Devil with a Blue Dress On

a.k.a. my Halloween costume. It was perhaps a trifle too understated. No one got it, and one person thought the dress was black. Perhaps I should invest in a pair of little red horns on an alice band. And a dress in a lighter shade of blue...

Met a guy today wearing moose headgear and a shirt that said "chocolate." Fell in love on the spot.


Today's earrings: bats, crows

Bedtime reading: "Old Halloweens on the Guna Slopes," R.A. Lafferty

Small earthquake this evening

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/eqinthenews/2007/nc40204628/
Shook just hard enough to get me out of my chair and under a lintel. (I hear lintels are no longer recommended. Feh. What do they know?)


Today's earrings: bunnies, flowers

Bedtime reading: Aesop's Fables, Townsend & James, trans.

What time is it?

There is discord in the chronologous world. Some clocks say Daylight Savings ended yesterday, some say it'll end next week.

No good can come of this.


Today's earrings: amethysts

Bedtime reading: Small Gods, Terry Pratchett

Critical Mass

a.k.a. The Parade of Entitlement, rolled up Sutter Street this evening just after I'd boarded the bus. I wanted to go home. They wanted to bang on the side of the bus and yell "Wooooooo!" while idling by. After ten minutes of waiting for the self-congratulatory bicyclists to allow the bus to leave the curb, I gave up, walked up to California, and caught the cable car.

I'd have more respect for them if their agenda amounted to more than, "Let's block traffic one night a month! It's really fun! We're morally superior! Wooooooo!" But it doesn't. I loathe all the Unique Snowflakes out there tonight, who imagine that the enjoyment they take in frustrating others is proof of their betterness.


Today's earrings: monkeys, coins

Bedtime reading: Small Gods, Terry Pratchett

The Laws of Habit

We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, "I won't count this time!" Well, he may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibres the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.

- - William James


Today's earrings: spiders, estrogen molecules

Bedtime reading: Small Gods, Terry Pratchett

We are here

Today's earrings: tree frogs, blue & green swirly beads

Bedtime reading: The Atlantic, November 2007

Work Without Hope

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair--
The bees are stirring--birds are on the wing--
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,
Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.
Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,
For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!
With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll:
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And Hope without an object cannot live.

- - Samuel Taylor Coleridge


Today's purchases: Games, December 2007
The Atlantic, November 2007

Today's earrings: bees, crows
Bedtime reading: The Atlantic, November 2007

Because I have no antelope

M fed us brunch, and they worked out a tentative remodel plan for the kitchen at the Dancing Square. Then, because M is wonderful, she took me shoe shopping. :)


Today's purchases: black waterproof mary janes, navy waterproof mary janes

Today's earrings: deer, buffalo

Bedtime reading: Small Gods, Terry Pratchett

Yum, yum, yum.

Sushi @ Ebisu tonight. :)


Today's earrings: skeletal fish

Bedtime reading: Small Gods, Terry Pratchett

Constellating deep meaning out of simple temporal junction

So last night, I post a bunny for no good reason, and tonight's episode of Supernatural is all about a rabbit's foot. Meaningful coincidence? Does my Dragonfly Future have a lagomorphic tone? And what of the turtles?


Today's earrings: flora, cobwebs

Bedtime reading: Wintersmith, Terry Pratchett

Tortoiseshell & rabbit's foot

Today's earrings: turtles, shells

Bedtime reading: Wintersmith, Terry Pratchett

New computer + empty inbox = paranoia

So if anyone wanted to send me an email, that would be, like, really cool of you. You don't even have to write anything.

kthxbye


Today's earrings: scarabs

Bedtime reading: The Great War and Modern Memory, Paul Fussell


eta: Just found K's wikipedia page. K, did you know you have a wikipedia page?

Stone the Crows

This weekend's events of note:

Confused Cricket and the Angry Lemming made an offer on a house, which was accepted.
B2 turned forty.
IT Elves replaced all the computers at work with smaller, faster models, and at last the Ghanaian Customs website is working properly.

Oh, and Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. Which just seems... odd. He's EnviroGuy, not PeaceGuy. Jimmy Carter is PeaceGuy, you know?


Today's earrings: diamonds, crows

Bedtime reading: The Great War and Modern Memory, Paul Fussell

It's a jungle out there.

Well, today, more of a rainforest.


Today's earrings: monkeys, alligators

Bedtime reading: Miss Manners' Basic Training, Judith Martin

untested recipe

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/107437


Today's earrings: moose, theobromine molecules

Bedtime reading: The Great War and Modern Memory, Paul Fussell

Finally: Green eggs and ham

Oh, there is joy in Earringville. And in Mudville, too - Mighty Casey has won Fan Favorite and asked Lia to tour Thailand together. It's a good thing.



Today's earrings: pigs, citrine teardrops

Bedtime reading: The Great War and Modern Memory, Paul Fussell

My ship has come in

Or rather, a small padded envelope filled with earrings. There's anchors, crows, monkeys, moose, and pigs. It's the year of the pig, you know.

Fantasy earring combo: apples, faceless men in overcoats and bowler hats. I could probably find the apples... but the little men, I suspect, will prove elusive.

It's started to rain. Sleep well.


Today's earrings: diamonds, dice

Bedtime reading: The Great War and Modern Memory, Paul Fussell

Saline solution

Finally got me a neti pot. Maybe I didn't put in quite enough salt the first time? It stung a little. Mostly it felt weird... but in a good way.

I think I'll go pour some more water through my nose now.


Today's earrings: angelfish, blue & green swirly beads

Bedtime reading: The Great War and Modern Memory, Paul Fussell

A list

Aaron's Beard
absinthe
acanthus
adder's tongue
aerial yam
Afghan yellow rose
agave


Today's earrings: amethysts

Bedtime reading: Amphigorey Again, Edward Gorey

No earrings today

I was halfway to the bus stop when I realized my ears were naked. Oh, no!

Annual review today. My boss says she approves of me.


Bedtime reading: Modesty Blaise: The Gabriel Set-Up, Peter O'Donnell, Jim Holdaway, il

*Waves*

Finally called C. He's out of the hospital. He had gone out to supervise a plant delivery this morning, and was home enjoying lying flat when I talked to him. Pain is not so bad, he says, and he's already eating better than he was before surgery. Dude is a total Zen Master about the whole thing.

I send these healing vibrations in his general direction:

~h~e~a~l~i~n~g~~v~i~b~r~a~t~i~o~n~s~~~h~e~a~l~i~n~g~~v~i~b~r~a~t~i~o~n~s~~~h~e~a~l~i~n~g~~v~i~b~r~a~t~i~o~n~s~~~h~e~a~l~i~n~g~~v~i~b~r~a~t~i~o~n~s~~~h~e~a~l~i~n~g~~v~i~b~r~a~t~i~o~n~s~~~h~e~a~l~i~n~g~~v~i~b~r~a~t~i~o~n~s~~~h~e~a~l~i~n~g~~v~i~b~r~a~t~i~o~n~s~


Today's earrings: scarabs

Bedtime reading: The Atlantic, October 2007

The Past

"Photography preserves moments like flies in amber."
- - Rudolf Arnheim

Kinda scary: http://www.ambericawest.com/fieldguide6.html
http://www.amberworkshop.com/buy_amber_inclusions_insects_and_plants.htm
http://www.mineralminers.com/html/ambmins.stm
but the book's not bad: http://www.wilmccarthy.com/Ffta.htm


Today's earrings: flies, amber

Bedtime reading: Modesty Blaise: The Gabriel Set-Up, Peter O'Donnell, Jim Holdaway, il

The Future

Made my first post to Craigslist, and shifted some plastic stackable desk boxes.
Reserved a hotel room.
Finally brought home the Amazon package that came last week.
Ate soup for dinner.

Contents of package:
A Chronicle and Flora of Niihau, Juliet Rice Wichman & Harold St. John, National Tropical Botanical Garden 1990
How to Disagree Without Being Disagreeable, Suzette Haden Elgin, John Wiley & Sons, Inc 1997
Modesty Blaise: The Gabriel Set-Up, Peter O'Donnell, Jim Holdaway, il. 2004
The Twelve Terrors of Christmas, John Updike, Edward Gorey, il., Pomegranate 2006
Rethinking Thin, Gina Kolata, Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2007
The Reminder, Feist, Cherrytree/Interscope 2007
Kill to Get Crimson, Mark Knopfler, Warner Bros. Records 2007
Drastic Fantastic, KT Tunstall, Virgin 2007


Today's earrings: dragonflies, other dragonflies

Bedtime reading: Modesty Blaise: The Gabriel Set-Up, Peter O'Donnell, Jim Holdaway, il.