Ree

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091221.html

In the center of star-forming region

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. . . well, hellhounds, among other things.  I’m unbelievably tired and whacked out, even on my recent usual scale of tired and whacked-out-ness, and even as Lo Text Mondays go this is going to be lo lo looooo, er, low.  And blurry.  I also need to try the assault on my hill while the temperature is still below freezing:  the idea is to hang out around here at the mews whilst the last moments of melt go on outdoors—and then whip down* to the cottage just before it drops below the evil magic number again.  The very thought of tomorrow makes me cry:  we had about two inches of snow this afternoon, followed by several hours of slow drip . . . which is about to be followed by another hard freeze, and tomorrow. . . .  I couldn’t walk down my cul de sac’s steep little hill this morning.**  And this afternoon when hellhounds and I went out for our second canter the road at the end of the long mews park driveway was solid traffic in both directions—into town because a lorry had broken down at the bottom of the hill at the crossroads and no one in Hampshire had a spare recovery vehicle that had the traction to cope with dragging him out of the way, and out of town because the dual carriageway was down to one crawling lane in both directions due to snow and at least one ambulance that couldn’t get through. 

            And of course there’s PEGASUS. 

            And the final blow is that someone near and dear to us has been in an awful car crash and we aren’t going to know for at least a couple of days what the prognosis is.  Peter, being a British male, is soldiering on.  I’m trying not to disperse into my component atoms.  But I do kind of want to lie down and curl up and snivel.   The bad news ruined the hell out of tonight’s opera, which was the Damnation of Faust, and I think was probably a pretty good production.

            So let us distract ourselves with hellhounds.  Lovely funny silly hellhounds.  This is why domestic animals were invented.

 

A blur of hellhounds.

 

 

 

 And yes, this is all the snow there is.  (This grass is pretty long, and some of the snow has melted since out here it’s not being trampled into titanium thaw-proof ice.)  If you can get out of town without killing yourself it’s fine. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My hellhounds really make me laugh.

 

 

 

 

Look at that FACE.

 

 

 

* * *

* And up.  Ordinarily the down-and-upness of Hampshire is one of its charms. 

** I tottered uphill to my parking slot, and hellhounds and I then slid majestically down the slope in Wolfgang, praying there wouldn’t be anyone in the road when we got there.  There’s actually a little relatively level and relatively bare spot just before you squash any pedestrians, and before you get to the road proper.  This is good.

 

And the first amaryllis/hippeastrum of the season.  Yaaay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And in my mission to keep you up to date with my footgear I felt that you really needed to see these tights from the OBE party.  Are they good or what.  The little ankle boots are good too but the tights rule.  And just by the way, it’s REALLY HARD to take a photo OF YOUR OWN LEGS.  (Note to self:  really must find out how to do auto-photo.)

It's dark now. It's the shortest day/longest night.

Tomorrow, the year's reborn.

http://www.dailykitten.com/2009/12/bella-7/

http://www.dailykitten.com/?p=4009

Location: Prescott, Arizona, USA

This beautiful liitle baby is named Bella after the Twilight character. We found her at our local animal shelter. They had already named her, but we thought it was perfect so we kept her name. She now is part of a three kitten family along with Cookies and Dexter. She’s very sweet and our other cats love her. Merry Christmas everyone !

I took over maintainership of anime_manga, which was abandoned in 2004. Time to get it running again, right?

This is a community dedicated to all things anime/manga. Fanart, fanfiction, doujinshi, graphics, cosplay photos, general discussion, news, questions or live reports - it's all welcome here. We are multi-fandom here, not restricted to one or a few specific series/shows.

Find rules and guidelines here.

brokencity_ic
( A Post-Apocalyptic Super Powers Game )

Bored? Got some time to yourself and nothing to do? Feel inspired by something you saw on television, at the movies, in the paper, from a book, on your computer, read in your ebook etc?

Then how about trying Fanfiction? Yes, the wonderfully creative world of fanfiction!

At alikelyscenario we give you 21 challenges/scenarios on which to base your fic upon. Each scenario comes with 5 prompts associated with it to inspire your writing. Come sign up and try your hand at fic writing.

Already have something written? We have a few fandom specific journals that are waiting for you.

heroes_fiction - The Heroes fandom burst on the scene four seasons ago. Since then there has been a lot of good fic. Come and share yours here.

sanctuaryforall - For the Webseries turned television series Sanctuary. Here you can post not only fanfic, but fanart, icons, challenges, news about the show, and anything else related to the fandom.

startrek_redux - Beam yourself up to this asylum for the new movie. Like the asylum above, anything related to the new movie is accepted.

Got something not associated with any asylum listed above, multi_fiction welcomes any and all fandoms. No matter what genre, we want it.

http://feeds.reference.com/click.phdo?i=d0ae0eee2d9809fb42c3676f5bc55581

http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/archive/2009/12/21.html

dolorous: marked by, causing, or expressing grief or sorrow.

http://feeds.reference.com/click.phdo?i=99186a40ee8356932fb974f349ac8dce

herido:
[Spanish] herido
[English] injured, hurt

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091220.html

If you went outside at exactly the same time every day and took a

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RobinMckinleysBlog/~3/bPmYRkRWO50/

http://robinmckinleysblog.com/?p=3279

 

 PEGASUS, PEGASUS, PEGASUS, PEGASUS, PEGASUS, PEGASUS, PEGASUS, PEG . . . SHUT UP, MCKINLEY.

            Okay, wait a minute, there’s probably something I can talk about.  Coherently.  Well, coherently may be asking a lot.

            I got to bed last night at my usual mmmph o’clock having once again somehow evaded the glorious opportunity to slide down my cul de sac on my butt*, with attendant hellhounds.  It was 34°F last night at mmmph o’clock, which meant that everything had a nice little melt to make later this morning, at 28°F, scuttling to the tower at grotesque o’clock for service ring, almost more sublime than the human constitution can bear. **  I did finally see a sand truck today—one sand truck.  Heading for the border and throwing fickle kisses over its shoulder.***  I think it may have left a token pebble at the crossroads at the bottom of main street.  It’s supposed to snow tonight.  This would be great weather for staying indoors and finishing my novel if I didn’t have hellhounds.†

            And it being so frelling inconvenient as to be four days till Christmas†† this also means extra rings.  I’ve told you before that I believe in bells for occasions, so for things like carol services I agree you really have to have bells.  There was a carol service this afternoon at Old Eden.  Oh dear.  I wish more people had an awkward sense of responsibility about ringing their bells.†††  There was poor Niall‡ . . . and then there was a blur of incompetence, including one beginner who really shouldn’t be ringing service yet anyway, and particularly not at Old Eden whose bells are possessed by especially large, spiteful demons in cold weather‡‡, which latter is why the rest of us were quite so blurred by incompetence.  

            Also there was a bat.  This one was biggish, as I think of English bats:  its wingspread the size of your two hands, and a little furry big-pointy-eared body between.  It was not at all happy about the sudden lights and the bustle in the ringing chamber and went swooping frantically around in what looked a lot like the casting of a spell-web.  I must be watching more cheesy TV than I realise.  I’m aware that the getting-tangled-in-your-hair thing is an urban myth, but frantic does kind of mess up your judgement (ask me, I know) and I imagine it might mess up your sonar if you’re a bat.  Teenaged Cordelia, however, was having a complete flashing-neon meltdown which was adding significantly to the unity and focus of the occasion.‡‡‡   We barely managed to ring rounds, and they weren’t very good.  I could see even Niall beginning to fray around the edges . . . and when several members of the congregation came rushing out to thank us afterward . . . we tried to run away. §

             Meanwhile . . .  Peter asked me to be a little more forthcoming about certain aspects of the OBE ceremony the other day.  I think I was not fully aware of this myself, but that is probably because I didn’t wish to be fully aware, which is that they apparently really want you to schlep up to the given venue and get conked by a royal.  This having it done locally thing is mainly an option for the frail and infirm.  Which unfortunately both Peter and I rather subscribe to.  It would have been an all-day business to get to Windsor and back, neither of us stands around well,§§ Peter would have been trashed for days, and . . . I’m not at all sure the ME would have allowed me to do it at all.  And have I mentioned that I have a book to finish? 

            Person wearing his brand-new OBE whilst cutting into his 82nd-birthday cake.  §§§ 

* * *

 * Most of the time it’s only a minor nuisance that my garage is at the top of the hill while the cottage is halfway down it.  In black-ice weather I know the gods are cruel.  

** I have a new rule to live by.  If you have weird aches, pains, bruises and gouges, and have fallen down recently, that’s why.  Never mind if you didn’t fall on that bit.  I actually haven’t fallen down today^ but I did yesterday and the day before and this morning when I put my hands over my head to pull up a bell, both shoulders said . . . ahem.  No, no, I said, ringing will be good for you. 

^ Yet.  I still have to get back to the cottage 

*** Speaking of shoulders 

† Which is why I have hellhounds.  It is a very good thing that I am dragged away from my desk at regular intervals.  But the shining, grit-free footing out there is making me look longingly at my old rowing machine.  If I could figure out how a rowing machine could be translated into stopping every five feet for a pee.  The condition of my shoulders probably has quite a lot to do with the hellhounds.  Although I will say with a certain fatuous pride that their ‘wait’ and ‘walk’ commands are a whole hell of a lot better than I realised—although that may merely be they recognise the panic in my voice, and are too good-natured to think, Now—let’s get her.  But both my shoulders and the fronts of my thighs seem at present to be in a permanent state of hysterical paralysis. 

†† AAAAAAAUGH 

††† I’m in a permanent snark about Old Eden, as I’m pretty sure I’ve told you.  It hasn’t had a regular band and a regular practise in years.  Then someone who learnt to ring there back in its heyday decided to commute to get a regular practise started there again, with the idea of weaselling a few locals out of the woodwork to make a band.  That was about three years ago.  She got bored and just stopped showing up, leaving Vicky, Niall and me holding the baby.  Tower.  We have exactly one local ringer.  One.  After three  years.  And she is lord of the commonwealth or some such and is so busy knitting up the rents in the fabric of the universe that she has very little time for ringing and pretty well zero interest in learning anything past the rock bottom fundamentals.  We regularly have members of the congregation rushing up to thank us for ringing their bells, but none of them ever offer to come to practise and learn to ring themselves.  

            After today there ought to be somebody who says, I can’t be any worse than that, maybe I’ll have a go.  In which case the humiliation will have been worth it.

‡ Vicky should have been there but was called away.  If it were anybody but Vicky I’d be snarky about her, but if Vicky is called away she is really called away. 

‡‡ It takes twice as long to ring up bells at Old Eden than anywhere else because of all the demons holding on to the bells up in the belfry and not letting them swing.  Demons are very strong. 

‡‡‡ The poor bat jammed itself into a corner when we started ringing, but one of our number opened the trap into the belfry and it humped itself—you know that rather creepy way bats walk on all fours with their wings folded up?—over the threshold and disappeared into the darkness.  Bats are (legally) protected, and a lot of church towers have a colony, Old Eden included, so they can’t mind the sound of the bells all that much. 

§ Niall, meanwhile, is left short a ringer for not one but two quarters as a result of Vicky’s defection.  No, I said.  No, I said.  No, I said.  He’d given me a ride to Old Eden and back.  No, I said.  And as I got out of the car and slithered away down the driveway of the mews I heard him turning around to go back out again and then the car stopped, and I stopped and turned to look, thinking I must have left something behind, like possibly my head^, and Niall’s head emerged from the opened window, and he said, Why?  And I said, I have a book to finish!   It’s not like he doesn’t know this, but I’m not sure he believes it. . . . 

^ No, can’t be the head, the eyes are working okay 

§§ I don’t know if this is a marker for a future that will include ME, but standing up for long periods of time has always made me wonky, which is why I don’t have lots of fond tales of SRO at the opera, or, for that matter, at the re-opened Globe. 

§§§ Credit line:  Philippa Dickinson http://twitter.com/PDRandom   Yes, it’s true, Peter is an empire.  He has a daughter, son and second wife in the publishing business too, and his first wife, who was a multimedia artist, used to turn out the occasional book jacket. 

            I also took a rather evocative picture of Peter cutting his cake, but unfortunately it makes him look like a serial murderer.  I like this one better.

I had a rotten afternoon - unpleasantly intense conversation with my mother, my work laptop went blue screen of death - and then I rang Ajay and she said she'd do anything to cheer me up and instead of taking advantage of this, we settled to meet up outside the Odeon on Lothian Road, get tickets to Avatar, then have dinner. We ate in a lovely Chinese restaurant called the Rainbow - I practically inhaled the ginger/pineapple/nut stirfry, except not really, because that would be gross and lethal - and I had steamed dumplings and Ajay had steamed Malaysian-style sponge pudding, I don't know what made it "Malaysian style" but it was nice. And Avatar was really terribly silly with plotholes you could drive a tank through great fun: though the Odeon bar has boring boring white wine, the homemade ginger chocolates Ajay brought were fantastic. And it snowed. We left the restaurant and walked to the cinema through a flurry of beautiful, perfect, enormous snowflakes.

...it had stopped snowing by the time the film was over, but Edinburgh was still pretty in the snow.

yesmeansyes - Anti-rape/sexual violence blog
blackandmissing - Blog that focuses on highlighting the Black missing & murdered ignored by mainstream media

http://www.dailykitten.com/2009/12/abby-2/

http://www.dailykitten.com/?p=4005

Location: Watsonville, California, USA

One afternoon two of our dogs began barking and my brother went outside to see what was happening. To his surprise, a small little kitten was on our deck, held at bay by our dogs. Abby was only about three weeks old, half starved and covered in fleas and lice. Her face was bloody from a bad sinus infection and one eye was closed from an eye infection, and we believe someone had driven by and dumped her in our driveway. An emergency trip to the vet, two weeks of antibiotics and several baths later Abby has become the delight of our home. She loves to play with her toy mouse and then snuggle up on my neck to cuddle. She’s an amazing blessing to our whole family.

http://feeds.reference.com/click.phdo?i=96efa5a4a22318b2d81d5a17917cead0

harto:
[Spanish] harto
[English] fed up, tired

http://feeds.reference.com/click.phdo?i=d67073bf8e34d4c5151784f536d580e9

http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/archive/2009/12/20.html

iota: a very small quantity or degree.

http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=d67073bf8e34d4c5151784f536d580e9&p=4

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091219.html

Aurora Shimmer, Meteor Flash

((Please pretend this is around early December, thanks))

Jean hasn't been around the Nexus, because well, taking college courses and starting ones own business is a lot for anybody to do.

"Alright, whose bright idea was it to have finals during the busiest shopping season of the year?" He asks. Its more rhetorical of a question, but still it needs to be asked. He sighs, "On a more serious note, anyone got any study tips?"

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http://robinmckinleysblog.com/?p=3110

A continuing epic adventure of socks and spindles and fanciness

Part two point five (point another five): THE SPINDLING (demonstration)

Alternate title: In which my numbering system collapses.

If you missed or forgot the previous posts in this series, here are links for The Yarning, The Spindling part one, and The Spindling part two.

4a. The first length of yarn you’ll spin is called a leader. On wheels, this is what you’d use to thread the whole thing and get your real yarn onto the bobbin for the first time. They’re usually a thick cotton string that you use over and over, leaving on the bobbin when you’re not using it. They’re not part of your yarn.

On spindles, leaders are a little different. You CAN use them as your yarn. At least the way I do it (by looping the end of the fiber over the hook and spinning immediately).

Keep the spindle going clockwise. Meanwhile, remember how you tugged the fiber so you could see through it? That’s called drafting. You’ll draft until you get a thickness of yarn you like, and then you’ll let twist into it. The first thing you end up with is something like this.

It’s yarn! Yay!

4b. Here comes another tricky part. It’s another personal preference thing, so you get to experiment with a bunch of ways to find out what works best for you. This is what works best for me.

Some spindles have notches carved into the whorl. Most of mine do not. This isn’t a big deal, except that at some point, your spindle gets full enough that when you start spinning again, the yarn slips around the rim of the whorl and makes a huge mess. The notch would keep the yarn in place. In absence of a notch, this is what I find works best.

I slip the loop of fiber down to the bottom of the hook, then pull the leader down over the whorl.

Wrap the leader around the shaft (clockwise! always in whatever direction you spin) a couple of times, pull it tight, and you’ve got a notch made out of yarn.

Now, when you bring your yarn over the whorl again (has to go back over the hook), you can secure it behind the yarn notch.

This way, the yarn won’t slip around the whorl while you spin. I like to make my notch in the back (6 o’clock) of the hook, because that’s comfortable for me. Other people like theirs in the 3 o’clock or 9 o’clock positions.

5. Now that you’ve got your leader spun, the leader turned into a magic notch, and a whole lot of fiber shouting, “Spin me spin me!” at you, you get to do the rest.

Remember that big rope-snake-thing of fiber we were looking at earlier? When I spin, it tends to dangle in my way and get caught around the spindle. I like to wrap that around my arm.

In quality, prepared wool like this, it WANTS to draft evenly. Spinners talk about fiber that spins itself, and what they mean is how nicely it drafts. The fibers slide against each other smoothly, the twist catches the yarn before the spindle falls to the floor, and the wool feels GOOD in your fingers. It’s soft. (I mean, you can use rough wool if you want. I’m sure there’s a reason for it. But I suggest only using the stuff you want to rub all over yourself. Unless you’re allergic to wool.)

Every time you get a length of yarn your arm can’t hold up, pick up the spindle and wind the yarn onto the shaft. Catch it around the hook, and get the spindle spinning again.

There are a couple methods for this. Some people like to roll the shaft against their thigh. That REALLY gets spindles moving. I’ve tried that, and it ends with spindles flung across the room. I prefer a more sedate way, by taking the bottom of the shaft between my fingers and snapping. That makes the spindle go plenty fast for me, and it doesn’t go so fast that my drafting can’t keep up. The twist has to have somewhere to go, after all.

My first attempts were pretty lumpy. I didn’t understand how the wool worked or wanted to be drawn apart. I just knew every time I tried to draft, the spindle stopped and started going around the wrong way. (When this isn’t a sign of drafting too slowly, this is a sign of spinning too thick for the weight of the spindle. Thin yarn needs more twist. Thick yarn needs less. It can only take so much! So when it’s full of twist, it backspins to let some of it out.)

An easy way to learn how to draft and keep the spindle going is called park and draft. You get to sit down! Give the spindle a sharp twist and let it work up twist. Then stop it, hold it between your knees, and draft out your fiber to the thickness you want. You can see the twist travel up your new yarn! Then spin the spindle again. You can continue in this manner until you’re comfortable enough to try doing both at once: keeping the spindle going and drafting at the same time.

Wind on.

As you get better and more familiar with your tools, you’ll start spinning more evenly and making yarn you’d actually like to show off. Lots of people can see this change in their very first skein of yarn. (I couldn’t. Heh. I had to wait until my second.)

6. Pretty soon you have a nice spindle full of yarn.

This spindle isn’t actually that full, but at some point it does get too heavy for the yarn you want to spin. (Remember, heavier spindles spin thicker yarn. If you want thin yarn, the spindle has to be light. General rule is the spindle can carry its weight, so a 1oz spindle can hold about 1oz yarn before you should do something about it.) What to do then?

7. Remember the TP roll I told you about?

When it’s all on your makeshift bobbin, you can start over until you have all the singles finished.

8. From there, chances are you’ll want to ply your yarn. Take your two or three TP bobbins and stick them in a shoebox with a hole for the ends to come out of, or on an upright paper towel holder where they can spin (my preferred method).

I usually use a heavier spindle for plying, but you can use the one you spun the singles on if you want.

Tie the ends of the singles together and catch them on the hook. Then spin the spindle COUNTER-CLOCKWISE. Always ply in the opposite direction you spun the singles, otherwise you’ll just add more twist to the singles and end up with something about as soft as razor-wire.

This does let out a little of the twist you worked so hard to put in, but not nearly enough to worry about. It makes things softer, too.

And presto. You have yarn.