Random Thread: Autumn 2017
Random threads go seasonal, starting now!
Date: October 1, 2017
Categories: At the Top of the Blog, Random craziness
Thursday, 25 April 2024
Life, the universe, pies, hot-pink bunnies, world domination, and everything
Random threads go seasonal, starting now!
Date: October 1, 2017
Categories: At the Top of the Blog, Random craziness
And, just in time for October, it starts to get cold around here…
Happy autumn, everybody!
The weather today was so perfectly Octobery! October has always been my favoritest month.
It was denim-jacket-over-short-sleeve shirt weather today, which is just about perfect for me.
Wow, first post!
Post-equinoctial felicitiations! Britain is following its time-honoured autumnal traditions. It’s damp.
Yay, autumn! It’s been very october-y here for the past two weeks, but I haven’t had a chance to enjoy it yet. Exams :/ But I survived- I’m still cringing inside at how terrible I did- and somehow got a B. Never again.
Does anyone know a good pumpkin pie recipe? I have a hankering for that.
If in doubt, consult Delia.
https://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/international/american-mexican-and-caribbean/pumpkin-pie
I got the red sneakers I need to go as Velma to Comic-Con this weekend! Last year I borrowed my roommate’s moccasins, but she moved out, so that wasn’t an option this year (plus they were more dark pink than red). Tomorrow I’ll break the shoes in a bit before I walk all over the Javits Center in them.
Coming up this month:
9th: Gimanator’s birthday (1993)
12th: Ebeth’s birthday (1991)
13th: Paul Baker’s birthday AND Friday the Thirteenth (watch out!)
16th: Kagy’s birthday (1993)
18th: Hagfish Day
25th: Birthday of Red-tailed HAWK (1994) and Randomosity101 (1995)
28th: National Chocolate Day
No K Days that I’ve calculated. Have I missed anything important?
Build-a-fort-in-your-backyard season has arrived, so I intend to check out the NYU one in the park tomorrow.
Post a review!
I actually had to stop and wait a bit when I first stopped by to check it out, because I was eating outside food and I couldn’t bring non-kosher food in, so I apologized and went away to finish my sandwich elsewhere in the park. But after that, I got to go in.
Just like last year, the roof is made from small twigs, so the light gets in and the sky is visible. I came by after lunch, so there weren’t too many people inside, but there were a few representatives of the community organization that had created the sukka who liked my NASA t-shirt and wanted to hear about what I was studying as an archaeologist.
An Italian Jewish family who were visiting New York came in to look around and said a prayer with their daughter, who was adorable. I asked them how they liked New York and they said they were enjoying their trip and that it reminded them of their home in Milan, which made everyone else in the sukka laugh. “I think they’re probably more stylish there than we are.” I said.
Day 1 of Comic-Con was great, I only got there at 6 because I had to come from class, but I got to meet up with my friend Steph, take photos with Mon Mothma and Moana, and got recognized as Velma by several adorable little kids.
Okay, I promise I’ll report on Day 2 (Saturday), tomorrow after class. Tonight I got too caught up in helping my roommate with her homework and it’s already 1:30 AM.
Day 2– well, what can I say, it was a full afternoon and evening at Comic-Con, so of course it was awesome!
A school group from New Zealand was on the 7 train platform at Grand Central along with me as I made my way to the Javits Center– I really hope they knew it was Comic-Con that weekend, or else they probably got a VERY skewed view of New York from that subway ride full of cosplayers.
My brother J. and his girlfriend were inside already, so we sent text messages to try to meet up on the show floor. A lot of people recognized my costume and shouted “Velma!” or “Jinkies!”, and in a few cases “I can’t see without my glasses!” (I ran into a female Cyclops cosplayer and told her “I heard you have trouble with your glasses, too.) I actually got photographed for a ModCloth photoset of cosplayers and featured on their [Popular Hipster Photo Site] account!
When I did find J. and his girlfriend, they surprised me by being dressed as Shaggy and Scooby! They hadn’t told me that they were going to cosplay at all, let alone match me, so it was a total surprise. We took some pictures together and some people took pictures with us, then we went around looking at booths and met up with my friend Steph. I hugged a giant plush crocodile-banana (crocnana) and talked with a giant Spider-Man toy (well, talking via some hidden person with a microphone, but they said “Jinkies, that’s a great costume!”, so I’ll take it).
I bought a bunch of cool stuff, including a Jurassic Park sticker, an ISS shirt, two cute necklaces featuring the croconana and his friend, a green manatee with markings like boba bubbles on his tail, aka mantea, and a poster signed by one of the artists for DC’s “Scooby-Doo Where Are You!” comic.
Later on, I met another Velma and a Daphne, and took pictures with them, but sadly it was after J. and his girlfriend left, so we couldn’t do a big group photo. (And everybody always forgets poor Fred. :sad:) There were a lot of very clever and skilled cosplayers, but I think the most unique of all was the man dressed as the Javits Center itself.
After the show floor and artists’ alley closed, I went down the street to see the offsite exhibit promoting Andy Weir’s new book about a mystery on the moon. They had artifacts related to the fictional moonbase in the story and a GIANT detailed statue of the moon that you could walk all around.
Really, it was a fantastic day, and I feel that because it was my second time at Comic-Con, I wasn’t *quite* as overwhelmed as last year and was able to go slower and enjoy things more.
Female Cyclops ♥
Happy Friday the Thirteenth, everybody! And happy birthday, Paul Baker!
Many unlucky returns, Paul!
Thank you! My birthday didn’t prove unlucky, though. Maybe it’s only if one begins a sea voyage on Friday 13th that disaster strikes.
Thank you! I had a quite delightful birthday.
The American Museum of Natural History should have one night of the week that they’re open late like the Met does, so people can visit after work/class. My class near the Met lets out at 5, so today I was able to hurry across Central Park in time to… visit for 15 minutes before closing time.
I’m trying to get my roommate a bilingual Chinese-English tutor who actually knows about her major, because last night I spent five hours trying to help her answer her homework questions and I have no idea whether the answers we put down are even correct because I’m not a music education major.
In my Extinct Landscapes class today, one of the other students told us about how scientists studied the populations of wolves and moose on Isle Royale in Lake Superior for decades after wolves first repopulated the island in the 1950s in order to understand the roles of predators and prey in a closed ecosystem, but that now the wolves are in danger of dying out because of inbreeding.
“Why don’t they just bring some more wolves over on a boat?” The professor asked.
“Because then what would they do with the cabbage and the goat?” I asked, trying to be funny, but the other kids didn’t remember the riddle I was talking about, so they just stared at me.
You’re taking a class in Extinct Landscapes? That sounds awesome!
(I totally would’ve high-fived you for the riddle reference, for what it’s worth.)
It’s an interesting class, but we have a lot of readings to do.
Strand, why do you have evergreen garlands with red bows up already, it’s not even Halloween?
I refuse to contemplate anything Christmas related till December (apart from rehearsals, of course).
For me November 1 is fair game for Christmas stuff. I like to stay up until midnight and count down to the Halloween/Christmas transition if I can.
Ah, the pleasures of youth.
Regular every-couple-of-months check-in! I’m doing ok, actually. I studied responsibly for my Musical Theater History test so I think I did pretty well, and today I learned how to do cleaning and maintenance on two different types of stage lights. I’m on medication and therapy for my OCD, working at a doughnut shop on the weekends, and preaching about Assassins the musical to anyone at college who will listen. Today was a better day than most, but I think it’s cool that I can have days like that, y’know?
Tell me about this musical! Is there twirling of capes?
It’s a Stephen Sondheim musical, maybe my favorite of his. It uses the framing device of a murderous carnival game to tell the stories of nine people throughout history who assassinated, or attempted to assassinate, US presidents – everybody from a Southern Confederate sympathizer to an anarchist trying to help the working man to a Charles Manson cultist. I think it does a really good job of humanizing the assassins and their motives without making excuses for their actions, has lots of dark comedy and ironically upbeat songs about murder, and the 2004 revival (with Neil Patrick Harris!) has an amazing twist at the end. The Ballad of Czolgosz is the bop of the century.
I got to see Neil DeGrasse Tyson interview moonwalker Charlie Duke today! A film featuring interviews with Duke called “Lunar Tribute” premiered tonight as part of the Margaret Mead Film Festival at AMNH. It’s a really sweet little film focused on how Duke left a photograph of his family on the lunar surface. They had a drummer listen to Duke’s interviews and use them to create musical impressions of his feelings at various points in the mission, which is a really clever and artistic twist.
Why do we have to have homework when the Volvo Ocean Race starts tomorrow?
The world is cruel.
I did well on the presentation at least!
A couple of days ago, a friend I hadn’t talked to in a while sent me a nice, complimentary message at a time I was really feeling down.
Today, on a whim, I contacted a different friend I hadn’t talked to in a while, and was able to give him some helpful advice when he was struggling.
I don’t actually believe in karma but it was cool.
The leaves are starting to turn yellow here, but it was still 70 degrees today! Some of my geranium’s leaves are turning red, I don’t know if that’s fall coloration or not, but once it gets to the 50s for days at a time, I will have to bring it in from the balcony.
Ah, I remember Fahrenheit. We actually used to use it. Can’t get a grip on it now.
Sorry, that wasn’t very scientific of me… :blush:
Read those as “21” and “10-15 degrees”.
I think Fahrenheit is actually more intuitive for describing human comfort. It was designed for European weather reports, after all. Zero is too cold, 100 too hot, and degrees small enough so that you rarely need to split them. The grand scope of its decadal bands as chilly 30s turn into tolerable 40s, coolish 50s, mild 60s, and so on is something Celsius, for all its other advantages, can’t match.
I dunno. I was brought up on Fahrenheit, so all those supposedly human markers were ingrained. But I went onto Celcius in my teens, and it made so much more sense. Zero is freezing, 100 is boiling, and 20 is comfortable for your living room (unless you’re from Texas). Blood temperature is 37, and that’s about all the essentials. I just find Fahenrheit confusing now.
KaiYves – if you want to be properly scientific, you should be using Kelvin. But then no-one will have a clue.
Brought the geranium in today, hope it adapts to the temp change. When I went walking in Central Park on Saturday, some trees were yellow, others orange. It might take a bit into November for us to have real fall colors this year.
Is it a true geranium, or a pelargonium?
In class today, I mentioned the “Whoever is pooping on my steps, stop, I curse you!” graffito from Pompeii and the professor joked that the graffiti actually was a curse, but the writer misunderstood how severe it was, and so when the culprit disobeyed the warning… the gods destroyed the whole city.
Curses and wishes must be handled with care, as numerous examples in literature (and now history!) attest.
At Forbidden Planet this weekend, they gave away free bags of all-ages comics so you could give them out to trick-or-treaters. I thought it was a good idea, so I picked one up and put our apartment down on the form as welcome for trick-or-treaters after my class ended at 7.
About seven kids came by, and all of them liked the comics. I let them flip through the pile and pick the one they wanted most. But one little boy dressed like Kylo Ren flipped through and then asked me “Do you have any #1 issues?” I said I didn’t and he contented himself with a SpongeBob one.
Any Squirrel Girl?
No, they did have “Lumberjanes”, though!
That’s such a good idea for non-food treats! So much better than cheap plastic toys which will end up being thrown out. I’ll have to find some comics and do that when I have my own place.
They gave them out at the comic store just for Halloween and I also had some left over from Free Comic Book Day in May.
If anyone participating in National Novel Writing Month this year? I’m too busy.
I understand some of the Old Guard are doing it this year, but I’m not. Also too busy.
I do have ideas, I only wish I had the time…
Welcome, everyone, to adulthood. The busy creeps up on you and bites when you’re not expecting it.
The Volvo Ocean Race 2017-18 is the best sports-comedy multi-platform web series you aren’t watching.
They literally celebrated one Dutch dude’s birthday on Team AkzoNobel yesterday by pieing him.
Sailors after my own heart.
So say we all!
And today the captain surprised everyone on Turn the Tide on Plastic with chocolate mousse because one guy got the news his daughter had been born.
There’s a big conference this weekend in Boston that my Anatolian Archaeology professor is going to, so we had class Monday morning (early Monday morning) instead of Friday, which means I don’t have class again until Monday.
Phew, some time to breathe after having a project or presentation every week for about the last month…
I’m glad it wasn’t QUITE as cold today as earlier in the week. It’s nice to have some turtleneck-and-bomber-vest real fall weather instead of going right from winter to summer.
The weather around here is still in the indecisive stage–I was just getting used to my winter coat, and then it jumps back up to sweatshirt temperatures. It looks like it’ll be warmer on Thanksgiving than it was on Halloween! I’m fine with that, though.
Good weather for mowing the lawn one last time before winter.
I was just thinking the same thing. Provided I can dash out between showers.
Hopefully when I go home next week it will be warm enough for some hiking with P. and J. Maybe even Mom and Dad, too!
Oh! We could actually do Blue Friday and take a bag and gloves to the trail that goes down to the beach, picking up any trash we see!
So, has anyone seen any Leonids? It’s too cloudy here.
You know, I hadn’t even thought about them. I always miss the Leonids, for some reason–it’s just a busy time of year, I suppose. There’s always the Geminids next month!
Alas, Britain is generally cloud-ridden on Leonid day.
An asteroid from another solar system is passing through ours! It was discovered last month and named ‘Oumuamua, Hawaiian for “a messenger that reaches out from the distant past”. It’s already heading away from Earth and will pass Jupiter in May and Saturn in two years.
Quick! Reroute New Horizons!
Is it going so fast that we couldn’t send something Philae/NEAR-like to go latch on to it before it left our solar system entirely?
I don’t know! It’s a tempting idea.
…And, unsurprisingly, people are thinking about it:
https :// asteroidday .org/11-24-2017-project-lyra-mission-chase-interstellar-asteroid/
Too fast to land on, I guess. We could maybe send an impactor, but a flyby is probably best like they suggest.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Same to you! My baked sweet-potato-apple-cranberry medley was a hit here!
Likewise to everyone. Sorry I forgot it.
I went to the wildlife refuge with my brothers (plus P.’s girlfriend and their friend Will) for Blue Friday. It was a popular place to be, which probably scared away the pheasants, but we did see a deer at the end, a lot of birds, and some chipmunks.
We had never visited so close to sunset before, even though the refuge is open until half an hour after sunset. Some of the trees still had their leaves and looked beautiful in the later afternoon light. But most of them were bare, so we could see right to the bay from the forest and when going up the hill to the meadow.
There were quite a few birds flying around, but they weren’t very interested in eating birdseed from anyone’s hand– they had probably already filled up on birdseed from the other visitors.
I brought a bag along to pick up any trash I found, but the other visitors had been very clean– we didn’t see any trash until we got to the very end of the trail, near the beach, and then of course there were things that had washed up on the beach, so we picked that up. By the time we got to the beach, the sun was setting, and everything was pink and orange. We found part of a conch shell that must have floated a long way to get to our bay.
Because it wasn’t piping plover nesting season anymore, we were able to walk down the beach towards the osprey nests, although we didn’t see any ospreys. We did find a lot more trash, including a lot of shotgun shells (which I HOPE floated in, because no hunting is allowed in the refuge), so we picked those up.
The walk back was cold, but short, and at the very end, J. and I saw a white-tailed deer after everyone else had already hurried ahead. We also came across one tree that still had its leaves, in a brilliant shade of yellow. Once we got back to the entrance and put our trash-bag in the can, we all felt very accomplished and grateful for having experienced the trail at a time of day we previously hadn’t.
Thanks for the evocative description, Kai! It sounds like a perfect fall day.
Manhattanhenge is tomorrow! If there’s a clear sky in the east at sunrise (7:04 a.m.), it should be a sight to see. That’s a salient “if,” I know.
I’m already up too late too get 8 hours before then, so I think I’ll wait for June.
I’m waiting for some archeologists to discover that Manhattan was laid out on the alignment of surviving neolithic structures, so that ManhattanHenge is a direct continuation of an ancient festival.
Dr. Tyson says that because the summer dates are close to Memorial Day and the All-Star Break, future archaeologists might conclude that the Ancient Americans worshiped War and Baseball. And, well…
Ironically enough, today I saw a copy of “Motel of the Mysteries” on the dollar cart at Strand, which is about similar humorous speculations about how people in the future might speculate on our present. I moved it to the children’s cart (it is intended for all ages) to hopefully help teach some young person about archaeology.
Where did November go?
Forget November, how is it almost 2018? And I’m supposed to graduate next summer…
*runs in circles of nope*
Not ready for any of this!
Three essays and the PhD proposal before break, ughhhh…
Courage! Disappearing time is simply an artefact of an interesting life.
I can’t use the phrase “Doggerlandscape” in a paper about reconstructing the landscapes of Doggerland, can I?
Yes. Yes, you can.
The cutest I got in the actual paper was “The artifacts discovered appear to be consistent with a Mesolithic culture of hunter-gatherers [description]” *paragraph break* “What did they hunt and gather? [description of reconstructed flora and fauna]”
Today I learned that if you flip your map so that north is left, Ireland is shaped like a buffalo.
(Yes, yes, get back to work, I know…)
Work can wait. Just one more animal. Bits of Japan should look like something…..
Scotland is a fairy with Big Hair tearing up a piece of paper, but that’s on a normal North-is-up map and something I’ve noticed since Elementary School.
Heads up to anyone with a clear sky: Geminid meteors tonight!
Cloudy here, I’m afraid, and I’m sick with the flu, but I’ll pretend that I can hear them whizzing through the mesosphere!
Potential name for a Japanese restaurant: The Misosphere.
Or a Japanese-Arabic fusion restaurant: Misopotamia.
Misoamerica?
Cloudy here too, alas.
The snow makes everything look so beautiful here, especially the evergreens. Hopefully there will be more snow when I finish finals and can actually take some time to play in it.
Happy Wright Brothers Day! I’m driving across northern Ohio bound for Wisconsin. Are there any towns I should single out for a wave?
I had one of those moments of questioning my life choices at 4 AM this morning when I was sitting in the lobby of my building because I couldn’t wake up my roommate by working all night in our room trying to finish my presentation for today about differing theoretical interpretations of the Hittite state over the past century (theory is the absolute LEAST FUN part of archaeology), and the doorman wouldn’t close the door so my toes were freezing inside of my sneakers and he was listening to some UFO radio show and I had a Johnny Cash song stuck in my head…
But the professor seemed to like the presentation today, which puts me at 4/6s done before I can go home on Saturday. So there’s that.
6/6, I can go home tomorrow. I don’t know how good the last essay or this proposal draft was, and I’m going to have to write another paper before the next term starts, but now I get to go home and take at least two weeks off and…
*holds up five fingers on one hand and the index finger of the other above my head like a boxer who got beaten to cake but won and collapses into the stool in my corner as the officials come out to help me*
*sponges off blood and sweat*
Thank you…
To those who celebrate, Merry Christmas, to everyone else, Happy Day Before the Sydney-Hobart Race!
Wow, so fun to snuggle up on the couch on Christmas Day evening and spend an hour watching the livestream. It made me miss Sydney and the racing itself was fast enough to be fun but stately enough to be relaxing. Australia, you’ve been holding out on us!
So this week is the tenth anniversary of my first post on MuseBlog, right?
Correct: December 23, 2007. Tempus fugit!
https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=872#comment-167495
And today is the 11th anniversary of mine!
Wow, I thought you predated me by more than that!
We got to play Dungeons and Dragons again for the first time in months last night. P.’s and my character got pulled into a plot to raid the treasury of a local learned society, but because my character was Lawful Good and they had demonstrated that they were poor academics and general rich jerks but not outright doing anything illegal, she refused to help. The wizard that P. had gotten for the heist team became more and more eccentric until he turned every blade of grass in a garden into frogs, then into doves that laid tadpole eggs, then turned himself into a demon and then disappeared. In the middle of trying to steal black powder for the robbery, P. saw the wizard’s reflection in a puddle and then…
We woke up at our campsite just as we had that morning! We thought it was just a dream until things started happening exactly as they had before– the smell of our cooking attracted the same wild dogs, etc. We headed back to the city to seek out the wizard and discovered that he was actually a barkeep at the local tavern who had been hit in the head with a glowing stone rod by a mysterious cloaked figure, and then gone insane and demonstrated powers. We tried to get him to help us to follow the cloaked figure, but when we looked into the wizard’s eyes…
We woke up back at our campsite again! We scared off the wild dogs again, headed to the city again, and P. staked out the tavern while I traveled to the learned society to research and discovered that there was an account of a badly eroded inscription in a nearby ruin that mentioned an ancient Elf wizard with the same name that appeared to be some kind of apocalyptic prophecy. When I headed back to the tavern, we saw the barkeep get hit in the head again and transform again, but instead of staying with him, I cast Locate Object on the cloaked figure’s staff so that we could find them. We tracked them up to the ancient Elven quarter of the city (no Elves live there, as all of the Elves on the island mysteriously disappeared centuries ago– my character’s long-term goal is learning what happened to them), where we found the figure’s cloak abandoned in a chamber pot on the side of the street. The spell dissipated before we could track the figure any farther, so P. lifted up the cloak to use his Orc sense of smell to see if he could track them by scent. But as soon as he sniffed it…
We woke up at our campsite again and the session was over! Kudos to J. for turning a heist plot that was stalling because my character was conflicted into a mysterious “trapped reliving the same day over and over again” scenario! Now if only we didn’t have to wait several more months until P. gets home again to keep investigating.
And yes, I really regret that I switched out “Hold Person” for “Phantasmal Force” after we ended the last game. If I had known we’d be chasing after a mysterious figure who kept fleeing with superhuman speed…