Enemy of Entropy

Archive for January 2009

Miscellany

30 January 2009, 12:02 am. 9 Comments. Filed under Links.

I lost track of who orig­i­nally linked to what, so I can’t credit them prop­erly. But thank you to who­ever they all were, anyway!

Filed under “another rea­son I’m proud to be a home­schooler”: Cal­i­for­nia court rules that pri­vate school can oust les­bian stu­dents. I do under­stand that it’s a pri­vate reli­gious school, and that their denom­i­na­tion doesn’t approve of homo­sex­u­al­ity. On the other hand, the girls’ par­ents chose to send them to that school, not the girls them­selves. And demand­ing that every­body in the school be het­ero­sex­ual makes every bit as much sense as demand­ing that they all be right-​​handed! (It also sounds like the school went WAY the hell over­board in inter­pret­ing the “evidence.”)

Can I get an “Amen”?! End­ing Weight Bias: The Eas­i­est Way to Tackle Obe­sity in America

This is news? Read­ers build vivid men­tal sim­u­la­tions of nar­ra­tive sit­u­a­tions, brain scans sug­gest

Not Good News: Mer­cury found in kids’ foods — and in pretty much any­thing else that con­tains HFCS. I’m con­fi­dent of my abil­ity to kick the soda habit, but totally avoid­ing HFCS pretty much means avoid­ing all processed foods. GAH!

This is so cool! Implants Tap the Think­ing Brain

No sur­prise to me, at least: Watch out. The Inter­net will cut you

Real­ity check: Sorry, you don’t have a 200 IQ

Another no-​​brainer: Video Games May Hin­der Relationships

Cur­rent Mood: (sore) sore

Any Knitters Who Like Graphic Novels?

24 January 2009, 4:35 pm. 5 Comments. Filed under Links.

[info]cian­nait linked to Hand­knit Heroes yesterday.

Imag­ine you’re a teenager, and you have some… spe­cial pow­ers. Maybe even super pow­ers. And one day, at a sleep­over, your best friend in the whole world tells you—you’re not alone. So begins the adven­ture for a cou­ple of teenagers, a sin­gle mom and yarn shop owner, and a whole bunch of hand knit­ted fun.

Hand­knit Heroes is the first graphic novel for knit­ters. Each issue fea­tures a great sto­ry­line with knit­ting super­heroes, ter­rific art­work, and a beau­ti­ful (and easy) knit­ting pattern.

I’m vastly amused, and I nei­ther knit (yet!) nor read graphic nov­els. I know that [info]hopeevey does both, though, and I fig­ure there are prob­a­bly others.

Cur­rent Mood: (curious) curious
Cur­rent Music: Sam play­ing City of Heroes

Silly Beast

21 January 2009, 3:06 pm. 1 Comment. Filed under Critters.

Oh, for a work­ing cam­era!1

Katie cleaned the top of the file cab­i­net next to my chair with a Method cleaner that is strongly mint-​​scented. Kyoshi won’t let us put the scan­ner there as intended, because he’s lick­ing the cleaned sur­face and rub­bing all over it orgas­mi­cally. (Cat­nip is in the mint fam­ily, and I guess this stuff is close enough.)

1 I need to buy a new battery.

Cur­rent Mood: (amused) amused
Cur­rent Music: Amber by Arcana

Random Things Meme

18 January 2009, 7:03 pm. 5 Comments. Filed under Memes.

Leah tagged me on Face­book to write 25 ran­dom things about myself, then Sam tagged me to come up with 16 ran­dom tid­bits. I’m not good at these things, but I’ll give it a try.

  1. I didn’t go to kinder­garten, but started first grade when I was 5 because my mother thought she had to put me in school.
  2. My first-​​grade teacher, Mrs. Forester, was very hard of hear­ing, so she yelled con­stantly. I was con­stantly pet­ri­fied that year, because in my fam­ily yelling meant some­body was going to get knocked around.
  3. I spent much of the 4th and 5th grades as a sub­sti­tute teacher for younger stu­dents, because one of my aunts was the school sec­re­tary and she chose well-​​behaved A stu­dents (always female, for some rea­son) for that pur­pose. The school or school dis­trict was appar­ently too poor or too cheap to actu­ally hire subs.
  4. My ear­li­est mem­ory is from the week after my sis­ter was born, when I was 23 months old.
  5. When my sis­ter and I were about 2 and 4 years old, a rabid Ger­man shep­herd jumped the fence around our back yard and chased us. It was less than a foot away from her when a neigh­bor used his hunt­ing rifle to kill it. She doesn’t remem­ber the inci­dent, but she’s still pho­bic about that breed. Me? I wanted to learn to shoot that rifle. NOW!
  6. I started ques­tion­ing Chris­tian­ity when I was about 8 years old. One of my cousins gave me a lit­tle Scor­pio pen­dant for my birth­day, which my mother promptly con­fis­cated, rail­ing about fortune-​​telling and witches. I asked her about the dif­fer­ence between “prophets” and “fortune-​​tellers” and found myself in the preacher’s office. I asked him about a spe­cific verse in the New Tes­ta­ment and was told that God hadn’t given him the under­stand­ing of that verse yet, so he ripped that page out of his Bible. Since Mother spanked us for even putting a Sun­day School book or church bul­letin on top of a Bible while car­ry­ing them, I was con­vinced that he was going to Hell straight­away — unless the whole church thing was balderdash.
  7. My first piano teacher, Mar­jorie Hall, had also taught my mother when she was a child. She was our church organist.
  8. My father has had seri­ous back prob­lems through­out most of my life. I learned to give back rubs very early, try­ing to ease his pain.
  9. My mater­nal grand­fa­ther, Daddy Boots, was a moon­shine run­ner in his younger years. Some of Daddy’s extended fam­ily ran stills across north Alabama and north Geor­gia, and it’s very likely that he worked for them. I’ve always found that highly amus­ing, since Mom’s fam­ily con­sid­ered Daddy to be “from the wrong side of the tracks” when they started dating.
  10. Our extended fam­i­lies were very closely-​​knit when I was young, but both fell apart fairly quickly after my grand­moth­ers died (both in 1987).
  11. My pater­nal grand­fa­ther was a union orga­nizer at the steel mill where he worked. He died when my father was 7, and the union did noth­ing to help the fam­ily, so Daddy has been vir­u­lently anti-​​union ever since.
  12. I came across the idea of being openly involved with more than one per­son at a time in Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love when I was 13. It made per­fect sense to me. I’ve been polyamorous ever since, though I have agreed to monog­a­mous rela­tion­ships from time to time.
  13. I adore huge dogs. Yes, in the house. It’s cruel to bring a dog into a fam­ily, then keep it out in the yard. They’re pack ori­ented! I miss hav­ing a big, fenced yard that’s suited to let­ting a big dog run around safely.
  14. I’ve always been a cat per­son, which is weird, since my par­ents have no use for them. They don’t think ani­mals belong in the house at all, but over the years I guess I wore them down. I hardly con­sider any struc­ture a home with­out a cat.
  15. I miss climb­ing trees. I don’t think any­one taught me to do it, but accord­ing to both my mem­o­ries and fam­ily sto­ries, if they couldn’t find me, the best place to look was gen­er­ally up. I used to spend hours perched up in trees, read­ing, as the best way to avoid my lit­tle sister.
  16. I spent much of my mid­dle school and early high school evenings and week­ends babysit­ting and act­ing as a “mother’s helper.” I even babysat a cou­ple of kids who were older than I was, but since I was ahead of them in school, that was a secret between me and their parents.
  17. I started work­ing at my father’s employer’s office after school and in the sum­mers when I was 12.
  18. I was involved in just about every­thing but art and sports in high school: march­ing and sym­phonic band, per­form­ing cho­rus, drama, debate, math club, Beta club, National Honor Soci­ety, Junior Civ­i­tan, Close-​​Up, model U.N., etc. I had no idea that any of it would mat­ter to col­leges — that was just a nice bonus.
  19. While hus­band v.2 was wor­ried about his draft num­ber, I was start­ing first grade. Hus­band v.3 had already served in Viet­nam and returned by then.
  20. Katie really is a mir­a­cle, Goddess-​​gift baby. I met a woman at a Mensa national gath­er­ing, and out of the blue she asked if she could per­form a heal­ing for me. I couldn’t find a polite way to say no, so I said yes. She spent sev­eral hours “pour­ing energy” into me. After­wards, I couldn’t find her, the room where we’d been, or any­one else who had noticed her. Not long after that, I was preg­nant with­out any fer­til­ity treat­ments, although mul­ti­ple doc­tors had insisted that there was no way I would ever con­ceive with­out them.
  21. I learned that I was preg­nant less than a week after con­cep­tion, because of the 24⁄7 sick­ness (that stayed with me through­out the preg­nancy). I thought I had a stom­ach flu, but it wouldn’t go away. I went to a doc-​​in-​​the-​​box to get a preg­nancy test just to make my hus­band stop talk­ing about a preg­nancy. I made them do the test three times to be sure!
  22. I’ve lost track of the num­ber of mis­car­riages I’ve had. I wanted more kids, but have finally resigned myself to the fact that I got a per­fect child the first time, and she’s going to be my only one.
  23. I’m a vocal snob. I find it phys­i­cally painful to be near some peo­ple when they’re singing, and have lit­tle to no patience with them. While I’d love to sing with a group again on a reg­u­lar basis, I’m totally dis­in­ter­ested in any group that doesn’t require strict auditions.
  24. I think I’ve for­got­ten how to cook. Odd, since I started cook­ing at a very young age and cooked din­ner every day until shortly before I met Sam. (He’s a bet­ter cook than I am, anyway.)
  25. I’m not cur­rently read­ing a book. I can’t remem­ber that hav­ing hap­pened at any time since I was in first grade.

I’m not going to tag peo­ple specif­i­cally, but if you want to play, please let me know so that I won’t miss your list!

Cur­rent Mood: (contemplative) contemplative
Cur­rent Music: Katie, talk­ing about her date last night

Capucine’s Story!

15 January 2009, 1:35 am. 2 Comments. Filed under Humor.

This lit­tle girl has to be one of the cutest lit­tle dar­lings any­where! Her story is highly enter­tain­ing :-)

Once upon a time… from Capucha on Vimeo.

Cur­rent Mood: (amused) amused
Cur­rent Music: Capuncine, again!

 

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