Random Thread: 2017.3
‘Tis time.
Date: June 2, 2017
Categories: At the Top of the Blog, Random craziness
Friday, 26 April 2024
Life, the universe, pies, hot-pink bunnies, world domination, and everything
‘Tis time.
Date: June 2, 2017
Categories: At the Top of the Blog, Random craziness
Happy birthday, ZNZ!
West of the Atlantic, there’s still time to celebrate National Doughnut Day.
Wooo! New thread for summer!
Maybe we should make threads seasonal if monthly is too frequent?
Not a bad idea. So, March, June, September, December? I’ll try to remember.
That’s pretty good, although I feel we should start a new thread on New Year’s instead of carrying the old year’s one over. So maybe bundle December into Fall (it’s technically Fall until the Solstice, and that’s only 10 days before the end of the year) and start on January 1st?
Or we could “round up” and start with the month after the equinox/solstice: January, April, July, October.
That’s a good idea.
The blog seems a lot sleepier than when I was a neophyte–what, five years ago? Did anything in particular happen with the blog or the magazine? Or has it happened slowly?
I ask mostly because I really, really miss writing the RPGs! Demigod RPG and that other one–medieval fantasyland thing–were the best.
Also, Piggy–Good for you! I myself am wondering about becoming a Dominican sister, because prayer, community, study, and preaching sounds like an excellent recipe for fun.
The blog has been slowing down for a while now, or so it seems. The magazine was completely retooled a few years back- I think they merged it with Odyssey(?). I have to admit I haven’t read any of the recent issues.
I also fondly remember the RPGs. As in, I remember loving to participate while cringing at my writing. Wasn’t there some kind of RPG where we wrote ourselves as adults fighting some kind of HPB coup (not BA, BA:TNG or BA reboot)? I remember really struggling to try and imagine myself as a functioning member of adult society- I have no idea what I put down as backstory.
SFTDP:
Hehe, I skipped having a backstory and only committed to hair/eye color.
…
Which I got wrong, because I figured that the impulse to dye my hair random vibrant colors was a sign of teenage immaturity that would fade when I got older.
…or grow stronger as your sense of self developed and you made the decision, not to gain validation through others’ shock or awe, but to express your sense of identity and personality via hair color?
That’s sad about the magazine. I’m pretty sure I still have my favorite issues in a box, somewhere.
Well, I’m on summer vacation now, so I’d be up for an RPG.
I believe that our government should be funding research into the creation of a tornado-deflecting force field, or as it would appropriately be called, a NOAA Fence.
As in “NOAA Fence meant”? Ha!
Unfortunately, the current President has proposed deep cuts in funding for NOAA and most other government science agencies. I don’t expect to see big new ambitious projects anytime soon.
Yeah, there’s a mini-trend in some places online of writing “no offense” as “Noah fence” as a joke, so the pun seemed to come naturally.
I would also like to move to Australia and start a tea company called Koala Tea, with the slogan “Koala Tea is Quality”.
Meeting with my old internship supervisor today reminded me how much I’ve come to appreciate “making people feel important” as a learned skill.
And a very good one for teachers to have.
Finally the sun comes out! I came home on summer vacation only for it to be rainy and cold from Sunday afternoon until an hour ago. Now to get my summer on!
Hey, how about that new astronaut class? Five women, seven men, a New Yorker, a Woods Hole engineer, a Curiosity Rover team member, an MIT Professor…
J. showed P. and I how to create characters for Dungeons and Dragons and we played for the first time tonight. There were a lot of funny moments just based on P. being an Orc and me being a Gnome, because I was small enough for him to pick me up and sometimes people didn’t even realize that I was there because I was so small and people were looking at him.
Highlights:
1) We ended up entering a town at the same time, going to the general store at the same time, and to an inn at the same time, forcing me to keep insisting that I wasn’t following him and please don’t hurt me.
2) In the General Store, I asked if they had any “Potions of Desalination”, to which the Half-Orc shopkeeper replied that it was too big a word and he didn’t know what it meant, but P. remarked “What’s the problem with drinking salt water?”
3) In the inn, P. got into a fight with some loggers and I broke it up by healing the guy he hurt and screaming at them both to calm down and not destroy the inn.
4) Everyone in town was mysteriously sleepy and had holes in their memory, and P. kept blaming them for it in different ways– the bartender was drinking too much of his own supply, the logging foreman had had too many trees fall on his head, etc. He asked his friend, the Half-Orc shopkeeper, who seemed unaffected, “Do you notice anything strange about these men? Besides that they are Men.”, and remarked “Charms that affect minds tend not to work on Orcs because we have little to deal with up there.”
5) When I introduced ourselves as folklore researchers to the logging foreman, J. made me roll Deception because while I really was one, P. wasn’t, and I got an 18, so the foreman believed P. was not only *sent by* the University of Zlava, but actually was a graduate, and congratulated him on being an Orc with an education.
6) While I was interviewing the foreman, P. lifted an entire log on his own and carried it to where it was supposed to go.
7) We got into a discussion over when sunset was because I had used my character’s background to ask if the disappearances had happened “Before the Solstice Festival” and added “So about a moon then.”, but J. decided it was early Spring and the sun set relatively early, so I said “I guess I meant Equinox Festival”, and we decided that was okay.
8) When I was trying to get the shopkeeper’s daughter to describe when at night she had seen everyone in town marching around with torches, J. went “I don’t know, there aren’t clocks yet!” (I finally asked “Was the glow of sunset fully gone by that point?”)
9) When discussing whether to search a tower during the day or at night; P. started telling a story about how his character had killed a witch that only appeared at midnight, and only for ten minutes, going on and on until J. told him to stop.
10) A priest was discussing the dangerous creatures in the woods and mentioned centaurs, P. said that centaurs weren’t dangerous, the priest lifted his robe to show a hoof-shaped scar.
11) We rolled Stealth to hide behind a bush and see what would happen at night, I had a great roll, P. did not, so a guard shouted “Hey Orc, are you pooping there?” and he countered “You going to do something about it if I am?”, getting the guard to leave him alone, but… the guards all thought my body curled up under the bush was his poop. (So, yeah, good stealth.)
12) The magic that mind-controlled everyone started… at midnight! (But didn’t last for ten minutes.)
13) We thought we were safe in the dark behind a bush because we had better dark-vision than the crowd… except one of them was a Dwarf and pointed us out.
The final battle:
14) We fought the mind-controlled crowd for a while, I managed to turn invisible and escape to investigate the tower, the vampire imprisoned underneath left to attack P. while I was at the top of the tower, and I only had spells to use because I was far away. I used Vicious Mockery, an attack where taunting actually hurts people psychically, but J. made me actually say the taunts and would only let the attack work if they were good. P. rolled his eyes and said “My life depends on Kai making a joke.”
15) I struggled to think of an insult because I couldn’t see that she was a vampire from where I was, so I shouted “I know enough tales to guess that you’re the reason everyone’s yawning, which means you must be THE MOST BORING PERSON IN THE VILLAGE!” It did minor psychic damage and confused her.
16) P. forgot to write in his inventory that the priest had given him a silver candlestick, and J. wouldn’t remind him or let me remind him, so it took a very long time for him to remember (I shouted “Darn that *vampire*!” in the hopes it would jog his memory), but finally he did and hit her in the face, making her scream.
17) I tried making a bright flash of light in her face, but it wasn’t sunlight, so it didn’t do anything (it didn’t even blind her, which I thought was unfair), so J. let me taunt again, and I shouted “You scream like Justin Bieber!”, which he allowed, but it didn’t do much damage because my roll was weak.
18) The vampire hit P. really hard and he didn’t have many hit points left. I didn’t know what to do, until I asked if I could use Mage Hand to form a magic hand to grab the candlestick and hit her again myself, remotely. J. said it would take a lot of strength and I would have to roll better than 15… I rolled 16, and it hurt her really bad and knocked her over. P. finished her off and the spell was broken!
19) The town chief looked at us and shouted “Who the [cake] are you people?” because we had never actually gone to meet him. He asked how we knew about the disappearances and the reward and we just said “From the shopkeeper” over and over again. He gave us 90 pieces of gold. Session complete, victory!
That sounds like fun! My boyfriend plans to teach me DnD soon.
J. needs time to script another scenario for us, but I hope we can play again this week before I go back to campus. When we start again, I want to make a toy for the daughter of the half-orc shopkeeper who helped us, because the manual says I can make clockwork toys as a Tinker Gnome.
So after I got back from DC, I left a day later as a chaperone on a youth group pilgrimage I somehow got roped into helping with. That meant two days of driving from Nebraska to New Hampshire-ish with a dozen-some teenagers in tow. That was a week ago, and we just got back tonight.
That was an experience, to say the least. I was averaging about four hours of sleep a night, which was difficult considering that four of the eight days we were gone were almost pure driving (at least ten hours a day). The kids were really good, all things considered, but also extremely high energy. We went more places than I can remember, paid little attention to the posted speed limits, and quickly grew tired of doughnuts (East Coast, you need to calm down about Dunkin already). I learned a lot about myself, about kids, about driving, about sleep requirements, about what it is I’m getting myself into with this seminarian business. It was really great, I loved it, I’m very grateful I got to do it, and I’ve got a lot of thinking to do. My thoughts I won’t get into right now, except to say that I’m reminded of my high school days, but there were some biased epiphanies, I think, though not because of the stress or the workload or the youths. The lack of sleep isn’t a direct concern but it may have had some impact.
Please pardon my gibberish–I haven’t slept much lately. Honestly I feel quite strange at the moment, because I have nothing to do for the next seven hours or so (besides sleeping). I haven’t had that kind of free time in ages. It’s been absolutely nonstop for a long time now, and I have no idea what to do with myself now that I have a few weeks of down time. Weeks? That’s crazy. A week is so much time. Wow.
First firefly of summer!
I haven’t seen here, but I collected my first scallop shell at the beach today.
No fireflies here on the west coast
Oh!!! I forgot there are fireflies here! I saw my first ones last summer. Excited to see them again!
Oops, this was meant to be a reply… oh well.
Aw, I have to go back to campus tomorrow already. Two weeks didn’t feel like it.
Happy summer, everyone above the Equator!
Happy Summer!
Realisation of the day: spice (melange) isn’t explicitly named after coffee.
Congratulations to Emirates Team New Zealand, winners of the 35th America’s Cup!
Happy Tau Day!
It sounds too good tau miss.
Ow!
Would “Carter Darren” as a character name sound humorously too close to “Aaron Carter” to be taken seriously if they had nothing at all to do with music and did not resemble Carter in any way?
Nope.
(Here in Washington, D.C., however, the name would make people think of the Carter Barron Amphitheatre in Rock Creek Park.)
Happy aphelion, everybody! Today Earth swings a staggering 152,092,504 kilometers from the sun.
And happy birthday, Kokonilly, wherever you are!
There were moments today when it felt like it was about six feet over my head…
Thunderstorms have rolled in here tonight. They are most welcome.
The three best kinds of July night:
1) Fireworks
2) Summer thunderstorms
3) Clear and relatively cool with summer stars
In case anyone wants to squander an hour or two :
Enjoy!
Incidentally, here are MuseBlog birthdays in July:
5 – shadowfire (1995)
9 – Lizzie (1991)
10 – Koko’s Apprentice (1996)
13 – Rosebud2 (1998)
16 – Bibliophile (1998)
18 – Fortune Cell (1992)
22 – IBCF (1993)
26 – Agrrrfishi (1994)
31 – Agent Hippie (1997)
You have a 5K Day this month if you were born between 24 October and 23 November 2003;
a 6K Day if you were born between 27 January and 26 February 2001;
a 7K Day if you were born between 3 May and 2 June 1998;
an 8K Day if you were born between 7 August and 6 September 1995;
a 9K Day if you were born between 10 November and 10 December 1992; and
a 10K Day if you were born between 14 February and 16 March 1990.
People who can wear denim jackets in 70-degree weather– how do you manage to be comfortable and can you teach me?
“The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.”
Getting Dad a hammock for his birthday was one of the best ideas my Mom ever had (and that’s saying a lot, because my Mom is a very smart woman), because now we all have a hammock under the tree to enjoy.
So, New Yorkers: are you ready for another Manhattanhenge?
Oh! That’s this week, you’re right! Shouldn’t be too hard to get to 14th Street…
Tomorrow and Thursday. Details are in the New York Times.
Today was a bit of a bust, it was too cloudy, but at least I had an excuse to visit the High Line, walk in summer rain, and try out the bubble-waffle restaurant I’d never stopped at before.
Cloudy again.
Oh, well. Four chances next year.
And bubble tea every day!
hi, nice to see y’all again. how’s everyone been?
Most of us are surviving, despite repeated attacks from the bunny horde.
Pretty good. Balencing busy weeks of thesis revisions with vacation periods as I wait to hear back from my professor about each draft. Yesterday I got to go out on a sailboat on the Hudson River for City of Water Day, and they let me pull on the line to raise the sail! I hadn’t drunk enough water and got shaken up, so I felt like I was going to be sick, but I didn’t actually get sick. If I get to go again, I’ll hydrate enough and take a pill beforehand. All-in-all, I really enjoyed seeing the skyscrapers from a new angle and waving at ferries going by.
For future reference, the sail-raising line is a halyard. If they let you drive, the stick in your hand is a tiller, and the rope in the other is a sheet.
Also, bear in mind that sailing is highly addictive.
I held the tiller still when we were motoring out of the marina, but once we were actually out on the water, one of the other guests, Jose, did most of the steering, as he had experience in sailing while none of the rest of us did. Maybe it kind of defeated the purpose of “Free Lesson”, but I probably wouldn’t have done a very good job with the state my stomach was in.
At least you got the feel of the tiller. It’s a start. It’ll take a few more lessons before you close haul the mainsail, point hard up into a stiff breeze, and heel her over at 45 degrees. Then you can watch everyone else go green.
I know what some of those words mean!
See? You’re learning fast!
The New York harbor is a lovely place to sail, but definitely a bit overwhelming. What sailboat was it, do you know? I sailed on Clearwater years ago, and Pioneer less years ago, and have friends on most of the schooners in the harbor.
It was one of North Cove Sailing’s training boats, the “Butterfly”, I think. According to the website, it’s a Colgate 26 keelboat.
That’s an excellent training boat, which should give you a lot of fun and excitement. The only downside is that the cuddy is a bit small to fit a cooker. Have to make do with a picninc hamper.
If you want idyllic sailing, though, talk to Midnight Fiddler. You could end up on one of the envy-inducing wooden classics with which she is admirably familiar.
I also went to South Street Seaport on Sunday to beat the heat and saw “Pioneer” coming in from a tour cruise. I didn’t get to go onboard, but I did go on “Wavertree”, whose size surprised me.
“Wavertree” is a BIG boat. Bit bigger than a Colgate 26, anyway.
Pioneer is such a cutie! :3 Wavertree is really cool, & not even as big as Peking, that used to be there & is currently en route to Germany to undergo a huge restoration project & be a museum ship in her original home port of Hamburg.
The “envy inducing wooden classic” I’m on right now is VERY classic–a replica of a 1625 Dutch-built pinnace, which was then sold to the Swediah navy in the 1630s & defenses the city of Kalmar, & then brought colonists to New Sweden, now Delaware. Kalmar Nyckel if you want to look her up, she’s kinda fun.
When I saw how big “Wavertree” is and the photos of how damaged it was trying to round Cape Horn, it really underscored how much scarier it must be in the smaller modern ocean racing boats I’ve also had the chance to see in New York, like IMOCA 60s and Ultimes. (I guess the Ultimes are close to as long as “Wavertree”, but much lower to the water, and of course, carbon-fiber trimarans and all…)
The nice thing about bad dreams is waking up to see that they were just dreams.
How do you know you’re awake?
Aliens are no longer blasting everything with lasers. Also it hurts when I pinch myself and text remains the same when I look away and then back.
And today there are no longer tornadoes destroying the city, so there’s that.
It’s weird when they bleed into reality though. I often have dreams of my dad having Alzheimer’s/dementia and it takes a couple of minutes to reassure myself it didn’t actually happen.
When my father did have dementia, I used to dream that he was just faking it. “Shh!” he would say. “I’m fine. I’m on a mission.”
Ugh. Do you also have that thing where you start dreaming about coursework and but in the dream physics is different and Weber’s law involves Schur projections somehow, and you spend the dream trying to figure it out and then you wake up you realise that the physics you started with was right all along?
No. But at least you have amazing nightmares. it beats spiders and zombies. Maybe you should turn it tinto a novel.
Last night I dreamt that the bolts on the cleanout hatches on our sewage tanks hadn’t been tightened, and they floated off and the entire bilge filled with blackwater. I was glad that that wasn’t real. As soon as I woke up I realized that the alignment of the tanks and the location of their hatches had been completely wrong in the dream.
Nightmares are often pretty good at identifying the worst situation imaginable. I suppose on pretty boats it has to be dismasting, fire, or something to do with the bilges.
Happy Moon Landing Day!
I remember it well.
Actually, that’s not true. I remember it vaguely. I was in my early teens. I seem to remember being allowed to stay up and watch it, but the landing would only be 9:18 pm UK time, so not horribly late. Maybe it wasn’t transmitted live. I also seem to remember that my entire school was assembled in the Great Hall to watch it – presumably a replay the next day.
I’m sure I appreciated that it was a significant event at the time, but it’s only after a few years of reflection and the acquisition of perspective that I came to realise just how momentous it was.
There are so many fireflies around here this year! I just came back from a walk on the backroads, and the woods were full of them– on either side of the road, I could see at least two twinkling under every tree. Some hovered so slowly that I probably could have caught one in my hands, but I didn’t want to hurt them. So I just took a video instead.
I’ve never seen a firefly. Apparently, the nearest poulation is in Belgium. A few do occasionally make it across the Channel and survive for a while, but they’re a rare sight in Britain.
Belgium has now been added to my visiting list.
Maybe they need to learn to use the Chunnel.
They’d certainly look pretty down there, but the trains go by so fast, I doubt if anyone would notice them.
Well, if they could survive the trip, they could settle into the parks and be appreciated there.
I want a pet firelfy. He can have the WHOLE of my garden.
Why not get a breeding pair? You could wind up with thousands of them.
Say, ten thousand?
I COULD TURN MY GARDEN INTO A FIREFLY FARM!
*is excited*
Hi
Greetings!
Hey, Maths Lover!
I haven’t been around in well over a year, has the blog changed much?
It’s slower, but people pop in occasionally. There are flurries amid a general placidity.
We’re operating in Ent time nowadays.
*nods* The more things change…
Finally done with all of my various summer assignments! Tomorrow my parents and I are going down to Texas to visit my sister and her husband. Then, maybe, I’ll finally be able to catch up on my sleep.
How are everyone’s various summers going?
I should clarify–by “summer assignments”, I don’t mean papers and things, I mean being sent around the country to various places. Seminary is a weird thing.
That sounds like a better kind of summer assignments. I’m taking a week or maybe more home with my family while I wait to hear back from Professor C. about the status of our visa for Turkey. The consulate is apparently being really slow about responding.
I have a serious backlog in the workshop. Most of the summer will be spent clearing it. Not that I’m complaining. There are worse jobs.
What you need is to take on an apprentice. I’m sure you’d find some takers around here willing to don tights and chase people around with a shawm.
If it didn’t involve so much paperwork, I’d have a team of apprentices.
So we aren’t going to Turkey, because the consulate didn’t approve our permit in time and Professor C. has a health issue.
On the plus side, she says if I cite one more paper, my Master’s-equivalent paper will be ready to submit for the September deadline. :happy:
I should do a life update at some point.
I graduated from college? That’s a thing.
Recently went to an engagement party where I met up with a few other former and current Musers.
Things are pretty slow IRL for me too, otherwise.
One would think that prospective employers would be competing for your intellect.
Haven’t gotten any interviews yet, I’m afraid.
Same here after grad school.
Don’t they know who you are? They should be beating down your door!
Keep at it. Your talents will be recognised eventually.
Congratulations on graduating!
This month’s gleanings from the MuseBlog Calendar:
7 – Birthday of Koppar (@taxonomy on Slack)(1996)
21 – Alice’s birthday (1993); total eclipse, central U.S.
23 – hobbit’s birthday
27 – Errata’s birthday (1996); Rainbow*Storm’s birthday (1997)
30 – Thief of Light’s birthday (1998)
You have a 5K Day this month if you were born between 24 November and 24 December 2003; a 6K Day if you were born between 27 February and 29 March 2001; a 7K Day if you were born between 3 June and 3 July 1998; an 8K Day if you were born between 7 September and 7 October 1995; a 9K Day if you were born between 11 December 1992 and 10 January 1993; and a 10K Day if you were born between 17 March and 16 April 1990.
I apparently have arrived back on the blog just in time for my 8k day!
Happy 8k!
So you have. Many pies!
TMFA! So good to see you again! Happy 8K Day!
Many happy returns!
…wait.
I see some things haven’t changed.
I always seem to end up hanging out with people who make terrible puns…
Happy 8k!
Hey all! I graduated from grad school in May and have been applying to museum jobs. No luck so far on the job front.
Congrats! Good luck with your applications!
Congratulations!
Yesterday, my brother and I went to a local wildlife refuge that we visited a lot as kids on school trips. We’ve starting hiking there again when we’re home on on vacation more recently– we went last summer, and again in the winter with J.’s girlfriend, and I think I posted about those times.
It’s not a very big area and there are only two trails from the entrance to the shore– one short one that goes directly there, and another one 3/4s of a mile long that goes around a pond, along the bay, and through a meadow before rejoining the other in the sandy forest right before the beach. But it is a very peaceful and relaxing place to visit, and a cool look at what Long Island’s coastal forests looked like before development.
Yesterday, we decided to visit wearing bathing suits under our hiking clothes so that we could walk along the trail, swim at the beach, and then cover up again (to protect against ticks) and walk back. There were a lot of visitors yesterday, because a lot of other people had realized the same thing and admission to the refuge is much cheaper than buying a beach pass from the town. Luckily, everyone seemed to be treating the area with respect and J. and I only had to pick up two pieces of litter that we found along the trail.
We saw more chipmunks and pheasants than we’d ever seen before, even with the increased foot traffic– the animals in the refuge are very comfortable with humans. We got to one of the little footbridges over a stream in time to see a pheasant walking across it ahead of us. (In J.’s words, “He think’s he’s people!”) At the pond, two older swans and a younger one that was almost full-sized but still gray were cleaning themselves by the water’s edge, and we got to see them slip into the water and swim across the pond.
Heading up to the meadow, a very small bunny was right by the edge of the trail, nibbling on grass. We watched it for a while to make sure it meant no harm, but it only seemed interested in eating the grass, not attacking, and only ran away when I made noise by putting my bag down on the ground because I was trying to get my camera and photograph it. It’s nice to see an uncorrupted one living a peaceful life.
As we mentioned, a lot of other people were already at the beach, but there was enough space that we didn’t have any trouble finding somewhere to put down our bag and take off our outer clothes and stow them inside. The wind was blowing on the bay, making larger waves than we were used to seeing on that beach, but nothing frightening– it was like swimming in a wave pool! The water wasn’t too cold, and it was full of healthy seaweed– when little red bits brushed up against my hand, I would catch them to hold up to the light for a moment and look at their tiny branching structures. There are a ton of shells and rocks on the refuge beach and even some sea glass, because visitors aren’t allowed to take anything.
We swam for a while, and then pulled our outer clothes back on awkwardly. Before we headed back to the trail, we were lucky enough to see an osprey landing on a nesting pole further down the protected beach. While heading back through the sandy forest, we saw a pheasant parent pecking through the brush right on the side of the trail, accompanied by three little pale-brown chicks! We took the shorter trail back because we wanted to see all of the refuge during our visit.
Both J. and I agreed that we should have done this years ago.
KaiYves,
Was that Saturday? It was a perfect day down here and sounds like a perfect afternoon for the two of you.
Sunday, actually. A little cloudy and windy, but that kept the heat off.
I’m writing a joke article about a character who’s a Gary Stu, and one of his overblown titles is going to be “Prince-Consort of [fictional small-yet-glamorous European nation]”, should I make it Prussiania as a shout-out? (Of course, it would probably be mirror-universe Prussiania to be famous for being great instead of terrible.)
Well, *officially* Prussiania is utterly magnificent, and I’m sure it would appreciate the shout-out. On the other hand, it isn’t remotely European. How about Ruritania or Graustark? Or Grand Fenwick?
I was going to put Genovia, but then people would think I was implying he married Princess Mia and then I would get a lot of messages pointing out that both the books and films show who she marries.
I thought Magneto was… wait, that’s Genosha…
Haha, no, Genovia isn’t from comics, it’s the kingdom from “The Princess Diaries”.
Reminder: The Perseid meteors peak tonight. Watch the sky!
(You’ll still be able to see them for another couple of weeks, however. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see meteors during a total eclipse?)
I was hoping to go on a road trip south to see the eclipse with one of my BU SEDS friends, but they didn’t have an extra seat, so I’ll have to just watch the 70% totality through the glasses at home with my family.
Plan ahead for April 8, 2024.
That’s how I got into this situation. Last March I asked my parents if we could all go to Charleston the week of the eclipse and they said planning a year out was too much.
So, what is the “sweet spot” time horizon? Six months? Four? Three?
My dad’s been planning this one for ten years now. Hasn’t been overkill.
Well, I got Mom to make hotel reservations for us to go to Newport for the Volvo Ocean Race nine months from now, so I guess the sweet spot is somewhere around there.
I was at school and couldn’t see the eclipse ):
Well, today was the first work day I’ve been unemployed for the last nine months. (The agreement heading in was that I would disappear from my job when I found a way into school again, which I’ve done). Now my time is spent scrambling to get administrative details ready for a coast-to-coast move and practicing horn for an orchestra audition. (Side note: spending lots of time practicing daily — or at least, what feels like a lot to me – is at once so pleasantly straightforward and yet so absolutely frustrating. I do not envy the full-time musicians out there.)
It’s been over a year now since I graduated from undergrad and started to spend my time applying for grad schools/working at a ‘real job’/prepping for grad school. A full year’s retrospective seems a bit too navel-gazey, but in short, I’ve had the strange experience of life activity drastically slowing and then, after a long wait, suddenly hitting the gas. I’m not sure how well I’ll handle picking up speed again, but we’ll see. At the very least, reintegration into an academic environment seems decidedly more appetizing than living with my parents and working an office job.
Hurrah for coast-to-coast moves! What will you be studying?
Oh yes, of course! I forget what information I’ve made readily available sometimes. It’s almost always less than I expect. I’m headed to Baltimore, for the record.
I’ll be studying music composition (a master of music degree), which is basically a continuation of the music degree I got in undergrad.
Last night I went out to the hammock at 1 AM to watch the meteor shower. The canvas was covered in dew, so I had to put down a sheet and a blanket to stop the hammock from being too cold and wet to lie in, but once I did, and got a pillow and another blanket to put over me, it was pretty comfortable. The last-quarter moon was rising, and that probably drowned out some meteors, but I still saw a lot of little tiny ones, at least two bright and fast ones, and one bright and longer one.
I could hear animals moving around in the cornfield, but I wasn’t scared because the moonlight gave me a good view of the lawn, and it’s big, so I felt sure I would see anything coming. I don’t know how long I laid there, but eventually I got tired, took off my glasses, and nodded off to sleep. I woke up when the dew soaked through my blanket, and I couldn’t get comfortable again. I reached down, got my glasses, and carefully climbed out and gathered the blankets up. When I got back inside, the clock said 3:36, so I must have been outside for about 2 and a half hours, but I don’t know how much time I was actually asleep.
I went back to my room and slept for about 8 more hours until my Dad woke me up. But I did see the meteors and I did sleep under the stars!
I looked out of the window. There were clouds. They must have been imaginary, because the BBC said they weren’t there, but they blocked the view. So I made tea.
Sorry for the sudden change of topic, but I have a question that I’ve been wanting to ask for some time. Is there any online archive of old Muse mags or perhaps a way to buy them in bulk? I have my private stash, but it isn’t very comprehensive and I wish I’d gotten the chance to read more of it.
((I am also scheming and plotting , but don’t have anything concrete yet.))
There used to be a bunch of them online, but I’ve forgotten where they were and am not sure they’re still there. I have a lot of extra back issues that I’d be happy to donate to a worthy cause.
If there’s a particular article that you want to re-read, Bookgirl, you can always ask Robert for scans, like I did with the Black Sea Flood article.
I still want March 2003 I think! And any pre 1999 ones
March 2003 — a classic. Send me your snail-mail address on Slack, and I’ll assemble a parcel.
Well, tomorrow is the big day…
We saw a partial eclipse here in New York! They had a viewing event for the public at a local art museum, with a NASA livestream in the theater from the path of totality, instructors showing how to make pinhole projectors, a solar telescope provided by a local observatory with astronomers explaining what was happening, and free filter glasses.
We already had our own glasses, so we sat in the theater to watch a stream of the eclipse from Oregon. After that, we stepped outside, found seats on the edge of the porch, and looked up wearing our glasses– there was a small bite out of the right side of the sun! As we sat and watched for the next hour, it got bigger and bigger, until the sun was just a crescent!
The sun was only about 70% covered at our latitude, so it didn’t really get that dark– when you came back out from being inside for a bit, the light looked cloudy even though it was a sunny day, but that was all. But sitting there looking up at a crescent sun– that was wild!
The eclipse was beautiful and indescribable. Magical.
I got to hang out with one of my High School friends, Hannah, today! We went walking in one of the towns near here, made each other laugh a lot, drank boba tea, and watched a very small fishing boat leave the harbor playing very overdramatic music.
It’s curious the shape that personal crises take as life progresses. At the moment, it’s recognizing how small a part of time’s progression my perception is. There’s this excellent quote in Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow about the Catholic church, though I can’t remember it exactly. It’s something along the lines of ‘it works in the span of decades,’ which is a reminder that an organization can occupy a developmental arc that one human alone can’t fathom. I think of those constructing Notre Dame, for instance, who never saw any time at which the cathedral wasn’t under construction.
Anyway, this is on the one hand an encouragement for me to understand and maintain history (if anything, it makes me want to take up Bonsai, so I have some sort of constant reminder that things move at a pace much less immediate than mine). On the other, much more distressing hand, it makes so much of life seem invariant. I read a book on, of all things, retirement. Among other things, it basically said the key to late life satisfaction was a diverse portfolio of community based interests. ‘People make other people happy, and you need to fill a lot of time to avoid compensating with television, which is what so many people end up relying on,’ it runs. What’s more, it suggests these interests won’t spring up without some sort of early life interest, so your youth to middle age development is the foundation upon which all this rests.
Add into that the fact that so many of my friends are settling into whatever they’re doing at the moment (getting married, finding houses, spending plenty of time at jobs) as well as the better part of last year which I spent at a full-time job, and I’m suddenly reminded that the ‘real world’ I always imagined as arriving some day is pretty much tomorrow, if not today. I’ve spent so much time during undergrad considering what my future life will look like that I find the possibility of discovering I’m at the end-state kind of terrifying. There’s a lot hinged on the hope of what could develop (but probably won’t). As a result I’m trying to incorporate things into my life I wouldn’t have considered before, all the while asking myself: “am I going to be happy if this is what the rest of my life looks like?” Obviously, the worst ingredient for happiness is constantly asking whether or not one is happy.
I’m not sure how best to proceed, I suppose. In the meantime, there’s plenty of personal development but not a lot of enjoyment, which is not a solution. How do we make peace with settling eventually? It seems unlikely, but do people handle it by forgetting to ask that before they arrive?
Did I do a lot this summer? Yes.
Does that mean I want to go back to campus tomorrow and prepare for term to start next week? No.
I’ve still got a couple weeks, but I know how you feel!
So today I learned how to play Overwatch at a welcome event in the computer center nearest to my apartment. I am told there’s more to the game than walking through doors and immediately getting shot dead by members of the opposing team, but I didn’t see much beyond that.
Hooray! Overwatch is one of my very favorite games. I admit that I usually just play against the AI, though….
Well, the guys currently playing wanted me to play on their team, and they have some experience, as do the people they usually play against, so I was kind of getting thrown in the deep end.
In the very last respawn as Mei, I managed to not immediately be killed, stay unnoticed on a balcony long enough to throw an ice grenade into the fray and stop two opponents, and shoot another one who got past with my icicle gun, while everyone else on our team actually secured the objective and won, so I actually did contribute something.
It’s a bit of a hackfest, but there’s a nice variety of characters. Pick up a few live streams on Twitch and see if it appeals. It’s a bit too frantic for me – like most things on Twitch.
New “this place is fake” joke conspiracy theory– Eastern Long Island did once have a Northampton, a town as large and glamorous as the ones named for the other cardinal directions, but it was destroyed in a horrible disaster, much like Atlantis, and the hamlet and properties named “Northampton” today are all that survived. The disaster was so terrible that no local will ever speak of it and will claim that Northampton does not exist.
There is also the original Northampton. The existence of that is fairly well established.
What to post, what to post… I have classes again and a lot of readings to do, but I’m trying to still enjoy the nice weather we’re having.
Enjoy the classes! I’m a little bummed that I won’t be studying more philosophy this year. There were some cool classes coming up, I think.
What are you studying, Kai?
Archaeological Theory, Ancient Landscapes, and Archaeology of Anatolia.
Above the planet on a wing and a prayer,
My grubby halo, a vapor trail in the empty air,
Across the clouds I see my shadow fly
Out of the corner of my watering eye
A dream unthreatened by the morning light
Could blow this soul right through the roof of the night…
Thank you, Cassini.
Today I went to the Marine Science Festival at Pier 26 with my roommate and we got to hold hermit crabs in our hands, see a demo of a card game about cone snails, tour a research vessel from Stony Brook University, touch a fragment of a black smoker chimney, and take home these really beautiful maps of the seafloor around NYC that the New York Aquarium and National Geographic collaborated to create.
I want to make room to hang the map and the poster I also got of the different underwater niches on a piling in New York harbor on my wall, but I don’t have too much wall space left on my side of the apartment, so I think I’ll just hang up the map so I have some space left if I find another cool poster at Comic-Con next month.
Arrr! It be Talk Like A Pirate Day once again, me shipmates!
Indeed it be, Matey, indeed it be. Thank’ee fer remindin’ me.
I’ve a-heard tha’ a local coffee chain be givin’ out ha’-price grog today if ye order like a pirate.
I be right befuddled that none ‘o mine favorite salin’ sites seem t’ be celebratin’… After all, ’twere there ever a finer display o’ swashbucklin’ than ol’ Pistol Pete’s plunderin’ in Bermuda this past June? Why he done seized Jimmy t’ Red’s greatest treasure, he did!
Or, should I be sayin’, Governor Ellison’s greatest booty, tho’ it were guarded by Jimmy th’ Red an’ Admiral Coutts.
This is a cool AU, I want to write this AU…
Write it and post it!
Jimmy Buffett’s “Take It Back” is kind of already this, really I could just change a few lyrics…
Wait, this is kind of impossible because the Golden Age of Piracy was before Australia and New Zealand were even colonized by the British. There can’t be entire pirate crews of British descendants who call themselves Australian or Kiwi in 1717.
Speculative Fiction. Alternate reality, Perfectly legit.
If we analogize events a little further back so that neither the US or New Zealand teams have to be the antagonist (with apologies to Alinghi…)
The year is 1707, and fear grips the seagoing nations of the world as the dreaded pirates of the mysterious Crimson Gyre guild continue their attacks on shipping and coastal settlements in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans– and beyond! Marked by their use of black flags and white sails bearing a red spiral pattern (hence the name), these unusually well-equipped pirates appear to strike from nowhere and to carry as much firepower as some navies.
After a particularly devastating attack on Bermuda (well, San Francisco is kind of Spanish-controlled at the moment), incoming North-American-born Governor Ellison secures permission from the Crown to launch a mission to finally hunt down and stop the Crimson Gyre pirates with the help of experienced Naval pirate hunter Benedict Ainslie and hot-blooded privateer Jimmy the Red, formerly a member of a British pirate guild that operated in the East Indies attacking the Dutch in Van Diemen’s Land.
Joining an attempted attack by the navies of several nations on a suspected Crimson Gyre hideout off the coast of Spain, the Bermudians are taken by surprise when a third faction enters the battle and manages to come the closest to actually defeating the Crimson Gyre ships before they make their getaway. The legendary Republic of the Silver Fern, a pirate haven somewhere in the far South Seas, is apparently far from mythical– and seems to have a grudge to settle with the Crimson Gyre.
When the Bermudians find themselves approached by one Captain Coutts with former ties to BOTH the Crimson Gyre and Silver Fern and a story of a prized silver artifact thought lost in Spanish California a generation before, the hunt takes a new turn. Things get truly weird as eccentric Frenchman Count Troublé manages to forge an alliance between the Bermudians, the Silver Fern guild, the Brits, his own country’s navy, factions from the Italian states and Ottoman territories and even… the Emperor of China?!??
Could a mysterious Swiss-Italian nobleman be connected to the Crimson Gyre? Can even this far-flung coalition stop them for good? And even if the do… who will keep the silver treasure once it’s recovered? It all comes down to one final showdown off Spain…
(This version guaranteed to have 70% less lawyers!)
This thing should be written. I want it on my bookshelf.
On a non-piratical note, my professor said that my committee approved my thesis and I can choose a date for my Master’s ceremony now.
Happy equinox, one and all!
Happy Equinox and Happy New Year to those celebrating Rosh Hashanah! (Did I spell that right?)
And likewise to all within this house.
This year of college is so busy! I have no time.
Public Service Broadcasting’s new album, Every Valley, about the decline of South Wales’s Coal mining is amazing. Listen to it if you haven’t yet!
Also, I had try outs for Model UN today and I think it went really well!
Good luck! Model UN was one of my favorite college experiences.
A new album? Wow, I know what I’m doing tonight! (Laundry. But, while I’m waiting for it to be done, listening to the album.)
This year of college is so busy! I have no time.
Public Service Broadcasting’s new album, Every Valley, about the decline of South Wales’s Coal mining is amazing. Listen to it if you haven’t yet!
So, anyone get raptured yesterday? Any sign of Nibiru? Just checking.
What? Did they literally just copy-paste the date in from the prediction two years ago? There wasn’t even a lunar eclipse last night this year! Now these doomsayers are just getting lazy…
I didn’t but I did buy a strange and interesting Venus flytrap in the flower district. Should be ok right?
If it was Saturday and not a month ago during the eclipse, you should be fine. Either way, just give it bugs like any normal Venus flytrap and never anything else, no matter what.
I did feel a bit strange, but I think it was just a dodgy gherkin.
I got raptured on Saturday! No, not raptured, the other one. Mexican food. I got Mexican food on Saturday.
I start Real College (transferring from community college) tomorrow and I feel very nervous and Bad because I haven’t done anything except sell doughnuts for six months straight. I’m taking costume design and set design which I’m excited about, and will hopefully get to work on Chess and American Idiot this year. I just hope I still remember how to do schoolwork at all, y’know?
The upside is, it’s almost Halloween! I’m going to be Queen Rancho, a fairly cheap costume with a crown and stuffed spiders based on a very niche joke from the My Brother, My Brother, and Me podcast.
After following their round-the-world flight and subsequent efforts to promote clean energy over the past two years, I was very pleased recently to find the crew of “Solar Impulse 2” exactly where they belong– in the 2018 Guinness Book of World Records as the first aircraft to circumnavigate the world using only solar power.
I still maintain that they should have been the Men of the Year 2016, but at least there’s one page on which no politician will ever steal their headline.
Hey, everybloggy in the USA! Don’t forget that tomorrow is National Public Lands Day and entry to state parks and National Park Service sites will be free!