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Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.
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| Friday, May 25th, 2012 |
princejvstin
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7:18a |
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| Thursday, May 24th, 2012 |
mhaithaca
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2:08p |
Probably not the worst stick ever... (207.0)
The phlebotomist who stuck me at the blood drive took forever drawing crosshairs on my arm, but then he missed. I appreciated that instead of digging around, he called over a senior nurse. She made a quick adjustment. A little twinge, but not too bad. Apparently I really started to slow down at the end, though. A couple of nurses were scratching their heads and making me twirl the little squeezy ball instead of squeezing it. Maybe not enough water this morning, or maybe low blood pressure. (It was on the low side today even for me.) Enjoying my traditional post-donation lunch at the Lincoln Street Diner a block away. Chris smoked some pork out back for today's pulled pork sandwich. Good stuff! |
matociquala
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12:21p |
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princejvstin
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7:11a |
Judge Magney Memorial Plaque
Today's picture is a bit different-it is of a memorial plaque to Judge C.R. Magney. Read the plaque and find out why |
| Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012 |
matociquala
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9:01p |
i just know that i'm harder to console
I'm working on "The Deeps of the Sky" tonight, and generating a regular festival of Words Word Don't Know: luminesced, tropopause, sheeny, thicks, unnavigable, dartlike, Meanwhile, I had a little argument with myself on twitter as to whether I should use some modestly bogus science to create a cool special effect. I went with it. ;-) Now I'm stopping because I have to figure out how the protagonist intervenes to stop the Bad Thing from happening, or how he mops up afterward... Oh, I might have just done so. Woot! Current Mood:  mellow |
immlass
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10:04a |
Weekly media report
Vacation means never catching up on your to-read pile Books: - Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness, by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Finished this finally and I'm glad I read it but I found it really problematic. I can't recommend it to someone not already into meditation. Movies/TV: - None! Music: - Little Boots, Illuminations EP. Includes two songs from her album but the other three are great, including a cover of Freddie Mercury's Love Kills. - Garbage, Not Your Kind of People. It's a Garbage album. To me, they've evolved their sound a little, but it's definitely an evolution rather than an abandonment of their last couple of albums, with an emphasis on more modern production (surprise!). A lot of people don't like their third and fourth albums and therefore think an evolution from them isn't any good; I liked them fine and enjoyed this album quite a bit. - Carolina Chocolate Drops, Leaving Eden. I can't figure out why I didn't listen to this sooner. I really like the cover of You Be Illin but the rest of it is pretty good too. This entry was originally posted at http://immlass.dreamwidth.org/859777.html. Comment here or there. Current Mood:  tired |
princejvstin
|
7:09a |
Devil's Kettle and Waterfall
Today's picture from #northshore2012 is of the Devil's Kettle Waterfall from Judge Magney State Park. The Devil's Kettle is on the left side, the "bowl" of the waterfall. |
| Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012 |
immlass
|
9:39a |
M83 & I Break Horses at Stubb's
M83 with I Break Horses at Stubb's. May 18, 2012. This was a disappointing show for us despite the good reviews elsewhere. We were both wiped out and Stubb's, which is at best a mediocre venue, was full of douchebags and smokers, plus the heat was making me ill and couldn't be doing any better for Michael, who's more vulnerable to it than I am. I really liked I Break Horses' album and was very annoyed that the sound was so crap for us even in our usual spot by the sound booth. The bass was high enough that I had earplugs in from the first song, and the vocals were so low in the mix that they were inaudible with the earplugs. Given that the problem solved itself when M83 came on, it was clearly an engineering issue of setting the board up for the main act. The fact that I couldn't get any enthusiasm up for a band whose music I already knew and enjoyed is an indictment of the live performance, but I don't think it was the band's fault. Because we were so tired and fried, and because the band came on late (15 minutes, not too bad as band times go) we only caught the first half-hour of M83. If I could have sat down, I would have managed the whole show, but we ended up in the back on the hill to get out of the press of the crowd, listening to the douches yammer on about bodily functions. The light show from the stage was great, particularly compared to the LZR-epilepsy-inspiring lights for I Break Horses, and the band seemed. The sound was much improved, too. The physical conditions were just too bad for us to stay on, though. I am very much looking forward to seeing M83 again at ACL, although by then I hope to have concert binoculars. I wish the conditions could have been better this time. Also, unrelated: M83 completes my 25 new bands requirement for this bucket list, so I've marked off one more item in my 101 in 1001. This entry was originally posted at http://immlass.dreamwidth.org/859475.html. Comment here or there. Current Mood:  productive |
princejvstin
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7:08a |
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| Monday, May 21st, 2012 |
immlass
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9:21p |
Art weekend
This is about the art portion of the weekend. I'm going to write about M83 and I Break Horses tomorrow. Andy Warhol: Fame and Misfortune and Roualt's Miserere at the McNay: We went down to the McNay last Thursday to see the Warhol exhibit, which was pretty interesting. What I realized as I went through the exhibition was that it was about a phenomenon of modern life that I really don't like. Also, for all that I think Warhol's art is interesting enough and all right aesthetically, his overall themes don't make the sort of art I want to live with every day. Rouault’s Miserere, by contrast, was unexpected and fascinating and really worth my time. I wish I'd had longer to sit with it and hope I can get back before it closes at the end of July. Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties: This was the exhibition we went to the DMA for. Again, a lot of it was interesting, but for me it was more about the historical artifacts than the aesthetics of a lot of the paintings, which I didn't care for. I did like the photographs and sculpture as groups better than a lot of the paintings, though. Overall it was worth seeing, and I wish I'd had more time to poke around in the museum. The Age of Impressionism: Great French Paintings from the Clark is the current exhibition at the Kimbell and we liked it well enough that we joined when we got there on Sunday. I had gotten pretty burned out on Impressionism for a while, but this was a good enough exhibition to overcome my feelings of "been there, done that, seen it before". We also wandered through the permanent collection at the Kimbell, which had rotated paintings through since the last time we'd been. The Kimbell is a real treasure and I'm glad we've started visiting it. We didn't join the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth but we did have brunch there (recommended, especially the artwork-inspired cocktails) and took a docent-led tour of the permanent collection, which I recommend if you get a chance. The building is also gorgeous and worth the tour simply to explore. It's walking distance from the Kimbell (and the Amon Carter, which we didn't have time for) so there's a day's worth of excellent museums in the area. Our last stop on Sunday was The Crow Collection of Asian Art, which is across the street from the DMA. There are several exhibitions right now: a fabled journeys exhibition, which had some fascinating artifacts, a tantric arts exhibition that didn't do much for me, a jade exhibition which has fantastic objects but the curatorial direction seemed a little high school aimed for my taste, and a fantastic exhibition of digital photographs from the subcontinent with almost painterly lighting and details. The last exhibit was the unexpected winner and a nice close for the weekend's worth of art. This entry was originally posted at http://immlass.dreamwidth.org/859390.html. Comment here or there. Current Mood: tired |
princejvstin
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7:13a |
Falls of the Cascade River
Today's picture from #northshore2012 to start the work week are the falls on the Cascade River, Cascade River State Park. |
| Sunday, May 20th, 2012 |
mhaithaca
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1:05p |
When's the last time you saw a TV repair shop?
I guess my Sony HDTV is about five years old, or maybe six, and there's no reason it couldn't be perfectly adequate for another five or six. At 42 inches and seven feet away, it doesn't much matter that it's not a 1080p TV. The problem is that the HDMI port (yes, it has just one) has been increasingly flaky. The picture often flickers or cuts out, and while sometimes it settles itself down in a minute, I often have to get up and go unplug and reconnect the HDMI cable to get the picture back solid for a while. (Yes, I've replaced the cable.) I'm sure replacing the HDMI port in the TV would solve the problem entirely, but even if I could find someone who'd do that, I can't see schlepping this behemoth to a shop. (It's not a flat-panel device that can be lifted by one hand, but a rear-projection LCD TV.) As a workaround, I'm doing most of my TiVo watching using the component cables, which have no such problem. That has a couple of drawbacks, though, in that the Apple TV and Blu-ray Disc player need the HDMI connection, and with the audio ports going to the TV alongside the component connection, they can't go to the Slingbox. (I use that rarely enough that it shouldn't be a big deal.) Even if I weren't on an austerity budget until I get a full-time job, I'd feel silly buying a new TV when this one mostly works. One thought I had is that I could switch it with the newer 32-inch Samsung in my bedroom, but that would be noticeably smaller in the living room and the Sony would look ridiculous in the bedroom. I suppose eventually I'll get a newer TV in the living room that'll slowly pay for itself by using less electricity, but for now, I'll make do with this one. |
princejvstin
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8:15a |
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| Saturday, May 19th, 2012 |
mhaithaca
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6:46p |
Roar (208.8)
I upgraded my work desktop machine to Lion last fall, around when it came out, and fairly quickly got used to the fact that Apple reversed the previous scrolling behavior. I admit it was an odd thing for them to do, considering people have been using scroll balls and scroll wheels and the like on Macs for years and years, and having up suddenly become down and left suddenly become right is disorienting, but they made the reasonable assertion that people were getting used to a "direct" correlation between the way their fingers moved and the way the content on-screen moved thanks to the iPhone and iPad, and they were just making the Mac behave the same way. Well, I finally upgraded my laptop to Lion the other night, and what I adapted to fairly quickly on the mouse scrollball has taken a whole lot of getting used to all over again on the laptop trackpad. Pushing my fingers up to push the content of a web page up is actually fairly straightforward, and I guess I've adapted to that already. What's really driving me nuts is scrolling around photos I'm editing. I guess that's in a different mental pigeonhole than scrolling around web pages, so my brain isn't picking it up. I know I can turn it off, or switch back to the old behavior, but I'm refraining from doing so. I know I'll adapt eventually, again. In fact, at last June's Worldwide Developer Conference, the Lion developers made a point of calling our attention to the change, and saying that while there's a preference checkbox to restore it to what we were familiar with, they urged us to give it a week or two and promised we'd get the hang of it. It does feel pretty natural, and makes sense in the context of the similarity to the iPad behavior. The big difference is that on the iPhone or iPad, you're pushing directly on the content with your finger, and on the Mac, you're using a displaced control device, whether it's the mouse or the trackpad. Steve Jobs actually spoke once about the idea of a touch-screen Mac interface, and said it's just not natural to reach out to the Mac's screen the way it is to touch a phone or tablet screen. |
queenmabwords
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8:25a |
Banky
One guy I saw yesterday looked so much like Banky from "Chasing Amy" that I almost called him that. i wonder if he's seen the film. |
princejvstin
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7:08a |
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| Friday, May 18th, 2012 |
mhaithaca
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10:08p |
3/4 (206.8)
It's official! I was asked a few days ago if I was interested in a 3/4-time temporary job in Ithaca College's marketing & communications group, I said yes, and as of this afternoon, I've got a job that should actually pay the bills. I start on Tuesday the 29th, right after Memorial Day. The job will involve bulk e-mail communications to various groups including accepted applicants, statistical analysis of various communications' effectiveness, and helping implement a news and editorial management system. I'll be working with several friends, and some other folks I've come to know online, and it seems (from the outside) like a great group. My new boss (one of the friends) understands that I'm still looking for a full-time job and might end up needing to leave before my three-month appointment ends, but if I don't leave and it's working out well, she can extend the appointment up to a year. I'll probably also keep doing some hours at the bed & breakfast, partly to help them out and partly because I've got some financial catching up to do, and probably will for a while. My salary will be way less than I was making at Cornell, so I'll definitely still be looking for a full-time gig with a better salary. Meantime, I've certainly learned over the last seven months to live on less. |
matociquala
|
12:11p |
This is just to say....
....that there's going to be an Annual Booksale when I get back from WisCon, as there are giant boxes of books all over my house again. You have been forewarned! Also, I will be doing an r/Fantasy (that's Reddit) Ask Me Anything on June 5th. Questions may be posted all day in the appropriate thread, and I will answer them in the evening. Because y'all don't get enough of a chance to listen to me babble... Current Mood: overwhelmed |
princejvstin
|
7:08a |
Outlet of the Temperance River
Today's picture from #northshore2012 is the Outlet of the Temperance River, which was once a waterfall at the end of the Ice Age. |
mhaithaca
|
1:04a |
Lucky doggie
Millie, one of my coworkers at the Inn, leads a good life. She didn't always, but since she was adopted about a year and a half ago, after being rescued from an abusive former owner, she gets to relax. She spends most of her day curled up in a doggie bed in front of the fireplace in the dining room.  She's not a svelte doggie; she eats well, and often. In fact, she generally eats canned dog food with cut-up pieces of chicken apple breakfast sausage. This afternoon, there wasn't any chicken apple sausage ready, so Lynnette put a little ham in her dish instead. She wasn't having it. She picked at it for a couple of hours, but really seemed unhappy. Before I left, I asked Lynnette if I should grab some sausage from the freezer downstairs and cook it up, and she said sure. Before long, Millie knew what was up, and kept peeking around the kitchen door. When it was cooked, I cooled off one of the pieces under running cold water, chopped it up, and we gave Millie a fresh dish of just what she wanted! She seemed very happy. |
| Thursday, May 17th, 2012 |
matociquala
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3:17p |
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matociquala
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1:14p |
your brain works a lot faster than mine.
Anything else I had to say about the Criminal Minds season finale is subsumed in ZOMG Reid knitted it himself!
He makes a pretty good Four. Also, I'm glad they did the Emily thing the way they did the Emily thing; it's good to see Will but he should have known better; I'm pretty sure that UNSUB plan fails on usual the Evil Mastermind overclever subroutine of relying on a coincidence they could not have known about in advance; I bet that's Kevin's cousin; Penelope needs a Stern Talking To of the variety she just gave Morgan a few weeks back; I'm still the only person in this fandom who likes Strauss, but dammit I still like Strauss; and FASTER JJ KILL KILL! Discussion in comments of parallels between JJ in Hit/Run and Hotch in 100 is open for business. Current Mood:  mostly quite pleased, really |
matociquala
|
12:20p |
don't you wish there were another picture of che guevara?
The following contains discussion of fitness, health, and weight issues. If that is triggery for you, please page down now!
Ob. Disclaimer: I absolutely support anyone's right to live in their body as they choose, at any size they find comfortable. This is entirely about me, and my efforts to reclaim my health and strength after half a decade of abusing and neglecting my poor body.
Well, I'm wearing a pair of jeans that, based on the brand and cut, must date back to 1987 or so. They're Chic, size 14 tall, and in high school they would have been baggy on me. Now, they fit loosely except for the waist, which is a bit snug--but then, that happened when I was sixteen, too, though the jeans were size 11 then. This is because eighties jeans were cut to fit absolutely nobody except a young Brooke Shields. They do, however, still make my ass look fantastic, a characteristic generally not shared by modern lower-rise jeans, which make nobody's ass look good. Not mine, not yours. Possibly Jessica Simpson's. But they do let one bend at the middle without pinching one's ribcage on the waistband, which I suppose is a win. I guess that means I am officially back in my high school clothes, generously speaking. As I also have a black bat-winged sheath dress from Chico's that I loved in high school, and have been hanging on to for sentimental reasons. I might dust it off for an eighties party later this year. If only I had some slouchy elf boots. I suspect I will save the jeans for eighties nights at goth clubs. I think I still have one pair of slouchy socks hoarded away somewhere... ;-) This is all prelude to saying that I'm hovering somewhere around 187, and have been for about a month now with the usual ups and downs--but I'm obviously building muscle, because I seem to be shrinking. At one point a month or so ago I noticed I had obliques, there under the slack middle-aged tummy. This week, I noticed the top set of ab muscles. Also, my thighs are no longer getting in my way during most of yoga--that stopped after ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) scott_lynch and I walked somewhere around 40 miles in three days of NYC. I can do Hero's Pose and Lightning Pose without cheating now, and my body doesn't actually interfere with my ability to do a lunge anymore. It's still getting in the way of twists, and my biceps interfere with Eagle Pose, but that's not new. I'm a solid girl. I can also wear most of my beloved old corp-goth work clothes again, justifying my hoarding tendencies. Two suits are a bit tight, but they were always on the skinny end of the rack. I had to move the buttons back on a green suit I love, that I had expanded a bit when I was gaining weight. It's a size 12. I am facing the surprising possibility of shrinking out of my wardrobe again. In any case, look for a much better-dressed Bear at conventions this summer, since I love these clothes and don't have a dayjob to wear them to anymore. Curiously, I'm about 17 pounds heavier than the last time I fit in these clothes, which tells us about the power of rock-climbing. Muscle is heavy! My current weight goal is somewhere in the neighborhood of 160 pounds. Which should make the same size, roughly, as when I was in high school and weighed 150-ish. I was on track and field then, and at my most muscular before now, but I'm pretty sure my upper body now dwarfs what I had then. (Shoulders! They're awesome!) Also, um. Boobs. Some cup sizes have come to roost since then. Ahem. So I'm less than thirty pounds from my goal, which is very pleasant. My body is behaving as it should; everything physical is so much easier than it was in 2004, when I couldn't walk a half-mile without agonizing pain (now I can run five 12-minute miles back to back); and I'm enjoying the reduction in back and joint pain and the ability to sleep comfortably on my side or back again without feeling like my own belly is crushing me. I seem to be part of a coterie of SFF writers and fans on the "get healthy the old-fashioned way; move more and eat less crap" bandwagon, which pleases me. (personally, I have been following the efforts of Scalzi, Doctorow, Lynch, Sykes, Downum, Silverstein, Connolly, Buckell, and I'm sure a few others whose names are eluding me because it's time for lunch.) It pleases me because I'd like to see a lot of these people around for a damned long time. I'm also noticing changes in appetite, which tell me my body is adapting to its new lower caloric demands. Two whole pieces of fruit is too much to eat with lunch now; I am contented with half of each (plus some protein and vegetables and brown carbs, of course). (I eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, about ten servings most days; I've finally figured out how to reach my RDA minimum of potassium, and it goes like this: a cup of fortified cereal in the morning (Special K protein plus, since I can't find Total Protein around here anymore), half an orange, a small banana, eight ounces of green coconut water, and half a sweet potato. Some strawberries or mango don't hurt either, or some beans.)) For those who are curious about how I did it (my doctor was, and she laughed out loud when I said, "Counting calories, restricting sweets and saturated fat, and getting off my ass!" She then replied, "So doing all the boring shit we tell people to do, huh?"), here's my plan, fondly called The Discipline: It's a refined version of the Hacker Diet, which relies on good old thermodynamics to make things happen. I'm keeping my caloric intake around 1700-1900 calories a day, exercising for about an hour a day on average, drinking lots of water and not too much caffeine, avoiding refined carbs (mostly: I get 100-200 calories of "treat" a day, which could be a glass of wine or a beer, or a brownie, or... PRO TIP: Guinness is lower in calories than most "lite" beers, and tastes a fuckload better. Now you know.), eating roughly twice as many vegetables as the FDA suggests, and trying to keep my protein intake around 20% and my fat intake around 25%--and also trying to keep my protein intake above 100g a day without too much reliance on red meat, or meat at all. (I do use protein supplements--whey and soy, mostly.) I eat a lot of high-protein dairy (skyr!) and I try to limit myself to 100-200 calories a day from refined sugar, which is roughly 20-40 grams. Or, well, half a can of non-diet Coke. Managing sodium intake is a killer. But I'm working on it. Sleeping eight hours a night also pisses me off, but it seems to be necessary. I got six last night, and noticed the difference on my run this morning--I kept having to walk up hills I normally cruise up in second or third gear. I also exercise six days a week--usually two days of climbing (with a little yoga); three days of running; one day of yoga. I also try to get in some vigorous outdoor time when possible--kayaking, hiking, walking the dog. Walking to the store. Picking up my jump rope for five minutes on an otherwise sedentary day. As I said, one of the most successful weeks of the Discipline recently was when Scott and I were on Manhattan, eating every goddamned thing in sight. But we also made a point of walking two-thirds the length of the island at least once (Riverside to Chinatown, with side trips), and we walked as much as time permitted, otherwise. I know it sounds like my fitness routine is crushing, and seven or eight years ago, it would have crushed me. (Hell, I had the pleasant experience recently of putting in a Rodney Yee video that, in 2006, I could do maybe fifteen minutes of, and having the full hour workout be only just pleasantly challenging.) But remember, when I started out, I weighed 285-290 pounds and could not walk a half mile. One good habit builds on another, it turns out--and I find myself drinking more green and herbal tea because black tea doesn't taste good after the first mug, and I find myself not hungry for seconds unless the food is exceptionally good, and even then not always. There's not actually a lot of privation; I just want more of what's healthy for me. It's okay if I have a measured ounce of cheese on my beans and rice, instead of as much as I can fit in the bowl. It still tastes just as good! Better, since it's as easy to afford small quantities of really delicious food as it is large quantities of sort of icky food. And far more satisfying. Who knew? Which is so different from all my old pathological ways of dealing with food and drink that it's a little croggling. Most of this, of course, is just basic health maintenance stuff, and not too hard once you get the hang of it. And it's not like I don't give myself days off: I will in fact have two or three drinks on a night out, for example. I'm fully planning on onion rings after archery tonight when I get dinner with the Thursday Night Shooters. Just... not too damned often. And budget for it. It's not the extremes that set one's level of health; it's the baseline. Current Mood:  relaxed |
princejvstin
|
7:20a |
Outlet of the Temperance River
Today's picture from #northshore2012 is the sandbar free outlet of the Temperance River in the eponymous park.You see, unlike many of the other rivers on the north shore, the Temperance River does NOT have a sandbar at its mouth. And so it got named for that lack of a feature. Get it? |
| Wednesday, May 16th, 2012 |
jccohen
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11:38p |
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