In no particular order and with very little in the way of segues, this is what I have been doing.
I took a quickie one night Indian cooking class with Levi. He and Alexis had signed up for the class but she had to work and he asked if I was interested. Sure! I went, it was good, I was reminded of how much I love Indian cooking. So, I went to TBS Mart on the recommendation of the teacher. It was okay, not the best Indian market I’ve been to. It had a lot of stuff but almost none of it was labeled or priced in such a way that I could figure out how much it was or if it was what I was looking for! Either way I dropped $65 on rice, dal, paneer, those tiny eggplants, and various and sundry other tasty bits.
Made up a huge huge pot of curried toor dal with seitan, the tiny eggplant, onion, tomato, the little cucumber thingies, carrots and sweet potato. First night we had it on basmati, the next two days we ate it with fresh chapatis. Delicious.
Saturday night was wholesome fun night with the Lee Brothers! We went over to their place for dinner and cards. John does a lot of very traditional Chinese cooking so it’s always a treat to go over there. Squid with sesame and black bean sauce, a stir fry of tofu, baby bok choy and mushroom (I can’t remember what the sauce was) and then whole mackerel with black bean sauce. Sadly, I just have never been able to eat mackerel, too oceany-fishy-strong for me. Everything else was delicious as usual. Afterwards we drank tea and played asshole until 1am (with an ice cream break in there).
Sunday the Lee Brothers joined us for brunch with Alan and his new ladyfriend, Alex. I’m beginning to realize that while Sunnyside Up Cafe has some tasty items on their menu, most things are only okay and something always gets messed up and their coffee is not very good. But they do have nice big tables in the sun which is nice for big groups.
Alan and Alex headed out to do the things that gooey new couples do and David and I headed over to the MayDay festival in Powderhorn Park with the Lee Brothers. Being tired and not necessarily feeling the greatest because of the Great Effexor Drift Down Experiment I found a spot on a hill to watch the parade from above and let David and the guys go stand in the crowds. I crocheted, watched the parade, played with other people’s dogs and soaked up the sun. The parade and the Tree of Life ceremony are always interesting, but really, they are kind of the same every year. I go for the people watching. Thousands of people from true societal outcasts to Volvo station wagon driving, expensive-handmade-by-indigineous-people-fair trade clothes wearing, earth-mother loving suburbanites, to outlandish thugs, to anything you can imagine. They’re all there and they’re all having a great time.
Being White McWhiterson from Whitefield Park I managed to get some sunburn on my neck, face and hands. Oh well, it was worth it.
Had lunch with Ms Mary this week. I missed her. We had cheap chinese buffet and caught up on the news and gossip and all the weird happenings taking place at MCAD since I left.
Also….coffee with Patty, pancakes with April, coffee and crochet with Cristy. It was a good week for getting out of the house and reacquainting myself with the world.
Some new roving is drying, getting ready for spinning. Some other roving has been spun and needs to be plied. More sweaters for felting means more new things to oooogle about!
Mostly I think that’s it. I’ve got some more political rantings queued up in my head so, you know, fair warning and all.
OH ALSO!! Have Twizzlers changed or am I just not remembering them correctly? The cherry ones taste like cough medicine and the strawberry ones taste like nothing.
Category Archives: Craftin
this thing this
First and foremost…the effexor update…
Dropping from 319mg down to 300mg was rough. Really rough. I spent a lot of time being very upset, crying, hating people, feeling like I had the flu, sleeping and also hating people. At the same time my hormones did their monthly plummet and that…exacerbated things.
David and I decided that I will stay at 300 until I am fully stable again. So I’m thinking probably 2 weeks at 300mg and then I’ll move down again.
Everything else?
Well yes, the other things…
David convinced me to go to trivia night at Merlin’s Rest on Sunday night. That shit was hard. I’ve never done bar trivia, but David had been going with some of his friends and finally I joined in. They said most bar trivia was pop culture and current events stuff. I can do current even news stuff, but pop culture would kill me. The trivia at Merlin’s Rest was a lot of news, history and science. Needless to say, I had an awesome time, even if we did score rather poorly (Why the hell could I not remember the Indus River??? Seriously! That was the answer to 2 questions!). I’ll have to study up better for next time, and it seems that Dingley has a thing about cows and I should probably learn about cows too.
Been feeling creative lately and have been pumping out purses for sale…of course mostly they sell before I can get them on Etsy, which is a pretty damned good deal if you ask me!
Speaking of Etsy, I put up some new yarn the other day. MMMMMM caterpillar invasions!
And, this week is David’s spring break which we kicked off by laying in bed and discussing ancient Sumerians! Nerdy? not as nerdy as this:
The other night I had a dream in which many nutty things happened. At one point I was trying to find David and I was calling out to him, but he wasn’t responding. Then I realized that I had to call out “my mermaid man” except in Italian in order to get him to respond. Huh. I don’t speak Italian. In my dream I sat there trying to figure out what the Italian word for mermaid might be. Then I remembered MANATEES!!! Manatees belong to the order Sirenia! They were often mistaken for mermaids and Sirenia is Latin for MERMAID!!! I figured it all the fuck out in my dream! “Mia Sirenio Uomo!!! Mia Sirenia Uomo!!” Obviously it’s not grammatically correct Italian but the nerd factor of that damned dream was so huge it cannot be measured. damn.
Oh, yeah and he DID finally respond to me, he’d been in the bathtub in the house that had been built around the gigantic elevator doors…the doors to the elevators to the basement of the parking garage outside the the small town Nebraska arena where the minor league basketball teams had their championship games (we had a suite in the arena and we used a fake credit card to pay for it but they didn’t care and even gave me a new tire for my car!). The elevators were not working, so I went across the street to the houses built around those elevators to see if maybe it was a system wide issue or just something wrong with those elevators. When I looked back the house was on fire and David was inside! People were throwing snow on the house and I ran up and broke all the glass in the windows so the people could breathe.
And this is where we came in, I had to find David because he’d been in the burning house. I needed to make sure he was okay.
and now might be the time for the big sandwich.
Payin’ it forward!
The first five (cinq) (cinco) (5) people to respond to this post will get something made by me.
This offer does have some restrictions and limitations so please read carefully:
Totally ganked from Joy’s blog.
1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make. (No refunds… no exchanges!!!!)
2. What I create will be just for you, with love from me.
3. It’ll be done this year (2009).
4. I will not give you any clue what it’s going to be. It will be something made in the real world and not something cyber. It may be weird or beautiful. I may even create something totally unbelievable and surprise you!! Who knows? Not you, that’s for sure!
5. I reserve the right to do something extremely strange…or awesome…or lovely…or offensive!
6. In return, all you need to do is post this text into a note/post of your own and make 5 things for the first 5 to respond to it.
7. Send your mailing address if you don’t live close to me! Feel free to email your mailing addy to hippo99 at velvet-c dot com
IMPORTANT: This offer is null and void if I do not see you post your own note to pay this forward. and believe me, I’ll look. I don’t have a real job and I get bored easily so I have all the time in the world to stalk your ass!
Edited to add
Anywhere on the planet is just fine, I will mail it to you! If you live on the moon we can work something out. If you are a hippo, you win!
Crabby McCrabbitron!
Yesterday I was crabby. Kind of today too, but mostly yesterday. I had to figure out why I was so crabby. Went through the checklist…
If I yell at the dogs and have the urge to throw something at David’s head then that’s pms…nope, not pms
If I have the urge to punch things or tip over heavy objects then that’s just me being crazy…nope, not the crazies
If I find myself spending hours researching a topic and then going to read debates on the topic and then start screaming at the computer and questioning the notion that we humans are somehow ‘smart’ then that means I’ve been reading the news and absorbing some science related controversy…oh yes! there it is! There’s the black marble of anger in my gut!
First off, there’s this dude, Ray Comfort. Now, as a rule, I’m a firm believer that you can be as nutty as you want and you can believe in whatever floats your boat (density of the object divided by the density of the fluid). That’s cool, you go believe in whatever. So, normally a guy like Ray Comfort would just get a sad sad head shake and maybe a laugh from me. Lots of people choose to ignore science, lots of people will even create a false premise and then argue from that premise. Everybody loves a clown (actually, not really, clowns are pretty messed up). So why am I so irritated with this guy? Because he is a very vocal part of the tard army that wants ‘intelligent design’ taught in schools instead of evolution.
The whole ‘intelligent design’ thing boggles my mind. I am often left speechless when I read their arguments. You cannot just MAKE SOMETHING UP, throw a few poorly reasoned arguments out there and call it science. This is the thing that you cannot do! Of the things that can be done, this is NOT ON THE LIST.
Let’s talk about the scientific method, you know, the very very very basic scientific method. You learned about this in high school, probably pretty early on, it’s really very basic. Ready?
- Figure out what the question is
- Gather up some info about the subject of the question
- Form a hypothesis about what you think the answer might be
- Perform some tests and write down what happens
- Take some time to analyze the results
- Draw some conclusions and form a new, better informed hypothese
- Go back to number 4 and repeat the steps, testing, analyzing, drawing conclusions, new hypothesis, repeat
- Once you’ve worked and worked and worked (and worked some more) and you have enough solid evidence to back up your hypothesis then you can publish it.
- Independent concerns will retest the work you’ve done to see if you did it right, to see if they get the same results, to see if different results can be found.
As you can see, a HUGE part of the scientific method gathering data and testing the data. A huge NOT A PART of the scientific method is just making shit up, forming false premises, or claiming that it is completely untestable.
A hypothesis based on untestable ideas or data is called a philosophy. Even most quantum physicists, those people who dabble so close to the untestable, readily admit that until they can find methods to test and evaluate their hypotheses they are playing in the realm of philosophy.
Like I said, I don’t care what you believe, but if the basis for your hypothesis is ‘God’ then you are not dealing with science but philosophy regardless of the subject matter. And I see no reason to replace science curricula with philosophy.
But he wasn’t the only thing that made me crabby yesterday…
Yesterday the president reversed the limitations on federally funded stem cell research. This did not make me crabby. This filled me with much hope and joy. Mmmmmm scientific integrity never felt so good.
But I was made crabby. Of course I was.
People please, do some real research before getting all pissed of…and while you are researching, please keep in mind that propaganda is not informative.
There is no connection whatsoever in any way at all ever and ever and ever with abortion and stem cell research. Doctors will not suddenly start harvesting 39 week fetuses in the name of science. Women will not suddenly be used as breeding chambers so that the evil scientists can get their hands on said fetuses. Somatic stem cells, the ones found in fetuses are not as useful or plentiful, and cannot be effectively grown ex vivo. Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent, they can be anything (you know within reason) the other stem cells, not so much.
Where are we going to get all these embryonic stem cells? Are we just going to have hordes of visigoth like doctors slaughtering embryos!? No. Instead of destroying the excess embryos created for in vitro fertilization and instead of becoming the crazy octomom these embryos will be donated. These embryos have not yet formed the primitive streak, the generally agreed upon signifier of unique life. These are embryos that were going to be destroyed anyway and they do not represent life.
So lets not go around making up ideas and calling it science and halting a line of research that has so much potential to help.
deep soothing breath. deep.
but today!
Today I took my sister to the doctor and got to listen to her try to talk while high on pain meds. “Hey! April! Why don’t you try to schedule an appointment with the confused lady at the desk at the clinic!” Damn that was fun to watch.
I also got a metric buttload of sweaters from Savers. These sweaters are now in the dryer finishing their felting process and soon will be turned into headbands or other kinds of headbands or other kinds of headbands or purses with Lady Cthulhu on them or…well a lot of the stuff you see here as well as a lot of other things I keep forgeting to photograph!
Many of these items can be found at my Etsy shop and if you want something but don’t see it, let me know. I do all kinds of custom things that never even make it to the shop.
less crabby, more pisgetti!
wherein I tell you things that are the things that happen
1. The battery in my cell phone doesn’t really hold a charge anymore. The phone is 3 years old, which in disposable technocrap years makes it a fossil already. So, okay, I need to go to tmobile and pick a new phone and re-up the contract. I start looking at the phones and I start getting weird. I used to think I was turning into a grumpy curmudgeon type whenever I got upset over the phones but yesterday I realized to my great horror that I was actually channeling Bill Cosby!
The Simpsons – Cosby Show Guest Star Season: 6 – The best video clips are right here
oh yes, there I am looking at the various phone options and it starts happening, “all I want is a phone, a phone on which to engage in calls….pffft now it’s all touch screens and video and music, why do I need my phone to have music? my god! what is wrong with people?!”
Now, it’s pretty bad to start channeling a guy with questionable decision making skills when it comes to sweaters, but it is actually much worse than this. The very first few phones are pretty much exactly what I want, Nokia, flip phone (because I never lock my keys and that can cause…issues), takes photos and probably has a calculator (the calculator on my phone gets used all the time when I am yarn shopping and I am trying to determine price per yard for yarns). There are like 3 of these phones, each slightly different but each pretty much offering nothing more than I need AND…THEY ARE ALL FREE WITH A CONTRACT!!!
Seriously, there is no reason for me to even look at the other phones! The phone that I want is right there and yet I go see what else there is and suddenly I’m possessed by the demon of the quiescently frozen pudding based treats.
Just pick the first free phone and be DONE. I know I don’t want a blackberry or a google phone and Motorola phones can go suck it twice and puke in the gutter. Just get the first phone.
2.
3. I had some stuff to say about Bobby Jindal, but, you know, too easy…
During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office, I’d never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: “Well, I’m the sheriff and if you don’t like it you can come and arrest me!” I asked him: “Sheriff, what’s got you so mad?” He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters.
The boats were all lined up ready to go — when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn’t go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, “Sheriff, that’s ridiculous.” And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: “Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!” Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.
There is a lesson in this experience: The strength of America is not found in our government. It is found in the compassionate hearts and enterprising spirit of our citizens.
um, seriously? You’re using Hurricane Katrina as a metaphor for national responsibility? really? oooh, wait, it doesn’t matter because that anecdote never happened
4. Dear Jermaine Dupri, perhaps if musicians started producing solidly good albums instead of crap with glitter we’d want to buy the whole album. I think consumers are pretty clearly saying that they don’t want all that you have to offer.
5. Got sick over the weekend, had a bit of a fever. started taking my temp regularly to see how it was going. I’ve discovered that my temp fluctuates between 97.4 F and 99.5 F all back and forth during the day. I meant to chart it today to see if I could find a pattern but I got distracted by Anna and some chicken and David Attenborough.