Wow, it's been quite a while since my last post.  LJ seems to be a cyclical thing with me; I'll post and read very actively for a month or two, then take a few weeks off.  I should gather stats on my posting and see if it matches one of the biorhythm curves or something. :)

For the last two weeks, I actually have a good excuse for not having posted ( Read more... )

We had a wonderful trip to Northern California to visit my rapidly-growing birth family.  I had fun playing with both of my nieces; Regan is a very thoughtful and alert six-month-old, and Kylie is even more a bundle of frantic energy and imagination than your average two-and-a-half-year-old.  Kylie has inherited a few of my own old toys, which she ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

( Read more... )

My wanderings are done, and Penelope is looking awful good. To all the monsters, sirens, lotus-eaters, gods, demigods, nymphs, oxen, and pigs who made this such a wonderful trip, thank you.

More (including some pictures) will follow.

I knew my Orlando expedition was going to flow nicely when I started up my MP3 player about an hour into the flight from LA to Atlanta, and it randomly played Joni Mitchell's Amelia followed by Ambrosia's Somewhere I've Never Traveled. While we're on the topic of lyrics, by the way, my latest "divine invocation where you least expect it" discovery ( Read more... )

I am starting to plan my packing strategy for the Orlando trip (yes, I have OCD, why do you ask?), and wanted to see what the latest TSA utterly useless farcesafety regulations had to say about various items I might want to carry onto the aircraft. My favorite section concerns itself with sharp objects, wherein we find the following table:

( Read more... )

When I was riding BART under San Francisco last weekend, the train operator sounded exactly like
( Read more... )

One of my favorite things about travel is how it makes home look different when you return.  Tucson (where I spent last weekend) is a very spacious, very flat city.  Few buildings are more than a single story, and most of them are painted in desert colors that make the structures blend into the landscape.  Almost all are set back from the road by ( Read more... )

NOTOCON V was extraordinary.  My congratulations to everyone ( Read more... )