Confessions of an Internet Junkie

Books

2015-08-29T10:12:31Z

sparky77 inspired me to actually post something. I think about posting every day, but somehow it never happens. This is easing back into the LJ waters.

Rules: List ten books that have stayed with you in some way. Don’t take but a few minutes, and don’t think too hard — they don’t have to be the “right” or “great” works, just the ones that have touched you.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. I think I was 12 when I first read this, and I say "first" because this was an annual reread for many, many years after. I loved Jo; she was bright, adventurous, ungainly, funny, always putting her foot in her mouth, and a tomboy, as we used to say back then. How could I not love her? She was me.

Gentlemen's Agreement by Laura Z. Hobson. I read this as a teenager, and it forever changed my perception of … well, a few things. The book was written not long after WWII, and the story concerns anti-Semitism in America, but really it's about any type of prejudice and how that prejudice is enabled by nice people who disapprove but remain silent and how bigotry is more sublte than confrontational. It was my first real understanding of "silence equals consent." (It was also a multiple-award winning movie starring Gregory Peck, John Garfield, Celeste Holme, and a pre-teen Dean Stockwell, who won a special Golden Globe for his performance.)

Lord of the Rings It was a phenomenon among the nerd and pre-hippie crowd when I was in high school. I adored everything about it, as did all of my friends. There had been nothing like it before in our literary lives, and it fired our imaginations and fueled our desire for pure adventure and the intense camaraderie that brought with it.

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. He was a member of a climbing team ascending Everest when a deadly storm struck almost without notice. Many climbers died during that storm; he was one of the survivors. He was also a well-known sport/adventure writer, so his memoir about that particular climb is absolutely harrowing and opened up an ongoing fascination with Everest and the mythos/industry/reality surrounding those who ascend to the peak.

Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. I can't pick just one story. I can't. I also can't believe that it took me so long to actually get started reading Pratchett, despite the urging (nagging) of so many of you. Now it's the one imaginary world that I wish I could visit. If I ever have a billion dollars, I swear to the gods - big and small - that I will create a Disc World theme park that will blow Disney and his happy fairy tale park out of the cosmos.

Dispatches by Michael Herr. He was a war correspondent for Esquire when he covered the Viet Nam war. It was termed rock'n'roll journalism, gonzo journalism, and it's still considered one of the best non-fiction books ever written about war and the grunts who fight it. Devastating, exhilerating, wildly funny at times, heart breaking at others. Some of the people Herr wrote about ended up as composite characters in both Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket. It's also a paean to the war correspondents and war photographers who covered Viet Nam and had a love/hate relationship with the danger and the Romance that went with it. Must read.

Beautiful Joe by (Margaret) Marshall Saunders. I read this as a pre-teen, and it's never left me. It's the story of a horribly abused dog rescued by a large and kind family, and it's written as an autobiography from Joe's viewpoint. I just discovered on Wikipedia that it's based on a true story that took place not far from me here in Ontario, and there's a memorial park and museum to honor Beautiful Joe. I know my next road trip!

Twisted Tales from Shakespeare by Richard Armour. One of the funniest books I have ever read. Armour was a poet and Shakespeare scholar who turned out to be wicked funny. The "twisted tales" are short pseudo-scholarly essays on about 10 of Shakespeare's most famous plays - complete with footnotes. I'm laughing just thinking about this book. If you love word play and an affectionate skewering of the Bard, I highly recommend it. ("Would you name your child Peaseblossom, Mustardseed, or Cobweb? Would you really?") ("Hamlet stabs Polonius through the arras.")

The Road by Cormac McCarthy. So dark and so unforgettable. I keep rereading it trying to understand why anyone would fight to survive in such a world. I think the father is selfish rather than inspiring, and I'm a bit of masochist for rereading in the vain hope of suddenly discovering some spark of light in his survive-at-all-costs philosophy.

Trixie Belden by Julie Campbell. This is a series of books about a teenage girl and her friends & brothers who stumble onto mysteries. It was the alternative to the Nancy Drew series, and it was the one I was much more in tune with. Trixie had to do chores around the house, babysit her younger brother, do homework, all the stuff I had to do. They lived in a wooded area of the Hudson Valley and the woods were their playground; I grew up at the base of Rattlesnake Mountain, played mostly with boys (there were very few girls in my neighborhood and they preferred dolls), and we spent most of our free time tramping around the woods. I loved Trixie. Still do.

The Walking Dead finale

2014-04-01T00:39:41Z

Because you can't do spoiler cuts on freakin' FaceBook. I'm just going to paste something I wrote to my brother earlier. He thought the Rick/Joe ending was unrealistic. So my response follows. Feel free to jump in and comment. And I hope I do this right. It's been years since I've done a cut.

You're not looking at it from the story perspective, baby bro. The set up was Carl asking Rick about Terminus: "Are we going to tell them?" Then he goes on to clarify (paraphrasing maybe) "Are we going to tell them what happened to us? What we did?" Then "Are we going to tell them who we are?" And then: "Who are we?" The big question is who are we now? What have we become? Rick and Carl have both been struggling with that this season, although not directly with each other. Have they become as monstrous as the monsters they've been fighting since the plague started? When Rick tore out Joe's jugular, he was answering yes, they had. But they had to in order to survive, and in the end he accepts that fully. He will do anything to protect his loved ones, no matter how monstrous.

I thought that whole sequence with Joe's gang was completely horrifying. I couldn't believe that the show was taking it that far, and for a moment or two I thought that Carl was actually going to be raped. But it really raised the stakes for the story and really, really provided the impetus for Rick to stop clinging to his illusions about creating a safe, separate reality.

Eugene (the nerd with the mullet) doesn't strike me as being any good in a fight, but you may be on to something about him coming up with some ad-hoc weapons. I think Rick knew they were outgunned pretty early on. I also think they didn't want to split up the group again, and that's why they didn't leave Daryl outside. Besides he's just one guy - what was he supposed to do?

I was thrown off for the last 10 minutes because I kept expecting a few of the group to die. Again, it was the hype that led so many of us to that conclusion, so we were all watching the clock and trying to figure out how all of that was all going down in the time that was left. It wasn't the fault of the script; the PR people screwed up. Still, I'm really glad that no one did die. Although for a few minutes I was convinced that Bob and Glenn and Maggie were dead when I saw the bad guys wearing their clothes. I was on Twitter with my friend Jenn in MA and we were going nuts. OMG those are Bob's pants! OMG they're all dead. OMGOMGOMG! Heh. Twitter is fun.

Anyway, I wish they would reshow the finale next week. I completely missed the point of the flashbacks. In fact, I didn't even get that they were flashbacks. In my mind, I was watching the hallucinations of a dying Rick, and Hershel was telling him to put down his guns because you don't need guns in heaven :) As I said - completely missed the point.

OK, back to you. Do you agree with any of this?

A meme seems nice and safe.

2014-02-16T02:07:39Z

Ganked from sffan.

A - Age: 64
B - Birthday: May
C - Crush: Captain America, Black Widow
D - Do you dance?: Oh, yes.
E - Easiest person to talk to: Myself (Seriously, I talk to myself a lot.)
F - Favourite colour(s): gray, red, lavender
G - Glitter or neon: Neon - blue, red, and purple
H - Hair colour: Ash brown with gray
I - Ice Cream: I stick to frozen yogurt these days, but yes. Love it.
J - Job: Cat wrangler, alpaca products purveyor
K - Kickboxing or Karate: Kickboxing, although either is laughable
L - Los Angeles is: someplace I've never wanted to visit
M - Movie: Well, I just cried at my 112th viewing of Field of Dreams, so that one. Today.
N - Number of Siblings: One younger brother
O - One Phobia: Drowning. Although that's more of a reasonable fear than a phobia.
P - Part of your personality?: Curiosity
Q – Quote: “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." Followed closely by "The day ain't fucking over yet."
R - Reason to smile: My cats never fail to deliver.
S - Season: Fall. I love everything about it.
T - Time for bed: Anywhere between 10PM and midnight. On nights before I work at the market: 8:30PM
U - U love someone?: Yes. Yes, I do.
V - Vegetable you hate: Loose leaf lettuce of any variety.
W - Worst Habits: Non sequiturs. Drives Dar crazy.
Y - Year you were born: 1949
Z - Zoo Animal: Meerkats

Oh, what the hell. I'm already logged in.

2013-10-21T01:31:52Z

Tons of things have happened - some good, some bad. We're still all upright, so that's a good thing.

We finally turned in my old 2002 Mazda (at almost 210,000 miles) and bought a 2006 Mazda with about 100,000 miles on it. Let's see how far we can take this one. We are a very high mileage family, but living in a rural area means you have drive pretty far to get to most of the things you need.

The alpacas are still being goofy. We've had three new crias this year: one girl and two boys. All adorable, of course.

There's a new boy cat in the family, too. He's another abandoned kitty - a gorgeous orange guy with a white bib. He loves people and craves affection, but we can't bring him inside because Grace (who was abandoned on our doorstep last year) goes completely ballistic whenever she lays eyes on him - or even smells him on our clothes. So Monty (the orange boy) lives out in the girls' shed. Miraculously they all get along. If anything, the alpacas annoy him more than the other way around. We need to get him a nice warm shelter and soon because the shed is drafty and winter is rolling up on us. We're expecting snow showers later this week.

Our booth at the market is doing well. We're getting repeat customers and people who are tracking us down because they heard about our alpaca products. Dar has become an expert at dyeing. She does amazing things with alpaca and silk. And our friend from Toronto with the curly black hair (I can't remember her LJ name!) turns out to be this master knitter and designer who's come up with several beautiful and unique patterns which we're marketing for her. I'm still mostly the gopher in the group, but I want to start trying my hand at dyeing silk. I'm pretty good at the sales end, and I can talk about knitting without actually being able to do more than knit/perl. Mostly I just love the feel of our yarns.

That's the briefest of updates. I need to ease my way back into this. It's just that it's been so long, and so much has happened that there's just too much to say in one post.

It's ALMOST a post.

2013-10-21T00:41:26Z

My Liberal Identity

You are an Eco-Avenger, also known as an environmentalist or tree hugger. You believe in saving the planet from the clutches of air-fouling, oil-drilling, earth-raping conservative fossil fools.

Take the quiz at
About.com Political Humor

OMG a Meme!

2013-05-31T00:59:43Z

Via brighty18:

You Are 60% Open Minded

You are a very open minded person, but you're also well grounded.

Tolerant and flexible, you appreciate most lifestyles and viewpoints.

But you also know where you stand firm, and you can draw that line.

You're open to considering every possibility - but in the end, you stand true to yourself.

How Open Minded Are You?

Blogthings: We're Not Shrinks, But We Play Them On the Internet

Yeah, I'd say that's pretty accurate. Interesting quiz.

Game of Thrones: Very exciting plot theory for end of S3!

2013-05-15T02:28:01Z

I stumbled across this earlier today; I think it was in a companion article to the GoT review in The Atlantic. This is so exciting, and it's killing me not to be able to talk with anyone about it! It's conjecture, of course, but it's also spoilery as hell if you haven't read the books. It's about Talisa, Robb Stark's wife and queen. The author of this theory has made a six minute video to underscore his theory, and it's kind of brilliant. The video and my reaction are going behind cut tags.

His theory is that Talise is a Lannister spy. Yeah, yeah - I raised my eyebrows when I first read that, too. But his video convinced me. You have to watch this.

It fits, doesn't it? What gives it even more credit for me is the fact this is a tightly written show. It has to be. There is a huge amount of information that has to be translated from the very long books into just ten hours of screen time per season. That doesn't leave much room for throw-away scenes or extraneous character nattering. I think the video underscores that point very well. OK, I'm not completely convinced about the Roose Bolton connection, but that's a minor piece overall.

I'm not sure what this means for the truth of Talisa's claim that she's pregnant. If she really is a Lannister spy, then it would be dangerous for her to be carrying the rightful heir to the throne in the North. But if she isn't pregnant, what benefit is there in telling Robb that she is? Maybe to seal his love for her. Or maybe as an excuse to miss the Red Wedding: morning sickness makes it too hard to travel.

You know, I'm really going to be disappointed if this doesn't come to pass. I think that makes me a sick person. I blame GRRM.

So what do you think?

Look! A question meme!

2013-04-21T23:25:44Z

I was tagged by brighty18 a few days. I finally have the chance to answer, so here goes. And also? It has been forever since I've used LJ tags; I see that they've changed a lot of things, so apologies ahead of time if this goes all fubar.

1. Always Post the Rules
2. Answer the questions the person tagged you and write 11 new ones
3. Tag 11 new people and link them to the post
4. Let them know you tagged them

1. What was your favorite game or activity as a child?
Being a Boomer, there were always a bunch of kids to play with. I loved playing in the woods behind our development. Rattlesnake Mountain was our favorite playground: The base was swampland (bogs, ponds, meadows) and then the mountain was tree-covered with some outcrops and a few caves. We were out there four seasons, allowed to roam and explore as long as we were back home by dusk. It was a much freer time for kids. We hiked, we scrambled, we built forts, hunted for the wild pigs rumored to be up there, made up our own adventure games. It was great. During the winter, we'd sling our skates over our shoulders, grab brooms or shovels and head out to the swamp for some skating at Black Pond or Duck Pond. I had loads of fun, and I truly feel sorry for kids who's only experience of playing games is sitting passively in front of a screen.

2. What are your three biggest pet peeves and why do they bother you?
Damn, Skippy - just three? Heh. OK, lets go with 1) not saying please and thank you, 2) people talking on their cell phones in shared spaces like busses, subways, and restaurants, and 3) pushing past instead of saying excuse me. All three have to do with simple courtesy and acknowledging that we share space, and this is only really going to work if we all agree to follow a simple set of basic courtesies.

3. If you could fix dinner for anyone, living or dead, who would fix dinner for, what would you make, and why?
My paternal grandmother, Anna Kalwat. I never really knew her, and I truly regret that. I have so many questions about her life; I'd give a great deal to be able to sit and talk with her. For dinner I'd try my hand at stuffed cabbage and noodle kugel served with her favorite Manischewitz kosher wine. It wouldn't be as good as she could make it, but I'd try my best to honor her.

4. If you could become proficient at a weapon what would it be and why?
Well, thanks to crappy vision and intention tremors I can't think of any weapon with which I could gain proficiency :) But if I could overcome those two things, I'd like to become proficient with a rifle. I went to a gun range once and had a grand time banging away at targets with a .38, but I think a rifle would be more practical. I really can't see myself ever killing anything, but I've enjoyed archery and target shooting. My mom used to go skeet shooting with her friends when she was young, and that always sounded like fun. And if push came to shove, I think that having a proficiency with a defensive weapon is not a bad thing to have.

5. Do you have recurring dreams or dream images? What are they?
Oh yeah. The big one is looking through windows. Usually I'll be looking at something truly terrifying to me: some kind of carnage or natural disaster. Ghouls. Yeah, that was a fun night. That is my personal message me to figure out what is scaring me that I'm not acknowledging. I don't get that one as often as I did when I was younger. The two most recurrent ones nowadays are 1) using a public toilet that is only partially enclosed - say from the waist down - or has no door (this has to do with privacy issues), and 2) struggling to get into clothes that are wet or tangled or too small. Lots of frustration in that one.

6. What makes a good movie in your opinion? You can list both elements or examples or both.
Character, character, and more character. Great dialogue. Great acting. I don't need action. In fact I hate chase scenes, fight scenes, and things blowing up. If a director throws any of that in, it had damn well better be in support of the story rather than the main point of the story. I like talky movies. I like long takes.

7. Have you ever had a supernatural experience? What was it?
Yes, I have. My mother and I took care of her sister Verna when she was dying of cancer; she was my favorite aunt and my godmother. We were very close. The night she died, all of us heard a knocking sound that traveled completely around the outside of the house, and our dog started howling. Our house was small, but it was built into the side of a hill: the back of the house was two stories up, with the basement being the first floor - no one could have been walking around the house knocking on it. We all thought it was my aunt. I also spent the night in a haunted house; just the two of us were there, but we both clearly heard a bell ringing in another room; it was the kind of bell that someone would use to summon a servant. It wasn't scary at all, thankfully.

8. What is your favorite journey?
I'm not sure what this means. Is it meant literally or figuratively? Literally, my favorite journey is driving the New England mountains in full autumn. Figuratively it's the journey of self-discovery through introspection. I'm still working on that :)

9. If you had a theme song, what would it be and why?
Ha! Well, you know, it should probably be a medley of show tunes - something for every occasion. I'd have to go with Bruce Springsteen's Thunder Road simply for these lyrics:

Hey, what else can we do now?
Except roll down the window
And let the wind blow back your hair
Well, the night's busted open
These two lanes will take us anywhere

It's a very personal reference for me full of exhilaration and hope and movement, all tied up with my great love of driving and exploring and freedom.

10. What is your favorite place (city, state, country, building, park, etc.) and why?
Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge and Watertown, MA. I spent a lot of hours there when I lived in the Boston area. It's beautiful year round, and it's a wonderful place to walk, take photos, explore, or just sit and read. Plus it's huge. I still haven't seen all of it.

11. What is your favorite thing about yourself?
I like myself. I don't like or even understand everything that I do, but I'm trying to figure out how to do better. And sometimes I succeed at that. But even when I don't, I don't give up trying. And I like that about myself.

I don't think that there are eleven people left who read my journal, so here's the deal: If you'd like to answer these questions, too, please do; I'd love to read your answers.

What they don't tell you about aging.

2013-04-14T22:38:31Z

Since I am older than just about anyone else I know these days (older cousins excluded), let me pass on a few things.

1) Your night vision goes straight to hell. I used to get very exasperated driving behind older people at night as they poked along. Payback is a bitch, guys. When it first started to happen to me, I kept wiping my eyes because it seemed like I was looking through dark gauze. Nah, just aging eyes. It's actually easier to drive in the country than in the city. Well, as long as no one is tailgating me. In the city the lights can be very distracting. In the country it's just you and your headlights. And oncoming traffic. And the guy behind you. But it's still easier than the city. Of course in bad weather it's all bad. You have been ~~warned~~ advised.

2) Your joints. Kiss them good-bye. Now admittedly mine are much worse than yours are most likely going to be thanks to lupus and whatnot, but even before that hit it was Creak-o-rama. As it was with my friends. It was pretty funny when we'd get together and the joint would be popping. So to speak.

3) You lose the padding on your feet. Really. Probably later than I did, again thanks to autoimmune diseases, but it does happen. For the past two years I was experiencing a lot of pain when I went barefoot and incredible pain even in socks if I stepped on something innocuous like a cord or something. I felt like I was walking on the bones of my feet. And it turns out that I was! Validation is good even when it's weird. I had no idea that it was also going to be a part of the aging process. Probably not until the 70s for the rest of you.

4) You still get freaking hot flashes. Females, anyway. Now part of that, again, is lupus doing its demonic thing with my body's ability to regulate my body temp, but even before that - yup, hot flashes. Not as frequent or as intense as during perimenopause, but they're still hanging on.

5) Skin. It's actually kind of fascinating how the elasticity and the texture of your skin changes over time. I don't think it's a bad thing at all, but it's a definite change. I honestly love how my hands look now with all of the creases and lines: It's like they're made from fine crepe. I don't know how to say this tactfully because I don't want it to sound mean, but I'm truly disappointed that I won't be around to see all of your tattoos in another 30 or 40 years. I wonder how they'll transform?

6) This last is mostly for me, but maybe some of you have had surgical work done. I had major surgery done on my jaw and mouth back in 1989. I have pins in my jaw and a metal plate in my chin; my jaw was moved back, the top of my palate was sliced and repositioned. It was a big deal. It was also 24 years ago. My bones have shrunk; the hardware is old. My jaw pretty much has a life of its own now. That thought that aging was going to affect the surgical changes decades down the road was never brought up. I'm not sure it was even considered.

7) Your aging body changes. You shrink. I didn't want to believe it, either! I remember talking with cousin Barbara about four years ago, laughing together as she told me how outraged she was to find out that she shrunk 1 1/2 inches. She yelled at her doctor :) "That can't be right! I'm very active. I eat right. I take care of my health!" Heh. And now it's my turn. I'm an inch shorter than I was a few years ago. Of all the changes that come with aging, this is the one that really bites me. Crazy, but there it is.

And now, since our power came back just a while ago (Yes! Yes! Yes!) I'm going to have something not microwaved to eat, and then I'm going to settle in for Game of Thrones. Life is good.

I have no idea what this post is going to be about

2013-04-14T21:06:18Z

Seriously, I'm dealing with massive fatigue and an allergy attack that combined are making me pretty loopy. Let's just see, shall we?

As those of you on Facebook know, we were hit with a huge ice storm Thursday night into Friday. Power is out all over the damn place. Deb, whose apartment is in the basement, didn't own a backup battery for her sump pump, so with the power outage and the freakish amount of rain, her apartment flooded. Like … flooded. The cats' food dishes were floating. All of the floors have to be torn out, all of the walls need to be replaced as far up as the moisture seeped. Some of her furniture, some of our stuff stored down there is toast.

And speaking of toast, that's what we're living on pretty much. We finally got a big generator hooked up, so now we have water (yay, toilets!) and the fridges are running again. But we have to be really careful about everything else. We can use the toaster or the electric kettle or the microwave. I really had no good sense of how much I used the stove until I lost access to it. Also no TV, no radio, no hair dryer, certainly no washer or dryer. Or shower or bath. We use a candle in the bathroom instead of the lights. One light in the livingroom/kitchen, and I get to use a light in my room because I am truly night blind.

Hydro One (the power company for rural folk) keeps pushing back when we'll get power. It started out as Saturday night, then late Sunday night, now sometime Monday afternoon. I'm not holding my breath. I am, however, going to be missing Game of Thrones tonight. Bleh.

The good news is that the alpacas are all OK. The girls and babies were closed in their barn, but the boys had freer access to the outside. I did see a couple of the boys gingerly making their way across the ice-covered ground. Lots of damage all around the area, though.

Dar has had a buttload of medical tests (literally in the case of her colonoscopy last Wednesday), and Friday we get to hear all of the results put into - it is hoped - some concrete diagnoses and plan. We know that the colonoscopy results were A-OK, but the results of her upper GI tests won't be disclosed until Friday. Good thoughts, please.

I'm still waiting for my damn work visa to be renewed so I can get some tests and procedures done. It's over 22 months, guys. On June 4 it will be two years since my visa and healthcare expired. I'd say that's a wee bit excessive, wouldn't you?

Im not reading much anymore because I keep falling asleep. I've been trying to get through Mort (part of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series) for several months now. I bring it with me to read while I'm waiting for Dar to do her thing at the various units at the hospital in London, then fall asleep sitting upright in uncomfortable chairs before I get more than a few pages in. My life, she is exciting, no?

I went kind of overboard with The Walking Dead right near the end there. AMC reran the whole series every night for a week before the finale, and even before that they were rerunning the first season on Thursday(?) nights in b&w. Which I watched. As I watched the whole series rerun during the last week. It became so much a part of my world that I found myself looking for zombies in other TV shows. Like Boardwalk Empire. For god's sake, Nucky, don't just pull over to the side of road and start yelling! The walkers will hear you! I started getting a little concerned about our glass patio door. Way too easy to break down. Now I have until October to settle down.

I was initially concerned about Glenn Mazzara leaving as show runner, especially when I heard that he didn't like the direction that the creator (Robert Kirkland) wanted to take the show next season. But then I watched the episodes that the new guy (whose name I cannot remember right now) wrote - and they turned out to be my favorite episodes of the series. I'm going to have to trust based on that, because the finale had a big WTF moment at the end. But as I said … I'll trust.

I'm late! I'm late!

2013-03-10T02:03:21Z

I completely blew through the last few days without stopping to wish a most happy birthday to the incomparable gatezilla. I hear that you were snowed in, but I hope it was still a wonderful day for you, my dear.

I was a pre-teen Shark

2013-03-03T04:41:50Z

Oh, man. I was going to get to bed at a decent hour, but I just did a quick check of the TV line-up, and West Side Story just came on TCM. I'm doomed! I saw it when it first came out in 1961. I was all of 12 years old, but I remember it like it was yesterday. It was playing at the Hartford Loew's; Hartford was very much the big city to me back them. I was with my mom and her sister Shirley (my favorite aunt). We were all raised on musicals, and none of us had ever seen anything like this before. It was stunning. And both the music and the dancing still hold up today. The dialogue not so much. Interesting little-known fact: the original play was supposed to be about Jews and Gentiles. I kid you not. It was decided that it wouldn't play outside of a Jewish audience, so they changed the main adversaries.

The movie was a huge, huge hit. I played the soundtrack so often that my dad got pissed at me. Then he decided to go see the movie himself, and the next thing I know he's playing the album. The movie was a big hit with my classmates at St. Matthew's Evangelical Lutheran School. We broke into two groups: the boys were the Jets and the girls were the Sharks. Because obviously the Sharks were much cooler. We'd "rumble" with big old wooden rulers during recess. It was a simpler time.

Our class got a rare trip to NYC to visit a Lutheran missionary school in Chinatown. On the way we passed through real NYC neighborhoods like in the movie. We were stopped at a light when we spied a "hood" just a little older than us lounging against a building. All eyes were glued on him in awe. He reached into the pocket of his jacket. We held our collective breath as he pulled out a … yoyo. To give him his due, he was pretty good with it. I'll lay you even odds that none of us remember anything about that missionary school, but we all remember our first New York hood.

Back so soon

2013-02-21T02:42:30Z

I really am trying to get back into the habit of posting on LJ again. sffan came to visit last weekend, and we were talking about how much we miss the old days when more people posted here. I have to admit that I'm part of the problem, so here I go trying to rectify that. Maybe I'll even work my way back to actual content :) Until then, it's just snippets. Baby steps and all that.

It snowed all day. Again. The worst part was the strong wind. I should say "is" the strong wind; it's still blowing out there and rattling around my corner of the house. Gary the farmer guy came around 10AM to blow out the driveway and the laneway, but I couldn't even move my car for him because it was surrounded by knee-high drifts. There was one little clear portion near my rear wheel, but that wasn't a lot of help. I got it backed up enough to give him room to plow me out, so that saved me an hour's worth of shovelling. Yay, Gary! Unfortunately the blowing snow built up drifts again within a few hours.

darlong was outside for over four hours in all this crappiness trying to get the doors to the girls' barn unstuck. She was doing other stuff, too, but really - those doors get frozen right into the ground in certain conditions; it takes a long time with much chipping and shovelling and strewing of ice melters to get them free. I'd helped get them unstuck just two days ago, too. This winter can end right now, please.

While Dar was out there doing chores, I was inside making banana bread. We also serve who only stand and bake. Things got very weird at the end of that. The doorbell rang. As I was going to answer it, the timer for the bread went off. Unknown young woman on porch staring in through the door pane; I let her into the hallway and rush back to turn off the timer because it beeps incessantly until it's turned off. Rush back to young woman and the door bell rings again. We look at each other and then out the door pane. No one is there. She says that she's here to pick up "the stuff that her brother ordered." I have no idea what she's talking about, but I figure that it's someone who's ordered an alpaca product from online or at the market. We both see the Alpaca-opoly game leaning up against the wall in the hallway, so I give it to her. "Is this what he ordered?" The door bell rings again. Still no one there that we can see. She says she has no idea what she's here to pick up; her brother just gave her the address. I figure that I need to see if Dar knows what's going on, so I invite girl into the living room while I pull the bread out of the oven and pull on all the blizzard-wear to trek out to the barn. The door bell rings again. She looks at me and says, in a "huh" voice, "The door bell was frozen so I really pushed hard. I think maybe I broke it." Yes. Yes, I'd say that's probably the case. Off I go, plodding through very deep drifts and completely snowblind - I'm just guessing where my feet actually are going. I catch up with Dar; she knows nothing about this, and we realize that the girl most probably needs to pick up her brother's stuff at the mill instead. Back I go, direct very confused girl to the mill (which is right there, right next to the house!) and then back inside to throw the bread back in the oven and listen to the door bell ring over and over and over and … until I finally was able to fix it.

And that was my day. Plus the usual cat wrangling.

the end

Snow paddock sunset_0158

2013-02-19T04:40:31Z

Snow paddock sunset_0158, originally uploaded by maystone1.

Winter took a while to catch up with us this year, but it's well and truly here.

Grace_0391

2013-02-07T03:35:36Z

Grace_0391, originally uploaded by maystone1.

She looks innocent here. About 90 seconds later she was hanging off that little scrap of curtain.

See? This is why I get too tired to post.

2013-01-23T02:36:30Z

So this was my day. Didn't get much sleep last night; joint pain woke me early, although I'm happy to say that that hasn't happened in a while. Still … not a lot of sleep. And this is on top of a week (at least) of going like an over-eager beaver. (I'd been doing more alpaca chores; there was a lot of driving and errand running; worked at the market on Saturday; difficulty sleeping always. Yesterday Dar started her chemo; that ended up being a nine-hour trip.) Our friend Skye had let us borrow her new(ish) Volkswagon for the commutes to the London hospital (Dar had appointments both last Friday and yesterday) because the weather was supposed to be snowy and my 11-year-old Mazda is not great in bad weather.

So today was the day when we were going to bring Skye's car back to her in Kitchener. It's about an hour from our place to hers. First, the car doors are all frozen solid. Dar searches out a long extension cord and goes to work on the driver's door with a blow dryer. Meanwhile, I'm shoveling the porch and steps and getting rid of the (smallish) snow drifts between us and the road. The car door finally defrosts, but I quickly discover that the car battery is deader than dead. It is wicked cold (5F/-15C), strong winds are putting the wind chill at waaaay below 0F and snow squalls are rolling through. I hook up Skye's battery with mine and let it run for 15 minutes before trying mine again. Nothing. Mess around with cables a bit, let it run for another 20 minutes. Nothing. Take all the cables off, we go talk to Deb about using her big-ass truck to jump the car, but she's on hold on the phone. She says to connect the two negatives instead of grounding mine on the engine block. I'm not happy about this because it can be dangerous, so I reattach the cables in the approved manner and hope for the best. Another 20 minutes of letting it charge. Nothing. Fuck this. I make sure Dar is nearby in case the battery blows up in my face and attach negative to negative. Ten minutes later my Mazda battery finally turns over. (Oh, and in between we were trying to affix tarps to the engine hoods to try to keep the blowing snow off the engines. Yeah, that went about as well as you're thinking it did.) Two hours, people. That's how long it took to get the damn car started.

We head out. Mark is driving my Mazda, and I'm following in Skye's car. Or trying to follow. Between the blowing snow and the occasional squall, it's white-out conditions in places. Fortunately it cleared up nearer to Kitchener. We meet up with Skye; I give her the keys to her car, and she hustles off to her dentist appointment. Mark and I slip into a coffee bar to warm up with some fancy-schmancy coffee. And this is when I discover that I have no wallet. Skye is gone, so I can't get back into her car to search around there. The last place I saw my wallet was in London the day before when I pulled into a gas station to fill up the car.

I'm trying not to panic. Maybe it fell out of my purse at home. Fortunately it was a decent drive back home. Once there I tear my room apart looking for my wallet. The same goes for the kitchen and living room. I stomped around all the snow where the car had been parked, in case it fell out of my purse while I was walking into the house yesterday. Nope. Dar hops on Google Earth (I suck at using that app), and we track down the gas station I used. No, they haven't seen it.

I am … upset. My wallet held all of my Canadian IDs. My drivers license, my SIN card (it's like Social Security), my health card, debit card (and one of Dar's, too), credit card, library cards, insurance card. All I have left is my American passport and a work visa that expired in June 2011. Yes, 2011. (Thank you, Immigration. Thank you so very much.) Trying to get all new Canadian IDs based on that is going to be a nightmare given all the bureaucratic hoops I'm going to have to jump through.

Dar cancels her debit card. I cancel mine. I file a police report with the London police online. I'm going nuts trying to find old copies of anything that can help me out. And then the phone rings.

Steven in London is calling to tell me that he found my wallet last night on the ground between a bank and a Tim Horton's. (This is so very Canadian; I can't even begin to tell you.) All the money was gone but everything else seemed to be there. He was going to mail it to me, but then he decided to call just to doublecheck. Can you say yay?

If the damn snow squalls stop, I can borrow Deb's truck and get my wallet tomorrow. Otherwise it'll be Friday or Saturday. And then I'm getting a different purse. And a wallet that gives off a shrieking alarm if it hits the ground. But for now? I'm getting some sleep.

A meme draws me out of my LJ lethargy

2013-01-17T04:03:41Z

Ha! It's mostly right :) via malterre

Your results:
You are Will Riker

Will Riker		65%
Jean-Luc Picard		60%
Uhura		60%
Deanna Troi		55%
An Expendable Character (Redshirt)		50%
Chekov		45%
James T. Kirk (Captain)		45%
Geordi LaForge		40%
Spock		37%
Beverly Crusher		35%
Mr. Scott		35%
Worf		35%
Leonard McCoy (Bones)		30%
Data		27%
Mr. Sulu		10%

At times you are self-centered
but you have many friends.
You love many women, but the right
woman could get you to settle down.

Click here to take the "Which Star Trek character am I?" quiz...

A kind of, sort of inventory of 2012 books & movies

2013-01-04T01:14:40Z

We all know about my spotty memory, right? So this is more of an attempt at a list than a true reckoning, but I thought I'd play anyway. You'll notice that almost all of my "new" movies are old hat to everyone else. I have to wait for them to come to the movie channels.

Books
Lords and Ladies - Terry Pratchett
Carpe Jugulum - Terry Pratchett
Thief of Time - Terry Pratchett
The Truth - Terry Pratchett
The Unseen Academicals - Terry Pratchett
Snuff - Terry Pratchett
The Folklore of Discworld - Terry Pratchett & Jacqueline Simpson
(I'm still only halfway through the Discworld books. I want to work on that this year.)
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins
The Walking Dead: Compendium One - Robert Kirkman
The Walking Dead: The Rise of the Governor - Robert Kirkman
The Help - Kathryn Stockett
The Lost City of Z - David Grann
The Lands of Ice and Fire - George R R Martin
Zoo Borns and Zoo Borns: The Next Generation (Yes, I'm counting those)
Drift - Rachel Maddow (but I'm still working on that one.)
Plus I reread all of Pratchett's Watch series and the first two of the witches series.

Movies
The Station Agent
The Hunger Games
Small Town Murder Songs
The King's Speech
Moneyball
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Melancholia
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows (I & II)
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
In Darkness
Silent House
Hanna
The Tree of Life
The Help
Appaloosa
Hidalgo
The Bridesmaids
Dream House
God of Love (Short film, won Oscar last year. Hysterical.)
Margin Call
The Ides of March
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane
Jane Eyre
Shutter Island
2012
There are more, I'm sure, but that's all I can pull out of memory now. As you can see, there's a prominent lack of action movies, bro movies, and comedies in general.

And just for the hell of it: TV shows I loved last year.
Treme
Boardwalk Empire
Nashville
The River (yes, really)
The Walking Dead
Hell on Wheels
Project Runway
Game of Thrones
Nurse Jackie (Excellent season)
The Rachel Maddow Show
Up with Chris Hayes

Huh. Now that I see it all written out, I did pretty well for myself. Cool.

I need this on a continual loop

2012-12-28T01:26:44Z

This is how some dogs perceive squirrels in their brain

Grace stockings_0282

2012-12-21T17:02:44Z

Grace stockings_0282, originally uploaded by maystone1.

OK, let's see if this works correctly now.

maystone @ 2012-12-14T19:20:00

2012-12-15T00:20:12Z

darlong and I have been trying to come to grips with the horror of the massacre at the Sandy Hook school. We're not making much headway. Tears, yes. Understanding, no.

There is no good that can come out of this. I hope, though, that this is the impetus to finally have the national (talk, breakdown, screaming match, war, fucking action) about gun control in the US. Because we cannot, in the name of civility, keep putting it off.

Grace counter_0818

2012-11-26T01:51:55Z

Grace counter_0818, originally uploaded by maystone1.

Grace looking wide-eyed and oh so innocent.

Pixel_0879

2012-11-25T23:44:39Z

Pixel_0879, originally uploaded by maystone1.

In Pixel's defence, it really is a comfy bed.

Bad news for us old TWoP Browncoats

2012-10-25T12:49:39Z

I just found out last night that Phil Chrusch (vchrusch had died back in March of this year. Like so many of us who knew him back in the day, I was concerned because we hadn't heard a word from him in such a long time, so I went to his Facebook to see when his last post was. I saw two comments that sent me flying to Google, and that's where I saw his obituary. All it said was the he died "accidentally at home."

I'm shocked, and I'm sad. We're going to try to track down some of his family or his friend Walter, and see if there's something we can do as a group in his memory.

I just can't quite wrap my head around this.

It's almost a post, OK?

2012-10-15T16:00:12Z

My Liberal Identity

You are a Social Justice Crusader, also known as a rights activist. You believe in equality, fairness, and preventing neo-Confederate conservative troglodytes from rolling back fifty years of civil rights gains.

Take the quiz at
About.com Political Humor