love in the asylum is a beautiful thing

[pipsqueaky]

Random stuff:

• I have just returned from the Green City Farmer's Market in Old Town. This is the first time in a long time - er, or possibly ever? - that I have been to a farmer's market by myself (i.e. without someone else dragging me along). I got zucchini and green beans and potatoes and mini cucumbers and cherries and a sprig of peppermint, and a bouquet of purple flowers to put on the dining room table in a vase. It turns out I do not actually know what to do with most of this stuff - I have no idea how to cook zucchini or potatoes, and I have no plans for the peppermint besides picking it up and smelling it a lot (and possibly attempting some kind of mojito), but I feel accomplished all the same. Now if only I can keep the damn cats from eating the flowers.
  
  My plans for the afternoon are to finish lunch (blueberry yogurt with triple-berry granola, a mini-cucumber and roasted red pepper hummus, and a handful of cherries), hang out at the lake for an hour or so, go jogging, and then head to Wicker Park Fest. I originally had plans to join a Meetup group for a picnic at the lake, but today I don't so much feel up to socializing with strangers, so a solo outing it shall be. :)
• So remember that project at work that I was given a lead role on, and how I had a slight spaz attack about it at the time? It was only supposed to last for seven weeks, so I convinced myself that I could try this "responsibility" thing for the summer and then move on to something else. Um, the project has now been extended to the end of November. And possibly beyond. And I'm still the tech lead. !!!! On the plus side, it's been a great learning experience and I've enjoyed it (for the most part). I do feel a bit more stress due to my position, but that's nicely balanced out by the very relaxed pace of the programming work in general. And the size of the team will be expanding (eep!), but they're gonna bring in a full-time iteration manager to take on some of the scheduling responsibility so I don't have to shoulder that anymore, which I was never supposed to have to do in the first place, so that's good. I'm a bit nervous, but things have gone well so far. The program manager pulled me aside the other day for the sole reason of telling me I was doing an amazing job. So ... yay?
• My new favorite thing: Electric Sheep. It's a screensaver (Mac/Windows/Linux) that generates fractal-ish animations, kind of like the Windows Media Player visualizations but way cooler. It also connects to the web to download new animations (called "sheep") that other computers running the screensaver have produced, and each sheep eventually morphs and mutates and merges with others to produce new sheep. You can "vote" for your favorites by pressing the up or down arrows while the screensaver is running, and the votes are transmitted online, and the more popular sheep will live longer and reproduce more. It's kind of awesome. I could sit and stare at it allllll day.
• I am ignoring Russell T. Davies. La la laaaaaaa, can't hear you.
• A link to share, via a friend on Facebook: Feminist theory: The dos and don’ts of defending Muslim women. The author talks about how it's easy for (white, Western) feminists to tell Muslim women what they should do to "liberate" themselves, but a lot of that advice actually comes from a place of privilege and ignorance of Muslim women's own lives and concerns. Interesting and thought-provoking article.
• Am currently re-reading George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. I own the first four books, but only ever made it halfway through the third, and that was years ago, so I'm starting over. I'm about 2/3rds done with Book 1, and I forgot just how (a) excellent, and (b) painful and depressing these books are. Especially when you already know what's going to happen to some of these people. Ow.
• Before (re)starting ASOIAF, I managed to finally read Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, like the good little atheist I am. :) It was mostly well-written, with some really hard-hitting arguments and valid points, although at times I felt Dawkins knew he was preaching to the crowd, and for some of his smaller, "less-important" points he would just make statements and assume the reader would agree, rather than take the time to defend his assertions logically. But that was a small quibble. My main problem was with Chapter 9, where suddenly, for no reason at all, Dawkins spends 5 or so pages defending pedophilia. SRSLY. I ... think he was attempting to argue that Christianity was a form of child abuse? Which, okay, if that's your argument, then fine. But you don't need to point to other, very terrible forms of child abuse and say that they're not so bad in order to make that claim. Which is just what he did. (He also implied that anyone who comes forward as an adult to say that they were molested by a priest or teacher as a child is probably making it up in order to sue them and become rich. No, really. I wish I was making THIS up.) Those five pages pretty much ruined the entire rest of the book for me. WTF, Dawkins.

And now to put on a bathing suit and go to the lake. Yay summer!