Learning Bushido
May. 14th, 2008
09:53 am - MyFolia Website
This is a great place to keep track of and journal about your various gardens. I've been meaning to write-up my gardens here for some time and finally just sat down and started it this morning.
http://www.myfolia.com/gardener/bushi7
If anyone else decides to use this website please let me know so I can add you to the gardens I read about.
Apr. 9th, 2008
07:47 am - Bird Songs
My son doesn't like hearing birds in the morning—they wake him up and he can't get back to sleep. He keeps his window closed at night because of this, but I don't think it matters much—I can hear the birds even when the house is all closed up.
Right now I hear the distinctive clipped chirp of cardinals. They've returned to our backyard since ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
sirvalence put out the new feeder, yay! Not especially pleasing to listen to, but the males are very pretty to look at, especially at this time of the year when they're all territorial with their crests and the feathers their brightest red.
Apr. 8th, 2008
07:18 pm - Wow. This was my son's teacher.
Carmel sign language teacher dies in motorcycle accident.
Brandon is doing okay. It was a shock, but he's dealing.
Apr. 7th, 2008
09:26 am - IndyScribe (for the local Indy crowd)
Google Reader recommended this site to me this morning: http://www.indyscribe.com/. There's an RSS feed, the volume is manageable, and the articles cover a variety of interests. Hey, and they even have a Board and Video Games category!
I am amused that the first entry under their Restaurant category is the Bosphorus Istanbul Cafe, also mentioned today in this post. Heh--first time I'd heard of the place and it's twice within one morning. I must go there sometime.
Mar. 4th, 2008
Feb. 19th, 2008
06:43 am - So What's Your Halloween Costume Gonna Be this Year?
Raelians Rocket from Clones to Clitorises
sirvalence: It's for a good cause.
me: Oh, sure. I don't disagree with that at all. I just haven't made it past the image of the woman dressed up as a clitoris to read the article yet. It's not something you see every day.
sirvalence: Thank God for that.
Jan. 8th, 2008
10:18 pm - What I Did Over the Holidays...
I got a tattoo! Hee! My BIL David celebrated his 40th birthday while we were down in Florida. He decided that he wanted to get a tattoo to commemorate the event, so my sister Kris (his wife) and I joined him. I consider it a late 40th birthday present to myself.
Getting it done.
It hurt. Not enough that I wimped out, but I winced occasionally and struggled to stay in my happy place. The procedure took about 45 minutes, and I'm very glad it wasn't any longer. I didn't get an endorphin rush (that would've been nice). Really, I don't understand why people cover large portions of their bodies with tattoos, considering the pain both in the procedure and in the aftercare. Especially don't understand why people tattoo sensitive areas, such as around the eyes for permanent eyeliner or genitalia.
Finished product: a Celtic knot just above my right ankle.
It itches right now and I'm trying hard not to scratch. Should be completely healed in about a month. No current plans to get more.
Dec. 12th, 2007
11:53 am - A Capella: 12 Days of Christmas
A men's a capella group from Indiana University. (I was the black sheep of the family and went to Purdue, but the rest of my family—parents and siblings—went to IU.)
Straight No Chaser
Dec. 5th, 2007
07:37 pm - Creative Writing
Brandon is playing a character named Heath in a Harry Potter PBEM (his first online RPing venture) that I am helping to moderate and it's been a real treat to read his descriptions:
As Heath was saying this something gnawed at the back of his
brain. It wasn't painful, just a little ticklish. Heath would have
scratched it if one could scratch the inside of one's brain, with
magic they probably could.
On his way out Heath paused at the door way. A familiar and almost
dreaded feeling crept up in his chest. A feeling Heath knew quite
well. A feeling more pleasant than joy and at the same time more
painful than pain. Curiosity.
A mixture of embaressment, fear, relief, and gratitude washed over him
as he saw his mother's face. Reflecting later Heath would describe the
feeling as seeming green with orange spots and blue six sided stars,
although he has no idea why to this day.
07:24 am - Popular Science
Some pretty shiny stuff here. I'm impressed with what people can create when they're not busy yelling at each other and blowing things up.
PopSci's Best of What's New for 2007
Link from sirvalence
Nov. 11th, 2007
05:57 pm - Handbells
Wow.
I got back a little while ago from an extra handbell practice squeezed in today. We're playing a lot of challenging new Christmas music this year and, man, we are working our tails off to get it all performance ready. (But rather than being draining, playing in an ensemble like this energizes me. It's a really great feeling.)
Just as an example, our arrangement of Twelve Days of Christmas changes nine times between five key signatures, and thirty-six times between five time signatures Well, I suppose you need to do something to keep the song interesting through twelves stanzas. It's just...wow. (Actually, it's only eleven stanzas. I went through and marked where each one started and the arranger left out verse seven. Apparently Kevin McChesney has something against swans.)
Three more practices before our first holiday performance and then we're into the season: fourteen performances in the month of December—apparently people like to hear bells at Christmas. Our director is still getting requests, which he is now thankfully turning down (Heh, call back by August next year!)
There will be a few public performances (i.e., free), and I'll let the local group know when and where in case they're interested.
Oct. 26th, 2007
09:49 am - Breaking the Record
(lifted from Coffee Klatch)
A local (Indianapolis) DJ is trying to break the world record for longest radio program by one personality. Mat Albro has been on the air since 12:01am on Monday. The current record is 135 hours by a DJ in Italy. As I understand it, this is sanctioned by Guinness and all that, so when he breaks it, he’ll be in the Book (along with “from Indianapolis”). The programming is a variety of things, focusing on classic rock, and it’s interesting to see the kinds of songs he’s playing after more than 4 days with no sleep.
He’s been able to take the radio station’s van (with someone else driving) out to local restaurants and other places, broadcasting live from there, which I’m sure helps as well as making things more interesting. To find out more about it or to see how he’s doing, visit http://wklu.net/. You can also listen live at http://wklu.net/listen.html. He’ll be on the air (hopefully) until at least Saturday afternoon.
Right now there’s a group of deputies administering some tests to see what sleep deprivation is doing to him. Similar to testing for sobriety. :-) Pretty funny. He says he’s waiting for the hallucinations that he’s heard about to start kicking in. Ha!
For what it’s worth, he is drinking absolutely NO coffee, caffeine, or energy drinks. He’s got someone helping him out who IS taking little naps and drinking coffee, and he apparently looks horrible! :-)
There’s also a link on the website to send him words of encouragement. Help him out and send him a note or joke or something. I did.
Go Mat!! (Oh, and you can follow his perspective on this event on his blog.)
Oct. 23rd, 2007
10:50 am - Busy Weekend
We had a very busy weekend. ( (inside the cut, some rambling, lots of pictures). )
Aug. 21st, 2007
07:07 pm - My Cuppa
Mugs to help you mix your favorite brew to just-how-you-like-it by matching the color swatch on the inside. Brilliant. The visual designer in me loves this.
Aug. 8th, 2007
09:57 pm - They are FINALLY HERE!
We received the StoryCards decks from the printer today. The decks look pretty damn good, if I do say so myself.
However... The tuckboxes, instead of being a rich blue, were purple and streaky (she says shrilly).
Tuckboxes were sent back to the printer. Cards were kept. Yay, we have card decks in time for GenCon!
The StoryCards manual is progressing nicely. I'm more-or-less all in pages now, so time to start on the TOC and index. Then I'll add artwork to fill up the holes. I think we're in good shape to be done in time for GenCon.
(While laying this manual out I've actually read parts of it for the first time and I have to say--and yes, I realize I'm biased, but honestly--that I'm very impressed with Carl's concept. He's managed to succinctly create a roleplaying system that runs on metarules, so it's amazingly flexible without being overly crunchy. It's wonderful, IMHO.)
Jul. 8th, 2007
09:19 pm - We're Back...
...from vacation, and great time was had by all.
Best part? White water rafting on Saturday down the Hudson River in the Adirondacks. We hit a rock traversing one of the rapids and I tumbled right out of the raft and started rushing down the river on my own personal white water adventure. That was a major adrenalin rush, let me tell you.
More stories and pictures later. Just home after 14.5 hours on the road and exhausted. Sleep now. sirvalence is already snoring on the couch.
Jun. 26th, 2007
12:24 pm - Kids Are Off...
...to spend two weeks with my parents in Florida courtesy of AirTrans. Next on the agenda is last minute housecleaning and packing for our own trip. Next stop: TBR.
Jun. 23rd, 2007
04:07 pm - I'm Unofficially an EMT
We had our practical exam this morning. There were six skills I was tested on, plus a seventh random skill.
Our instructor thought she had the inside scoop on what the random would be. "The preceptor organizing the practical said he needed three people at the random skill station. The only random that requires three people is the Hare traction splint." So we all studied in great detail the Hare traction splint.
Last night, while briefly going over the other random skills in case our instructor was wrong, I lamented to sirvalence that there was one random skill I hadn't even done: long bone splint. I don't know how that happened--I guess I was busy looking at the traction splint. Carl said not to stress about it--I was already pretty sure what it was going to be, and if it wasn't that, I had an 80% chance it WOULDN'T be the long bone splint.
Guess what the random skill was? Right! LONG BONE SPLINT. I was like, @&&$@%!! I haven't even done it!
Well, long story short, I managed the random skill and flubbed up on one I KNEW: the KED, or short backboard. I tried to put it on BACKWARDS, and even though I discovered this and turned it around, I was out of time before I could finish.
We were allowed to repeat stations we'd missed, and I got the KED second time around, so I've unofficially passed the practical and unofficially passed the written. I'll get official notification about the time we get back from vacation.
So...I'm unofficially an EMT. Yay! My plan is to get a year or two of EMT-B experience under my belt, then it's on to paramedic school. We all went out for a drink afterwards (the testing students) and I'm still currently glowing from the two ciders. Life is good.
Jun. 19th, 2007
11:03 pm - Storycards Art
It is almost done. I received the last pieces of art from our illustrator last week and now I'm almost done incorporating them onto the 60 cards. There's still some tweaking left to be done, and I still have the tuckbox to design, but progress has been made. (Whew!)
If you're interested in a sneak peek at the cards, clicky here.
Jun. 7th, 2007
02:06 pm - Star Wars Weekends!
My younger sister Kris and her husband David dress up and march every year in the parades during Star Wars Weekends at Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando.
Kris is the officer in the left-hand row, third from the front. David is the trooper in front with the Very Big Gun.
I'm so tickled not to be the only sci-fi geek in the family.
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