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Jasperglasses

lierre — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 12:42:03 GMT

lierre — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 12:56:15 GMT

I'll just copy and paste my Facebook post:

I called Jasper's previous owner to ask about his breed because it has been seeming more and more unlikely that he is a miniature pinscher, he's way too small and just doesn't exactly look it, now that I have seen him next to a verified one. Several people have been calling him a Prague Ratter. The man's reaction? 'Yeah, he's a Prague Ratter. That's the same thing as a miniature pinscher.' LOL no it's not! Seems official though, Jasper is a Prague Ratter :)

lierre — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:47:18 GMT

Red lentils I just cooked soft with lemon grass, coriander, cumin, and a dry sherry taste suspiciously meat-like and I can't figure out why. Delicious though.

I was going to watch the "House" show for the first time, they just aired an episode featuring an asexual couple and because of the severe lack of asexual exposure in the media Lev and I were interested and intended to watch it together...then we each independently found out that it in fact sucked very much. One was found to have a medical cause for his "asexuality" and the other turned out to just be lying to be together with him. In the end they 'debunked' it as not being legitimate orientation at all. So there is finally mainstream awareness and it is completely negative as well as ill-informed as they seemed to confuse "asexuality" with "erectile dysfunction" and/or "lack of libido" which is not accurate. It's kind of upsetting.

lierre — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 09:11:16 GMT

more cupcakes.

my back actually hurts from making cupcakes.

that's enough.

lierre — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 15:21:43 GMT

Btw, since people keep asking when I'm going to post more paintings: art sale!
And this might be the beginning of the end. Beginning with an end-of-(last)-year sale at the beginning of the year, oh how chaotic.

The mushrooms in my icon are up too now.

lierre — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 23:10:13 GMT

I just upgraded Skype to 5.0 just because it's been bouncing around telling me to and I thought well ok maybe it will hold better with my recent connection problem.

The thing is huge, clunky, stuck together in one gigantic app, it is just horrible.

And google tells me if I want to downgrade again I have to delete all of my files and start from scratch. This sucks.

So be warned if you are considering upgrading, google it and read reviews and look at screen shots first.

lierre — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 13:24:33 GMT

I don't make a whole lot of money on these mandala patterns but the e-mails from people who buy them are so uplifting, they alone make me want to create more of them. That such a simple thing can cause such feelings in people, it's beautiful.

lierre — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 13:53:16 GMT

Any Hindi speakers reading this have a few minutes and willing to type me out the lyrics to these two nursery rhymes? I tried googling them and searching the site linked on the videos but no luck. I get the gist of them (of course i know the numbers, and "chalna" is one of the first verbs I learned) but I don't know all of the words. Don't need a translation, just the text and I could probably figure it out from there :) Doesn't matter if it's Romanised or Devanagari, I've got the alphabet down. They're only about a minute and a half each:

Ek Do Teen
Ghadi Tik Tik Tik

The kids love these two and keep asking me to sing them and I kind of want to make sure I am singing them right too lol

lierre — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 12:40:34 GMT

I posted these to my art account but copied and pasted to my regular journal because they have personal relevance: Almost completely painted without an eye patch! (I had started them in October, hence the one Halloweenish one). I've developed the habit of looking from one side though as i figured would happen. Still better than patching one eye so often.

lierre — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 18:08:34 GMT

Apparently this was just in the paper about my brother's band:

“Lemongelli sounds like a bare-knuckle bowling alley brawl between King Kong and The Allman Brothers. Who wins? Everyone wins. It’s a bare-knuckle bowling alley brawl between King Kong and The Allmans.”

- Gene Padden, music critic, The Citizens’ Voice

:D

This is them, he is the first one on the left although he looks totally different now, he lost about 100 lbs since that pic was taken.

lierre — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 20:24:29 GMT

omg I figured out why rednecks wear wife beaters. it's because of how strongly they feel about their right to bare arms.

lierre — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 11:48:50 GMT

Does anyone want a free website design for your small business or portfolio something? I'm thinking of doing some on the side again for extra money and it would be good to have some current examples besides my own websites.

I did this professionally back in 2001, employed by an automation company here in Brandenburg, I quit when I got sick and eventually the company went out of business so I went on to teach at the language center here instead, which I in turn quit when I was pregnant because I was making more money selling paintings than teaching.

My specialty is flexibility, making a design work across as many platforms as possible, which is why I shied away from Flash early on for instance. I don't even use JavaScript in my own sites even though I learned it, because of compatibility and the fact that users tend not to like it, so I achieve everything with HTML and CSS.

If anyone's interested post here and we can talk :)

lierre — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 19:42:33 GMT

I did three more editions of mandalas and finished the website for them: mandalas.lierre.de

Editions 4 (all flowers!) and 5 are my favourites so far.

I had the idea of printing and colouring 9 or 12 of them and framing them in square frames then arranging them 3x3 or 3x4 like a patchwork quilt on the wall and now I'm all excited :D I probably won't have any time to do it in the near future but still. It could also be a nice gift, if anyone is looking for something somewhat-personalized for someone who likes anything from art in general to Buddhism, Hinduism, India, to patchwork quilts I guess. COLO(U)R!!!

Genetics buffs please!

lierre — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 14:22:23 GMT

I'm trying to understand this genetics thing. I posted in a community a while back asking if ancestry DNA tests like the The Genographic Project that National Geographic is doing would give information about my father's grandmother (my brother would do the test since he is a male descendant). The general consensus was that since the line I want to know about was passed on through mitochrondrial DNA (matrilineal) it wouldn't have been found in my father's DNA and so neither in my brother's.

But reading about Kwäday Dän Ts'ìnchi now ( aka "The Canadian Iceman") I found this:

In 2000, DNA testing of local inhabitants of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations tribes' mitochondria revealed 17 living people who are matrilineally related to Kwäday Dän Ts’ìnchi. (Source; Original source cited: Pringle, Heather. "The Messenger", Canadian Geographic Magazine, Dec 2008, p. 73 )

Those remains were male, so I am confused again. Can anyone explain to me how they were able to confirm a matrilineal lineage (matrilineage? lol) there? Does that mean we might find the specific haplogroup in our DNA from a female ancestor past through our male parent after all? Or am I understanding something here wrong again?

Of course I'd like to just get the test done already and see what we find out but it's not a financial priority unfortunately :p

lierre — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 00:17:59 GMT

goooooooooodnightynight.

lierre — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 16:49:36 GMT

You are the product of an unbroken lineage, some 7500 generations of pairs have had to successfully produce offspring which lived at least long enough to continue the cycle, from the emergence of our modern species through its development of language, technology, and society, with so many hardships along the way just from finding nourishment and protecting ourselves from the rest of nature, through severe climate changes like ice ages and warming periods and acute natural disasters, countless wars and other violent conflicts, and devastating diseases like the Black Death which killed 30%-60% of the population of Europe alone at the time.

Those ~7500 pairs of people over tens of thousands of years, and just one of them would have to have died too soon for you to not have come into existence.

Whether you are a Creationist or a Darwinist or something in between we at least generally agree that we come from a long line of people.

So no matter what else you want to put yourself down for don't forget how long and far you've come and what odds it is that you exist it all. It kind of makes you special, like everyone else :p

lierre — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 11:00:07 GMT

This is the world's oldest known song with complete music notation, it even has lyrics. It was found on clay tablets, recorded in cuneiform, in a lost city of Syria and dates back to around 1400 BC. It was discovered in the late 90s. The title of it translates to 'The Prayer of the Infertile Woman' and as a sad lament to the moon goddess of a childless (not "childfree" in this context!) wife asking why she could not bear children as others.

orchestral interpretation:

simple version with lyrics, on a reproduction the lyre instrument of the time

lierre — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 21:10:11 GMT

i dreamt we invented a device that could detect and reproduce sound waves past their audibility to our ears, and roughly date their creation. using filtering methods and something akin to a new form of archaeology with sounds, we were verifying and clarifying countless historical and criminal cases. it was revolutionary in the way that carbon dating was. maybe more so.

Do people who aren't sorry deserve forgiveness?

lierre — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:06:39 GMT

I just felt like articulating this...

I had the question posed "why do people hate each other?" and my instinctive reaction was, "Because they are unforgiving."

That seemed to put the whole fault for the situation of hate on the one who was wronged, in other words it's -- dare I say it -- some variety of victim-blaming.

My method of reasoning to a resolution involves something of a debate between sides in my head so in defense of the unforgiving hater I asked myself the question, "what if the one who has wronged the victim (of course this is simplified for the sake of this argument) did not deserve forgiveness?"

But I realised that forgiveness is not just something you give to other people as a gift of selflessness. It's something you do for yourself, to move on. You can forgive someone who is not sorry for what they have done, who perhaps even continues to behave inappropriately, and you should forgive them because you deserve it.

If you are such a mindful person as to be considering forgiving someone who has not only done you wrong but is not sorry for it, I honestly believe that your compassion is great enough that you deserve to be free of the pain of anger associated with continuing to be unforgiving.

"Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned." -Buddha

---

I recently read a comment from someone who had been treated badly by another person and said she didn't want to let it go because she felt that would let the wrongdoer "win." I guess the reasoning is that if she went on with her life as if nothing had happened, it would be condoning what was done.

Keeping with that concept of 'letting them win': if someone does something to harm you and you continue to let it negatively affect you, I think they have really hit the jackpot there. However, if you are able to stand up and put it beside you and go on with your life not letting it get you down, you've shown them that their horrible actions have not managed to destroy you, you have won over them.

I thought that might be helpful to some other people too.

lierre — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 10:40:57 GMT

23.8
Quinn is sitting next to me twisting one of my Rubik's cubes to make letters on it...I, U, C, H...

Today we made books (construction paper covers, white drawing paper inside, all folded in half to A5 size and stapled on the fold). The wrote and drew in/on them with crayons and coloured pencils, cut out shapes to glue inside, and used stickers.

At night after their bubble bath we made chocolate cupcakes.

This stuff is mundane, we do things like this regularly, but i never write it down and should sometimes in case they forget their nice memories later.

24.8
Quinn asked me last night what "ladies and gentlemen" meant. I explained it superficially then elaborated one what people mean as far as expected or observed behaviour, concluding with the point that he can be considered a little gentleman already if he tries to always be kind. He got a sad look and said, 'but I'm not a good person, because I do bad things.' And went on to talk about when he accidentally caught a guineafowl up in a string he was playing with and injured it so badly (it got stuck in a bush and pulled its own leg out of the socket panicking) that we had to slaughter it.

It reminded me of a Dharma talk on depression by one of my favourite Buddhist monks, Ven. Ajahn Brahm about people only seeing their mistakes, and carrying around 'their chickenshit in their basket instead of the eggs.' I didn't use that story, or the one about the brick wall in that sermon but I went with the basic idea and reminded him that he tries to be good, that this and most other really terrible things that happened have been accidental, and that there are a lot of GOOD things he does.

So he asked me what the good things were and I mentioned how he helps his little brothers, he even washes Jack up in the bathtub when he poops his pants, he makes sandwiches for them both, he draws pictures for people and folds it up and puts it in their mailboxes to make them smile, he helps me clean up, he closes up the barn at night so the fox doesn't come in, when one of our hens was a clucky with two chicks he always made sure they made it into the barn at night since they often didn't on their own, and so forth. That seemed to make him really happy so I hope he doesn't forget it again soon.

at the moment

lierre — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 15:11:42 GMT

i'm sitting under a tent in a thunderstorm next to our four Indian runner ducklings playing in the water

eta: on the 10th we took a trip to the zoo / film animal training school to visit the guanacos and one female in particular seemed to bond with me quickly according to Peter. we need name suggestions, also :)

lierre — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 13:22:42 GMT

i've been taking so many notes on Buddhism that i decided to just make a dedicated journal. it's buddha_notes (creative!) if you are interested. anyone is welcome to read/comment.

this doesn't mean i will never mention Buddhism here again, just that the long contemplations that don't directly have something to do with me personally will tend to be there now.

lierre — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 09:54:49 GMT

I am tentatively coming to the conclusion that enlightenment is a physiological state, which can be "attained by anyone" in the same way that perhaps "anyone" could sing like an opera singer because "everyone" has vocal cords.

lierre — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 12:13:39 GMT

this is my favourite from a recent project, and the largest painting i have completed in a while (i usually have a few i am working on) it's 30"x30"

and why can't firefox decide what to do with the colours, in the LJ previews it shows it drabber and in the actual display it's oversaturated :/

i liked this one a lot, it's a 20x20. the scanner doesn't take the red tones well.

lierre — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 12:52:56 GMT

I watched the second part of "Discovering Buddhism" which is about Death and Rebirth. You don't have to be religious or even believe Buddha ever existed to gain something from the teachings.

Again, some of the key points were things I have already concluded on my own and currently live by, the most significant having been to not carry regrets as negative memories but instead as learning experiences (which in my version of it can better the future, to elaborate).

The concentration on the topic of death was on the fact that death is inevitable and unpredictable, that most people fear it, and that it is not necessary to die afraid like this. The solution to it, as I interpreted it, was to live your life in a way that you are pleased with what you have made of it, so that you have no more regrets. Live your life now knowing that it could be over at any moment and that you will have lost the chance to do that anymore.

One woman, a nurse, spoke of a man from Burma that she had cared for, and how he asked for peace and quiet at his shrine at home, having put his mattress down there to die. He said he just needed to concentrate now because he was dying. She said that all of the non-Buddhist caregivers were shocked at how calm he was, and that he didn't need any drugs, because in their experience people dying and aware that they are dying will usually need drugs to keep them calm, they are so afraid.

When my father was dying he was unable to speak anymore, he was paralysed. My brother said his eyes reacted to people talking, that he seemed to manage a slight smile when they came in, and when he heard my voice on the phone. When it was decided to give him morphine just to make the last days more pleasant for him (it was hard to determine whether he was in bad pain) my brother asked that they not mention it aloud in the room, so that he wouldn't be upset. A loud-mouthed nurse stomped in there and announced it. My brother was furious with her and looked at our father worried and said he saw tears well up in his eyes. He said he thinks he felt we had given up on him. I kept thinking all he has to know is that he raised us well and we would do good with what he had taught us, because he made no secret of the fact that his life goal was to provide for us for life (although he felt this could only be achieved by becoming extremely wealthy and setting us all for life financially). I think I already knew from that experience what a person needs to die in peace, maybe not consciously but it looks in retrospect that I was trying to do just that. I don't know if we managed by then though.

I might "regret" not having known enough at the time to really be CERTAIN he was made aware of that, and it feels awful that perhaps my own father had to die feeling unhappy and a failure for me to learn that lesson. But I can't change the past, I can only influence the future, and that will be made better because of that experience.

Oddly enough (or perhaps logically) the teachings on death and especially the part about the calm dying man reminded me of giving birth. Right down to the point that we ultimately do it alone. Everyone around me was shocked that I did it alone, on my own, in my own home, and was not afraid. That it was so quiet even, that Quinn in the room next to me when Jack was born did not wake up, nor Iris sleeping in the open loft, no door or wall between us. I wasn't afraid because I had educated myself, I knew what to expect and that I just needed to concentrate and nature would take its course. I was prepared to handle the consequences and it worked.

To me, this is exactly the same. I've managed to connect birth and death in a way that I feel they can be the same experience for me. I don't think people do need to be afraid of dying if they have lived their lives knowing it is inevitable but that they can use this knowledge to appreciate the value of what life they do have. You do your best and when it comes time to die, well, it's not like you can mess it up ;p