Category: DIY

halos on Mars

isn’t it stunning? This is actually a computer graphic, but apparently that’s what they’d look like. Researchers sought them but haven’t found them yet.

 

I have a month to get ready for Orycon. I have to admit that I’m jealous of all of Shad’s wonderful patches she’s sewn onto her guitar case, so now I’m going to announce my probably useless plan to sew patches on MY guitar case (Smokey’s going to the con, I don’t know if both ukes and the mando are going. I really want to take the dulcimer but then I keep thinking I’ll borrow Jeff C’s but I’m not 100% sure he’s going. Anyway, I have to figure all of that out. ANYWAY while tearing my craft boxes apart for patches I found Granny’s little Hummel girl on mesh, so SHE’S going on my guitar case and then I can carry Granny around with me every time I sing and play. I’m going to try to find some of the crochet work Grandma Zoos made and tack that on too, mebbe make a mesh pocket of it.

I need to select, assemble and print/PDF a filk-büche, practice until my fingies hurt, sew some patches, select and pack clothing,

Brief break for crafty Black woman! I freaking love the hat.

SHAD’S HAT THAT SHE CROCHETED AS PART OF HER CARPAL TUNNEL THERAPY. (SHAD IS CINDY, CINDY IS SHAD.)

is it not of surpassing excellence and tremendous beauty???? SAY IT ALOUD

So I’m ripping stuff apart in the craft area of my room (which I have to compress down into JUST ONE BOX lol AND I FOUND THE PERFECT PURPLE SPARKLY EMBROIDERY FLOSS TO MEND MY PURPLE TIE DYE TSHIRT WITH. SO I guess this morning has been a success so far.

I’m going to the Con!

 

 

Early one morn on a unicorn, well, I launched a rocket ship!
and I wore my silks and tie dyes and gave mundane life the slip
It cost me more than I could afford but I had to take the trip
for I have you all to thank that I’m a filker!
We sing the sweetest music and we laugh the loudest laughs
The robots sell their spares to hear, the wizards pawn their staffs
the circle calls in the function halls for a chorus fine and free
You can keep your wretched autotune –

it’s a filker’s life for me!

BANG

JESUS GOD that just about made my heart stop. Under Jeff’s supervision I was trying to bring my bicycle up to rideability after a couple of years in the shed, and I’d been adjusting the tire pressure. I rolled it around and I was looking RIGHT AT the front tire when it blew, scaring the entire shit outta me and flecking me with this plasticky watery bright green paint. Jeff and I have no notion what the hell it was, but… yuk.

Feeling very sorry for myself. Jeff said I could just roll it up the street to the bike place but screw that noise, I’m going to borrow the bike carrier from Paul and take it there that way, and then after that I’m going to offer it to Katie, and if she doesn’t want it I’ll sell it. It’s got lovely MEC panniers and is otherwise fit for use, sigh.

I suppose you want a picture but I don’t want to be reminded of how I felt when shit flew into my face.

Glorious day

I got ALEX FOR TWO HOURS

He was as good as gold. He whined at the very last minute when he realized his momma bear was going to leave and he wasn’t going to get Xenon HE LOVES XENON, but we made recordings and watched TV and I made him homemade choco milk and we laughed very very hard.

Because

before we made new recordings we listened to all of the old ones, and Alex made some noises that were excruciatingly funny and the two of us nearly choked laughing.

And we have sourdough bread thanks to Katie so YES.

Weather was lovely yesterday, it’s overcast and cooler now, also good.

I got a couple more surfaces cleared off in the kitchen.

10322 on the fic

Wasp nest growing over yardlights.

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SEE YOU IN HELL

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above noted is the noted, feted and howlarious burlesque artiste Carrie Finnell. According to twitter’s @WhoresOfYore, “Carrie Finnell (1900-63) was a legend of burlesque. She had complete control of her pectoral muscles & could bounce her boobs out of her dress & move them independently of one another. She called her act ‘The Chestcapades’ & was once the highest paid burlesque act in America.”

Don’t say this isn’t an educational blog, and she’s only mentioned in Wikipedia as a member of the Mutual Burlesque Association, so don’t bother looking her up.

two week experiment

Per life coach Mark Reklau

3 things I’m thankful for

3 things that made me happy today

3 things I did well today

2 Affirmations

How could I have made today better

What’s my most important to do tomorrow?

I am thankful for my mOm and pOp and brO.

  1. food in the freezer 2. tea in the cupboard 3 I have enough printer ink to print out the book mOm wants

1 I made fried bread 2 I slept like a boss 3 the weather’s glorious again

Every day in every way I am getting deader and deader

I affirm that affirmations suck and they really only work for people who don’t have Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria LOL

I could have made today better by staying off social media

Tomorrow I will continue to clean small focussed areas of the house.

BRIEF wildlife encounter

If I remember to get a camera, I’m not in the moment, so this is unrecorded in video.

Small brown bird, dapper despite being distressed, greets me by flying through my hair as I go into the media room. I set everything down (I was carrying NOT ONE BUT TWO ARRAYS OF HOT LIQUID GAWDAM AND IT WASN’T EVEN FIVE AM AND I’D ALREADY ALMOST WIPED OUT IN THE BATHROOM) after congratulating myself at not tossing the entire array at the ceiling with an unhinged scream, and considered my options.

While the bird flew pretty much nonstop across the room, NEVER CHEEPING or making any sound not associated with flying, I turned the light behind the TV off and the room light on. That accomplished, I turned on the light into the games room and turned the room light off. The bird obligingly flew into the lit room, whereupon I closed the door, which was the first point at which I could be guaranteed that the bird would not fly up the stairs, into Jeff’s room, and shit on his head as a conversation starter.

And then THE JAPANESE NOREN that has scowled across our living space from various doorways ever since mOm gave it to John in the mists of time BALKED THE CRITTER. It couldn’t fly under it and instead it perched on it – repeatedly, glaring at me.

Talking and moving slowly and carefully, I remonstrated with the bird. “Sister – the door is that way!”

I opened the back door and folded back the noren so the bird could get through the second-last door, and then, scant inches from the open door, the bird communed with my laundry and went all Disney like it didn’t want to leave.

“You may not nest in my underwear, there is a cat in this house, which you already know, dumdum.”

I advanced on the bird and it flew off into the morning twilight. I closed the door and thought, “I didn’t take pictures. I didn’t try to catch it. I just tried to find the fastest way to get our unintended guest out of the house.”

Now I have told you what happened. I supposed one morning I’ll come downstairs and there’s a raccoon going through the trash and then you’ll really hear me screech.

scratch track

the distortion is part of the charm – it’s a natural feature of whacking the guitar this hard at a harmonic point with a rubber mallet – yes this is a hammered guitar

It’s the hottest part of the summer and I’m treating myself to beer. God I love this song. Anyway, it sounds MUCH BETTER on headphones, I’m hearing stuff I didn’t hear the first time. It’s just got depth, you know, and then this sort of pounding howl of a chorus, so much pent up jealousy and rage and then back to… I do this, I do this, I do this, life has a rhythm, and then I JUST GET SO MAD. I LOVE IT so there

 

seven mutuals toasted

That means nothing to you but

I’m on twitter

I follow people on twitter

I find out that other people on twitter are following a writer who gives the most disgustingly ableist writing advice I’ve ever seen. Rants ensued. I read the advice READER IT SUCKÈD

So I found the person who gave the advice on line, found who follows me who follows her, and unfollowed them all (and I know one of them IRL, although I doubt like hell she’d remember me). They were all middled aged white writers.

that was easy, and I still follow hundreds of people

the Indigenous people I follow on twitter put baby Yoda beadwork and yawning bobcats into my feed, not pathetic ableism

the Black people (especially the disabled Black women, my god) I follow on twitter make me feel before I think new thoughts because I can’t hyper intellectualize my way into a better world

and that’s good because science says that white people are less empathetic than people who aren’t white, AND WHY WOULD THAT BE

NOBODY CARES BOUT MAH POOP

except me, of course.

So I was communing with my output in the water closet this morning as one does when one is a hypochondriac like I, and thinking TERRIBLE THINGS ARE HAPPENING TO MY LIVER and then I chanced to remember two facts. One, I’m looking at a perfect 3.5 on the Bristol scale, (so firm, so cylindrical, so fully packed) so relax, ya cheesewit, and second, I’ve been eating nothing but leftover pizza, egg salad with a ton of paprika and half a dozen mandarin oranges for the last two days, so that dreffle bright orange colour is…. nominal.

ah, the relief.

I stopped making masks for a while because Jan in Toronto nearly put her fucking eye out when a needle broke while she was making masks. Mask making involves really large changes in the height of what you’re sewing together and if you go too fast it’s super easy to break a needle. (She’d never had one break….fortunately spouse was home and dealt with the bloodination.)

I realized I was doing it bare-eyed because I don’t have functioning bifocals (I hate them) and realized I was asking for an industrial accident. Fortunately Jeff had a pair but he said the elastic had perished. I learned that I had THE IDENTICAL elastic and both cleaned and maintained the glasses, which are now waiting for me by the sewing machine, so I have no further excuse for my dilatory mask making ways. I also found a bunch of still useful stamps from my granny.  They were on a poster like this.

John H. Talman - Stamps for Sale - Auctions and Retail

courtesy John Talman stamps for sale

I thought pOp would like to know that when I mail him some masks the stamps will be from his mOm, who continues to look out for him, the way mOms do.

 

Starting to think about UPSUN again. Couple hundred words on latest fanfic.

Made raspberry scones this morning.

East Van love

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Jennifer Yaeger LPC in Newnan Georgia has this to say

email circulated by a world famous scientist

Thanks to me exchanging emails with Carolyn Porco back when I was still stanning for Unitarianism, I got this this am. It is actually from a friend of hers.

Subject: What I am doing for the upcoming COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic

Dear Colleagues, as some of you may recall, when I was a professor of pathology at the University of California San Diego, I was one of the first molecular virologists in the world to work on coronaviruses (the 1970s). I was the first to demonstrate the number of genes the virus contained. Since then, I have kept up with the coronavirus field and its multiple clinical transfers into the human population (e.g., SARS, MERS), from different animal sources. The current projections for its expansion in the US are only probable, due to continued insufficient worldwide data, but it is most likely to be widespread in the US by mid to late March and April.

Here is what I have done and the precautions that I take and will take. These are the same precautions I currently use during our influenza seasons, except for the mask and gloves.:

1) NO HANDSHAKING! Use a fist bump, slight bow, elbow bump, etc.

2) Use ONLY your knuckle to touch light switches. elevator buttons, etc.. Lift the gasoline dispenser with a paper towel or use a disposable glove.

3) Open doors with your closed fist or hip – do not grasp the handle with your hand, unless there is no other way to open the door. Especially important on bathroom and post office/commercial doors.

4) Use disinfectant wipes at the stores when they are available, including wiping the handle and child seat in grocery carts.

5) Wash your hands with soap for 10-20 seconds and/or use a greater than 60% alcohol-based hand sanitizer whenever you return home from ANY activity that involves locations where other people have been.

6) Keep a bottle of sanitizer available at each of your home’s entrances. AND in your car for use after getting gas or touching other contaminated objects when you can’t immediately wash your hands.

7) If possible, cough or sneeze into a disposable tissue and discard. Use your elbow only if you have to. The clothing on your elbow will contain infectious virus that can be passed on for up to a week or more!

What I have stocked in preparation for the pandemic spread to the US:

1) Latex or nitrile latex disposable gloves for use when going shopping, using the gasoline pump, and all other outside activity when you come in contact with contaminated areas.

Note: This virus is spread in large droplets by coughing and sneezing. This means that the air will not infect you! BUT all the surfaces where these droplets land are infectious for about a week on average – everything that is associated with infected people will be contaminated and potentially infectious. The virus is on surfaces and you will not be infected unless your unprotected face is directly coughed or sneezed upon.  This virus only has cell receptors for lung cells (it only infects your lungs) The only way for the virus to infect you is through your nose or mouth via your hands or an infected cough or sneeze onto or into your nose or mouth. >>>>>>> OKAY THIS WAS THE POINT I SAID hunh

Because this disease has cell receptors all over your body, as previously mentioned in this blog. HOWEVER he’s right that it can only infect you by getting into your respiratory system, usually by you transferring live virus to your facial mucosa. Once it gets in you, it can hurt your heart and your circulatory system surfaces as well.

2) Stock up now with disposable surgical masks and use them to prevent you from touching your nose and/or mouth (We touch our nose/mouth 90X/day without knowing it!). This is the only way this virus can infect you – it is lung-specific. The mask will not prevent the virus in a direct sneeze from getting into your nose or mouth – it is only to keep you from touching your nose or mouth.

3) Stock up now with hand sanitizers and latex/nitrile gloves (get the appropriate sizes for your family). The hand sanitizers must be alcohol-based and greater than 60% alcohol to be effective.

4) Stock up now with zinc lozenges. These lozenges have been proven to be effective in blocking coronavirus (and most other viruses) from multiplying in your throat and nasopharynx. Use as directed several times each day when you begin to feel ANY “cold-like” symptoms beginning. It is best to lie down and let the lozenge dissolve in the back of your throat and nasopharynx. Cold-Eeze lozenges is one brand available, but there are other brands available.

I, as many others do, hope that this pandemic will be reasonably contained, BUT I personally do not think it will be. Humans have never seen this snake-associated virus before and have no internal defense against it. Tremendous worldwide efforts are being made to understand the molecular and clinical virology of this virus. Unbelievable molecular knowledge about the genomics, structure, and virulence of this virus has already been achieved. BUT, there will be NO drugs or vaccines available this year to protect us or limit the infection within us. Only symptomatic support is available. I hope these personal thoughts will be helpful during this potentially catastrophic pandemic. You are welcome to share this email.

Good luck to all of us!

James Robb, MD FCAP