good-humored approach to bat invasion -- "When Fred and Casey Garza decided to open a restaurant offering Chicago-style hot dogs in a building that is more than 100 years old, they expected a few bumps. In September, they found a photo album with historic pictures of Cleburne in what used to be a gambling joint on the building's third floor. It went missing, and a ransom note told them to give away 100 hot dogs on Valentine's Day. They did, but the photos are still gone. Then their mascot, Chico -- a mannequin made by an Iraq War veteran -- that sat outside their restaurant, Garza's Famous Chigo Hotdogs, was beheaded during last winter's ice storm. It now has a pickle bucket where the head used to be. But now things have become just plain batty after Fire Chief Clint Ishmael discovered bats, perhaps thousands of them, near the three-story building's roofline."
Airigami: The Fine Art of Balloon Sculpture by Larry Moss.
Sidelinked from above: Wearing The Hair Of The Dog. Portraits Of People In Clothes Made From Their Pets' Fur. -- the very first photo has me going, "That's a pretty nice-looking cardigan."
Ducklings Imprint on a Corgi -- "So how did the ducklings imprint on Yogi the Corgi and choose him as their new mom? Frances Marsh and family bought a couple two-day-old ducklings to bring home to Atlantic Beach, North Carolina. On the car ride home, Yogi popped his head over the side of the duckling’s box and licked them. Ever had your cheek licked by a Corgi? You’d imprint, too."
Giant Ground Sloth For Sale, $450K OBO -- browse through the gallery of some of the most interesting fossil and mineral treasures that went up for auction yesterday.
Labrador retriever with a baby bunny on its head.
This Jobs Crisis Is Obama’s Kryptonite -- "I don’t trust the American electorate, especially when times are tough. Too many Americans drink the stupid juice when the economy is in the tank, and pull the lever against their own economic interests. Or, demoralized and disenchanted, they just stay home and don’t vote at all. The results of the 2010 midterm elections provide all the evidence you need of that proposition. Voters cast their ballots for some of the most regressive governors, state legislators and members of Congress one can imagine. The country is hurting, but instead we get voter ID legislation, decimation of labor rights, criminalization of abortion, Vouchercare, and laws banning sagging pants. We knew they would do something like this, even though they didn’t explicitly say they would. The Republican track record on overreach speaks for itself. And the lackluster Democrats did their best to bring a GOP victory last year, eager as they are to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."
So I'm having a slight wardrobe crisis, in that I was going to buy some more pairs of cargo pants but I found some perfect ones that were backordered -- and then my order was cancelled because the availability date was pushed back even farther -- and hopefully I can order a couple of pairs at the end of this month, but that still left me with just barely enough to get me through the work week. And then last week one of those pairs ripped -- in an irreparable way -- and when I wandered through the women's section at Wal-Mart during a grocery run last week I found some lovely cargo shorts (which do me no good for wearing to work, but I suspect I'll get a pair in a week or two for switching out with the pair I tend to wear nights and weekends during the summer months) but couldn't find anything long enough to wear to work (capris being acceptable) that was A) available in my size and B) had thigh pockets big enough to stick my Blackberry in. I was thinking I'd try going to the mall over the weekend, but that didn't actually happen.
So today I'm wearing a dress, for the first time in months and months. Slight consolations being that it's the pink-and-purple dress that matches my Aeolian Shawl, and also I'm wearing my pink My Little Pony necklace for only the second time since I got it. (It just didn't go with anything but the pink-and-grey outfit, and I was wearing the lavender cameo with that.) Also I have on lacy white kneesocks so, you know, an extremely girly wardrobe today. (Which has nothing to do with a weekend spent reading Georgette Heyer and Jane Austen.)
Run across while browsing, no idea if it'll do any good, but I need to remember to try installing it when I'm back at my usual computer and not finishing off the afternoon at the receptionist's desk (as I am again today): Dreamwidth ljwho, being an add-on that lets you stick LJ-style notes onto usernames on Dreamwidth, even if you're using Chrome and hence can't use Greasemonkey like with Firefox. (At this point I suspect notes I stick onto names using one computer won't be visible when I'm browsing on another computer, but I'll be testing that.)
Oh, hey, found a pair of posts by seperis /
seperis reviewing X-Men: First Class: x-men first class: i say this with love -- "It's just, okay, see, Erik. And People Skills. Which he, let's all admit it, lacks. This is one of those times that Erik's life of desperate revenge needed remedial classes in People: How To Recruit to the Dark Side wisely. Because I want to say, when I think Darth Vader could have given you better tips--think about that one--you are doing it wrong." And, movie: x-men first class -- "I've been trying to figure out how to review this without gushing on archetypes and good intentions, because in a surprise twist, our archetypes are mixed and not very archetypical and good intentions aren't even in the running when the intention is survival."
So I've got another fifteen minutes or so on the clock and maybe ten minutes' worth of actual work I was wanting to do before leaving -- and even that much is just getting a small jump on tomorrow's stuff. Not bad for a Monday.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth with
comments made.
Here we go, shoulders bound off. Next weekend I cast on for the first sleeve -- and probably make a special point of getting past the fiddly bits at the bottom edge, so I can be on to the teal-dots-on-white portion when I reach the last week of this month and start spending all my free time with my nose in a book Kindle app for a few weeks.
Several nights without knitting last week, didn't touch it at all Saturday night (in fact, I was so late in reaching the knitting portion of the evening, I didn't even quite finish the amount of my sweater I'd wanted to work on that night), but yesterday evening I found out I was indeed at the point of switching to the final ribbing. I'm maybe halfway through with that, and this pair will be done. I can finish up tonight, possibly, if I come home and watch something with Mom like I probably should.
Happily, with what I managed to get done Friday before leaving, I don't have a lot of actual work to be done today. Which is great, since I'm still running low on sleep and Tumblr is a bitch to catch up on after a weekend away from the computer. At least LJ shouldn't be too busy.
Because Mom was more interested in seeing the Mavericks play last night than watching anything else (she pointed out to me that she doesn't normally care about basketball, but she got pissed by the way the Mavs had been written off as having any chance and the announcers were basically cheering for the Heat), she hasn't seen last night's GoT yet. And I'm kind of looking forward to her reaction to the ending, since she's basically my stand-in for the audience-members-who-haven't-read-the-books. So, I think I'm going to lean towards watching that tonight when she gets home. Probably have the pizza we didn't have last night, and it'll be like our usual Sunday night thing pushed forward a day.
Tumblr / Twitter / Facebook links:
Inside the Ghost Ships of the Mothball Fleet -- "For decades, dozens of forgotten Navy and merchant ships have been corroding in Suisun Bay, 30 miles northeast of San Francisco. These historic vessels-the Mothball Fleet-served their country in four wars: WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and Desert Storm. After a decade of impasse, the ghost fleet is slowly dwindling as the ships are towed out one-by-one for scrapping. About 15 retired ships are already gone; by 2017, the entire fleet will be just a memory. Over a two-year period, several close friends and I gained unprecedented access to the decaying ships, spending several days at a time photographing, documenting, and even sleeping aboard them-often in the luxury of the captain’s quarters. Sneaking on-board required months of planning and coordination, and it involved taking significant risks. Of course, things did not always go as planned, but despite several close calls, we were successful in all of our attempts to infiltrate the ships while evading round-the-clock security patrols."
The most secret secret in the history of secrets -- "You don't actually need to wonder what that is. It's the Teller-Ulam design for compact fission-boosted nuclear missile warheads. It became a huge fucking deal in the late 1970s, when a magazine called The Progressive published a series of anti-nuclear articles that speculated on how the design worked, specifically for the purpose of blowing the lid off the biggest secret in the world. What makes it the biggest secret in the world is a clause in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, called the 'born secret' clause. It's unique among all the laws governing national security and secrecy in the United States. It says, in essence, that certain information is so secret that even if you manage to figure it out completely independently, you are still guilty of espionage merely for knowing about it. In other words, if you just happen to be a genius or whatever, and you independently figure out on your own how to build a hydrogen bomb, you're guilty of espionage and can be prosecuted for it. That's how secret that information is."
Video of fruit bats fighting over a sweet potato.
Fright Night trailer -- not having been following any news about the project, watching this vid on Saturday was the first I knew that Anton Yelchin was in it. Also, includes David Tennant shirtless and wearing eyeliner. Yep, going to have to see this one...
Cleburne hot dog shop's owners take good-humored approach to bat invasion -- "When Fred and Casey Garza decided to open a restaurant offering Chicago-style hot dogs in a building that is more than 100 years old, they expected a few bumps. In September, they found a photo album with historic pictures of Cleburne in what used to be a gambling joint on the building's third floor. It went missing, and a ransom note told them to give away 100 hot dogs on Valentine's Day. They did, but the photos are still gone. Then their mascot, Chico -- a mannequin made by an Iraq War veteran -- that sat outside their restaurant, Garza's Famous Chigo Hotdogs, was beheaded during last winter's ice storm. It now has a pickle bucket where the head used to be. But now things have become just plain batty after Fire Chief Clint Ishmael discovered bats, perhaps thousands of them, near the three-story building's roofline."
Airigami: The Fine Art of Balloon Sculpture by Larry Moss.
Sidelinked from above: Wearing The Hair Of The Dog. Portraits Of People In Clothes Made From Their Pets' Fur. -- the very first photo has me going, "That's a pretty nice-looking cardigan."
Ducklings Imprint on a Corgi -- "So how did the ducklings imprint on Yogi the Corgi and choose him as their new mom? Frances Marsh and family bought a couple two-day-old ducklings to bring home to Atlantic Beach, North Carolina. On the car ride home, Yogi popped his head over the side of the duckling’s box and licked them. Ever had your cheek licked by a Corgi? You’d imprint, too."
Giant Ground Sloth For Sale, $450K OBO -- browse through the gallery of some of the most interesting fossil and mineral treasures that went up for auction yesterday.
Labrador retriever with a baby bunny on its head.
This Jobs Crisis Is Obama’s Kryptonite -- "I don’t trust the American electorate, especially when times are tough. Too many Americans drink the stupid juice when the economy is in the tank, and pull the lever against their own economic interests. Or, demoralized and disenchanted, they just stay home and don’t vote at all. The results of the 2010 midterm elections provide all the evidence you need of that proposition. Voters cast their ballots for some of the most regressive governors, state legislators and members of Congress one can imagine. The country is hurting, but instead we get voter ID legislation, decimation of labor rights, criminalization of abortion, Vouchercare, and laws banning sagging pants. We knew they would do something like this, even though they didn’t explicitly say they would. The Republican track record on overreach speaks for itself. And the lackluster Democrats did their best to bring a GOP victory last year, eager as they are to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."
So I'm having a slight wardrobe crisis, in that I was going to buy some more pairs of cargo pants but I found some perfect ones that were backordered -- and then my order was cancelled because the availability date was pushed back even farther -- and hopefully I can order a couple of pairs at the end of this month, but that still left me with just barely enough to get me through the work week. And then last week one of those pairs ripped -- in an irreparable way -- and when I wandered through the women's section at Wal-Mart during a grocery run last week I found some lovely cargo shorts (which do me no good for wearing to work, but I suspect I'll get a pair in a week or two for switching out with the pair I tend to wear nights and weekends during the summer months) but couldn't find anything long enough to wear to work (capris being acceptable) that was A) available in my size and B) had thigh pockets big enough to stick my Blackberry in. I was thinking I'd try going to the mall over the weekend, but that didn't actually happen.
So today I'm wearing a dress, for the first time in months and months. Slight consolations being that it's the pink-and-purple dress that matches my Aeolian Shawl, and also I'm wearing my pink My Little Pony necklace for only the second time since I got it. (It just didn't go with anything but the pink-and-grey outfit, and I was wearing the lavender cameo with that.) Also I have on lacy white kneesocks so, you know, an extremely girly wardrobe today. (Which has nothing to do with a weekend spent reading Georgette Heyer and Jane Austen.)
Run across while browsing, no idea if it'll do any good, but I need to remember to try installing it when I'm back at my usual computer and not finishing off the afternoon at the receptionist's desk (as I am again today): Dreamwidth ljwho, being an add-on that lets you stick LJ-style notes onto usernames on Dreamwidth, even if you're using Chrome and hence can't use Greasemonkey like with Firefox. (At this point I suspect notes I stick onto names using one computer won't be visible when I'm browsing on another computer, but I'll be testing that.)
Oh, hey, found a pair of posts by seperis /
seperis reviewing X-Men: First Class: x-men first class: i say this with love -- "It's just, okay, see, Erik. And People Skills. Which he, let's all admit it, lacks. This is one of those times that Erik's life of desperate revenge needed remedial classes in People: How To Recruit to the Dark Side wisely. Because I want to say, when I think Darth Vader could have given you better tips--think about that one--you are doing it wrong." And, movie: x-men first class -- "I've been trying to figure out how to review this without gushing on archetypes and good intentions, because in a surprise twist, our archetypes are mixed and not very archetypical and good intentions aren't even in the running when the intention is survival."
So I've got another fifteen minutes or so on the clock and maybe ten minutes' worth of actual work I was wanting to do before leaving -- and even that much is just getting a small jump on tomorrow's stuff. Not bad for a Monday.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth with
comments made.