Back home...
Well, I'm home. And it's mostly good...
In the course of my travels, I was on a flight along the eastern seaboard, during which I witnessed some of the most amazing thunderstorms I have ever seen. There was white lightning over New Jersey, orange over Virginia, and blue over Connecticut. I saw arcs of lightning playing over and between land and cloud, and eerie white flashes illuminating vast expanses of cloud beneath the plane at night. Perhaps the most amazing of all was the sunset: a blood-red opening between gray clouds, in which several small "hoodoos" of black cumulus seemed to rest on the lower edge, and through which golden-red rays of sunlight were streaming. I can't say the trip was entirely painless, though. At least I did get to spend some time with a friend who drove me to the airport...
I woke up today and felt like crap, after apparently catching the minor flu bug my parents both have had the past few days. Aside from a mild headache, I mostly feel better now though. Hopefully I can do a bit of hiking this weekend, as there are a few local spots I want to try out. You see, I'm new to this state, and have a LOT of exploring to do!
My dad quit his job, because his coworkers are apparently assholes. There seems to be a serious overabundance of such people in the world these days...hopefully he'll find a new one pretty soon, and with somewhat more normal people.
Anyway, what else...I read Madeline L'Engle's A Swiftly Tilting Planet yesterday, which I think I read way back in elementary school, but had forgotten enough to make it interesting. It's definitely a thought-provoking read, though the characters in the intersecting timelines can be very confusing (e.g. Zyll, Zylle, Zillah, and Zillie are all different characters!). Soon after finishing, I happened to read that the author had just passed away! How weird is that!? In fact, downright creepy, because I believe that sometimes coincidences are not just coincidences, and I find it very strange that I happened to read one of her books for one of the two times in the last ten years or so on the very day she died.
I'm starting Wicked now, and we'll see how that goes. The first few dozen pages give the impression that there'll be a lot of irreverence and sex throughout the book, which is fine with me as long as it doesn't become excessive.
In my spare time--of which I have plenty--I'm also making a model of our house in Google Sketchup. It's a pretty good, very user-friendly and intuitive program, and even though I haven't completely mastered it yet, I can generally do what I wish to. The floor plan's pretty much done, and I'm extending the house into 3-D. This is one of the few times I'm glad I live in a single-story home! Now if I can just figure out how the hell to make a regular dodecahedron! I'm afraid my knowledge of three-dimensional geometry is fairly limited outside of the cube and tetrahedron...*sigh*
Farewell for now,
~Zooc
RTOTP: If women ran the Pentagon, would submarines and missiles be designed differently?
In the course of my travels, I was on a flight along the eastern seaboard, during which I witnessed some of the most amazing thunderstorms I have ever seen. There was white lightning over New Jersey, orange over Virginia, and blue over Connecticut. I saw arcs of lightning playing over and between land and cloud, and eerie white flashes illuminating vast expanses of cloud beneath the plane at night. Perhaps the most amazing of all was the sunset: a blood-red opening between gray clouds, in which several small "hoodoos" of black cumulus seemed to rest on the lower edge, and through which golden-red rays of sunlight were streaming. I can't say the trip was entirely painless, though. At least I did get to spend some time with a friend who drove me to the airport...
I woke up today and felt like crap, after apparently catching the minor flu bug my parents both have had the past few days. Aside from a mild headache, I mostly feel better now though. Hopefully I can do a bit of hiking this weekend, as there are a few local spots I want to try out. You see, I'm new to this state, and have a LOT of exploring to do!
My dad quit his job, because his coworkers are apparently assholes. There seems to be a serious overabundance of such people in the world these days...hopefully he'll find a new one pretty soon, and with somewhat more normal people.
Anyway, what else...I read Madeline L'Engle's A Swiftly Tilting Planet yesterday, which I think I read way back in elementary school, but had forgotten enough to make it interesting. It's definitely a thought-provoking read, though the characters in the intersecting timelines can be very confusing (e.g. Zyll, Zylle, Zillah, and Zillie are all different characters!). Soon after finishing, I happened to read that the author had just passed away! How weird is that!? In fact, downright creepy, because I believe that sometimes coincidences are not just coincidences, and I find it very strange that I happened to read one of her books for one of the two times in the last ten years or so on the very day she died.
I'm starting Wicked now, and we'll see how that goes. The first few dozen pages give the impression that there'll be a lot of irreverence and sex throughout the book, which is fine with me as long as it doesn't become excessive.
In my spare time--of which I have plenty--I'm also making a model of our house in Google Sketchup. It's a pretty good, very user-friendly and intuitive program, and even though I haven't completely mastered it yet, I can generally do what I wish to. The floor plan's pretty much done, and I'm extending the house into 3-D. This is one of the few times I'm glad I live in a single-story home! Now if I can just figure out how the hell to make a regular dodecahedron! I'm afraid my knowledge of three-dimensional geometry is fairly limited outside of the cube and tetrahedron...*sigh*
Farewell for now,
~Zooc
RTOTP: If women ran the Pentagon, would submarines and missiles be designed differently?