|
|
|
December 20th, 2009
December 19th, 2009
klingonguy
 | 09:00 pm - Hanukkah Swag
Those of you who know me well know what an insufferable prick I can be when it comes to gifts. This is because there's very little that I want, and what little I want I usually just go and get for myself (you know, like books). This make gifting situations (e.g., my birthday) a living hell for my wife.
This year for Hanukkah she insisted that she had found eight gifts that I would really really like. I was dumbfounded at the idea. Eight gifts I'd like? Holy octuplified oil, Batman, I'd be happy with one gift that I really liked.
Here's one of the gifts, my very own dalek:
Okay, okay, so it's actually a step stool, but it looks enough like a dalek, and it glides so smoothly across the floor that I'm sure I heard it saying "Exterminate!" at least once.
It's very very cool, and just exactly what I needed for the library (I have a folding step ladder, but it's a pain, doesn't hide away well when not in use, and doesn't make me hallucinate that it's calling for my destruction).
What a great gift!
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/mely/lemonfaces/blue.gif) cold
|
December 18th, 2009
allisona
 | 02:28 pm - Asian Pears and a QUESTION
I often have one or two Korean exchange students in my class each year and it's been traditional for the man who is the host to these students in our school community to give each teacher of the students under his care a box of fruit at Christmas and at the end of June. For many years at the end of December he would deliver big boxes of oranges for us all. Since John doesn't care for oranges and I could never eat so many I would always bundle them up in Christmas bags and take them to share with our families for the holidays.
This year at Thanksgiving for the first time instead of delivering oranges he delivered boxes of Asian pears to our school. Now, Asian pears are not really something that had crossed my radar often and though I may have had the occasional slice at a friend's house I had never bought them myself. As always, I bundled up the pears and took them to family to share for Thanksgiving. I did leave one on my own counter for myself, though.
A few days later I cut it into slices and ate it. It was delicious- the crunch of an apple, the mellow taste of a pear. Yummy. The next time I went grocery shopping I went looking for them and I've been eating them steadily for the last two months. They're good, but upon getting another box of Asian pears for Christmas this week I realize that wherever our Korean student host gets his boxes of pears from they are particularly huge, juicy and so, so good. I don't think many of them are going to last for family holiday gatherings this year :).
But Asian pears are definitely a standard food for me now.
QUESTION:
Have you discovered a new food or dish recently that you can't get enough of? Maybe something you've just stumbled across or something you may have cooked for the first time that has become a regular for you?
|
December 17th, 2009
birdlovers
[mactavish]
 | 11:26 am
I like to go to the AGU fall meeting. It's just a wonderful, geeky, fun, crowded, powerful, over-scheduled joy-fest of earth and space sciences. This year, I couldn't pull it off, because we've been hit by the economy too, but because it's nearby, I did join some geonerd friends for beer on Monday to get a little fix, and I've been following the AGU09 twitter tag.
That's how I found out about the pigeon flying around inside the convention center. It's been there all week.
Finally, someone got an interview with the pigeon.
|
mainpa
 | 07:01 am - A Week of Reflection
Originally published at The Modern Domestic Geek. You can comment here or there. I haven’t posted this week – actually, for a while it seemed the week was crawling by, but now it’s Thursday, and I’m not sure what happened. Some weeks are like that. Sunday after the dinner party, I did manage to bang out some more cookies, make home made marshmallows, and fudge! I made fudge for the first time! The theme of my cookies this year is really chocolate and esperesso – since getting the instant stuff (thank you internet and Google), I’ve made three batches of cookies and the fudge had it too.
But I have been pondering the upcoming year. I’m close to getting my goals together. Mostly they are about minimizing. Less of this, less of that. And coalescing how my cooking project will go. They are almost ready to be revealed.
I’m starting to rethink my kitchen as well. In researching for my project, I found out I was ruining my knives by using a glass cutting board, and so I’ve made some changes, but there are still a couple to come. I’m trying to make the small space as economical as possible – what with all the appliances and such. Pictures at some point, I promise.
And I’ve been playing World of Warcraft, and farming small eggs so I can make gingerbread for Father Winter, or whatever he’s called. Again, when I feel like I’m not accomplishing a damn thing – I can go into WoW, and level up, get a purple elephant to ride, or farm for eggs.
And crap – there is still some Christmas shopping to do. Sigh.
|
shadowhelm
 | 01:35 am - Rewriting, Cocoa and Voodoo Dolls
Sometimes there's just not enough cocoa in the universe. You know what I mean?
The day started out good enough. I got Christmas presents mailed, got an article written and made venison wild rice soup and Christmas cookies, and somehow managed to keep both recipes separated despite the multitasking. But the day couldn't stay decent. The foot of snow quickly compressed and then the weather warmed up enough to rain on it. (Lovely). That made the roads dreadfully icy and I don't even want to think about the road coming up to the house. The ATV with the plow can best be described as "on the fritz," and it actually stopped running while I plowed. I managed to get it back up the hill and park it, but there's something wrong with it. Sigh.
So today I've been waiting for the editors to come back and approve my work. Instead, I get rewrites. Which means more time spent on the same articles. At that point, the three dozen or so Christmas cookies are calling to me and I start thinking I need an emergency stash of chocolate.
The reality is I hate rewrites. All authors do, and if an author says they don't mind them, they're stinking liars. The problem is that having an editor come back to you with corrections is equivalent to telling a mother her kid is ugly. Yeah, the kid is ugly, but the criticism is seldom received well. No matter how gracious a writer may be, the fact that you just pointed out a big wart on the end of their brainchild's nose means that the next time they have a few dollars, they're going to look up some voodoo witchdoctor and buy a doll that looks like you to stick pins in. What do you think I do with all my money?
So, with the rewrites, I made some Aztec cocoa with organic milk and added organic cream to it and decided to work on my blog instead of becoming pedantic over them. They'll still be there tomorrow and I'll have a better feel for them at that point. And maybe I'll feel better about them, but I doubt it.
No matter how hard we try to be professional, rewrites and rejections suck big time. This is why if you know an author, don't bother telling them there's a problem with their book. They don't want to know. The damn thing is out and there's nothing they can do anyway. Except buy that voodoo doll thing.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/dwaggins/angry.gif) aggravated
|
December 16th, 2009
aylinn
 | 11:04 pm - Nope, I'm not a child of the 70's & 80's - not me.
I scored some serious gift certificates for Amazon thanks to my employer's annual gift to its employees and the traditional "I don't like my present & I want cash" tendencies of a co-worker.
Okay, I admit it - I LIKE John Denver. We all know how warped my musical upbringing was, okay?
So I took advantaged of the "free money" to pick up some MP3s.
What I didn't realize (until now) is how much he'd affected my subconscious. See, I was looking at one of his album covers and it hit me square between the eyes.
I have a character by the name of Mykale Evan Thomas. I originally created him as a character in the personal fan-fic of the Marvel Universe I wrote with my ex-husband. He started out as a citizen of the UK and had dirty blonde hair & hazel eyes. And he was a Bard. He's wandered through a few universes since then but he's always been some sort of musician and he's always had dirty blonde hair & hazel eyes.
Yeah.
I seem to have modeled him visually as a NON-dorky John Denver. *facepalm*
nope, I wasn't an impressionable child in the 70's - nope not me. not much.
*sigh*
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/neko/kaokitty/dorky.gif) dorky
|
gorgeousgary
 | 10:11 pm - A Visit to Sunny San Francisco
What? Why is my entire friends list laughing at me?
Well, OK, maybe it was just a bit cloudy, drizzly, and/or rainy during most of my visit to the Bay Area last week. Still a successful trip though. I was there for a conference on seismic retrofit of existing buildings. I attended a bunch of interesting presentations (several quite relevant to my work), touched base with a few counterparts in the building code arena, and made a couple of new contacts. Still need to actually sit down and read the proceedings.
( Meanwhile, there was this housefilk )
Interesting note on the conference: it was held in the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero, one of several hotels designed by Atlanta architect John A. Portman. Portman's hotels are noted for things like soaring 20-story atriums, with the floors served by glass-enclosed elevators. His most famous of these is probably the Hyatt Regency Atlanta (made further famous by John M. Ford in The Final Reflection). I spent several of my early years in Atlanta. The Hyatt atriums are breathtaking for an adult; one can probably imagine the effect on a three-year old. This explains a lot about how I wound up as a structural engineer.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/juicy/cutealiens/lethargic_a.gif) tired
|
klingonguy
 | 12:29 pm - Wish I'd Taken a Pic
On my way out of the house this morning, Gej raced by on his way out into the backyard. He had a ten dollar bill in his mouth.
WTF?
Current Mood: cold
|
allisona
 | 12:19 pm - Olympic Torch Relay
The Olympic Torch Relay travelling across Canada right now toward the Vancouver Winter Olympics in February passes through Toronto and Richmond Hill tomorrow and Friday. I did my research and was sad to learn that the torch will be passing far enough south of our school that it isn't feasible to take my class out to see the torch pass (I was so keeping my fingers crossed that it might go up Bayview Ave., a block away from us!). I've read the torch is passing by five Richmond Hill schools and there's big celebrations in each of those schools, so that is fun for them.
Still, with all the media coverage and the excitement about the Games in Canada we have done a few lessons on the torch relay and I'm encouraging the students to watch the news or read the newspapers to follow the torch in the Toronto area. I've also discovered there's a live Internet feed of the torch relay, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I can get the Richmond Hill feed up and running tomorrow or Friday when the torch passes near to us. It would be fun for the kids to see that.
I'm also impressed with all the Olympic resources for teachers on-line and I've found a great fitness challenge where the students have a map of Canada with the torch route laid out and cut up into sections for each of the 106 days of the relay. They have to do a certain series of exercises to earn the right to advance along the route by colouring in each of the sections. So I've put a series of exercises on a chart, colour-coded so they have to use that colour on each section of their torch trail so I can track what exercises they are choosing each day. I introduced the activity today and the kids seem quite into it. We'll do more Olympic activities as we get into February.
I know a lot of people can get cynical about the Olympics, but I still think there's an optimism and inspiration about it that can be found even among the commercialism and the politics. And Gr. 4 is young enough that it is fun to just explore the excitement and challenge of the Games, especially when they are hosted here in their own country.
|
December 15th, 2009
punkwalrus
 | 08:22 pm - I say goodbye to a good man
I was about 16 years old when a large man with a white beard came up to me and asked me, out of the blue, if I wanted to go to the moon. I told him "eventually," and he asked, "So, how are you going to make that happen?" Weird people were pretty common at science fictions conventions. In their heyday, a local con in the DC area would attract a few thousand people. So some weird guy coming up to you, telling you it was up to you to get your sorry ass to the moon was... well, not unusual. But this guy stood out from the rest.
This man's name was Dick Preston.
I can still picture Dick, white beard and hair, sitting on a hotel chair in khaki shorts and a white NASA tee-shirt, holding a cane. Years later, I would have the opportunity to moderate, host, and be on panels with this man. I also got to see his house from time to time, as he was a friend of my friends Bruce and Cheryl. His house could have easily been 90% bookshelves. Even the tables had shelves under them. Packed in the warped bookcases, stuffed to the point of bursting, were a collection of science, science fiction, and fantasy tomes that I hope get donated to a professional collection that scans them and distributes them to the public. It was like how you'd imagine a wizard's library, except dedicated to science.
Dick was the kind of guy who never sat still. He also never took excuses, and often never stopped talking passionately about science while awake. In fact, any panel with Dick Preston at it became Dick Preston's panel. Any audience with Dick Preston in it also ended up being Dick Preston's panel. And while that make make him seem like a right arrogant bore, God gave this man the ability to entertain the human race without anyone ever complaining about it. I have rarely met anyone like him. His passion for science was... intoxicating and euphoric.
But the best part was he loved kids. Kids loved him. He loved to educate kids. He founded the International Star Foundation for them, and I wish I could find his card somewhere that said that. I would like to believe that Dick inspired me to teach kids. I hope I had even half his enthusiasm.
I found out today Dick died on November 30th. I knew he was ill, and had been suffering from Alzheimer's for the last few years, but nothing more. It has been over a decade since we have spoken. Last conversation we had, he asked me if I had made my way to the moon yet, and if I was educating my son with science.
I did some research on Dick, but the best I can offer is a compilation of his life from his obituary along with my own memories. He was born in Winthrop, MA at Fort Banks. He grew up an Army Brat during WWII, was an Eagle Scout at Ft. Meade, and ended up with a Bachelor of Science at University of Maryland in 1958. He joined the Marine Corps in 1958 and became Captain before was Honorably Discharged due to knee issues, IIRC. He would get Master of Education degree in 1977, and worked for Goddard Spaceflight Center; NASA HQ, Smithsonian Air and Space Museum; and retired from HEW, Department of Education in 1979.
Dick worked on the campaign to name the first space shuttle "Enterprise." He was a Major in the Civil Air Patrol and a member of First Fandom. He worked with young people at conventions and at rocket camps at the Boy Scout Jamborees, Camp Fantastic, and Rocket Camps in France. He taught painting and drawing and led art tours through England, many of which I got to see in his hundreds of picture albums. A member of the Washington Science Fiction Association, he also ran Starcon, if I remember right, a science and science fiction convention in the early 80s.
He is survived by his wife of over 33 years, Janice; and their three children plus eight grandchildren, all of whom he loved very, very much.
Services will be held at Arlington National Cemetery on Thursday, April 8, 2010, at 1 pm. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Marine Corps League Foundation, PO Box 3070, Merrifield, VA 22116, in memory of Richard K. Preston 077209.
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
pafischer's Friends Page