As some of you know, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
bubblesutonium's birthday is tomorrow.
Unfortunately she's in bar review right now, which is the legal profession's equivalent of going into a cloister for six weeks. I've never seen less of her, not even during the most busy days of her law school career.
So this year, we've changed the date. Her birthday in 2009 will be on March 9th. Kinda like the royal birthdays in Britain, without the horse-and-bugle corps and red carpets.
March 9. Not January 9. Please make a note of it.
Thank you. Please resume whatever it was you were doing. Unless it was illegal, immoral, or fattening, in which case you should bring enough to share with the rest of the class.
- Mood:Busy
- Music:Some unspecified trance chillout thing
Lost weight. I dropped about 35 pounds that I could well afford to lose. More importantly, I'm back in shape again: running about 5 miles every couple of days, swimming up to a mile at a time, biking, kayaking, and skiing when I can.
Lost money. Ah, well. We all did that.
Spent two weeks alone on a rock. Lately, every time I get tired and stressed, I reach for that calm, still place I found when I watched the moonlight over the water with my dogs at my feet.
Made forward progress on the PhD. I spent much of the year prepping for the general exam essays that I wrote in December. This coming Wednesday is the actual stand-up-and-defend-your-work part of the exam, after which I find out if all that work paid off or not.
Watched
bubblesutonium graduate from law school. One of the great triumphs of my year. Found hope, comfort, and joy in unexpected places.
Just for balance, maybe I'll add a few things I'd like to do more of in 2009:
Travel. I've got two "fun" trips planned and three conferences to attend before July, so that'll help.
Write, for values of "write" meaning "not just academic papers, although those would be nice too, y'know, you're supposed to be Mr. Research Guy and you haven't even finished that paper you wrote last spring, you gormless twit."
Love lots and laugh more.
Happy new year. May it be better than the old.
- Mood:
contemplative - Music:Fauxliage, "Rafe"
One of my friends at school, besides being one of the smartest women I know, is also one of the most positive, happy people in the world. She genuinely likes what she does and takes joy in the world around her.
Her favorite phrase: "I am SO PUMPED!"
What I've noticed, after watching her for a couple years, is that it's not just her smarts that are getting her through life. People like her, and like being around her, and want her to succeed.
It's too easy, in this day and age, to fall into a constant stream of negativity. "Oh, I can't, because...." or "oh, your favorite store is doomed, they'll never survive the recession" or "will we ever find jobs again?". I say this stuff to myself regularly.
Then I look at Rebecca and see just how far hard work and optimism can take me. Next year I think I'll resolve to smile more.
Thanks again for reading my scribblings. Happy holidays to you and yours.
(And yes, I have photo evidence, if I can ever get the photos cleaned up and processed.)
The snow played merry hell with the lives of a lot of people, what with the unplowed roads and canceled flights and icy hills and general western-Massachusetts-style winter, but on the whole
bubblesutonium and I were extremely fortunate. We live on a flat street. Our winter supplies include a good snow shovel, a supply of road salt and kitty litter, and a 4x4 Jeep, so we were never truly housebound. We had no travel plans. Everyone who came to visit us made it in and out safely. We're still trying to clean out the refrigerator from all the food we'd stocked up.Which was good. This was the weekend
bubblesutonium graduated, magna cum laude, from Seattle University's law school. All hail the doctor of laws. Sometimes, four years of hard work truly does pay off. Her beaming smile as she walked across the stage made everything worth it.It was a good weekend despite, or in some cases because of, the weather.
bubblesutonium got in her long-planned graduation dinner, though with a few empty chairs. (For those who weren't able to make it: you were missed.) Museum-hopping plans were canceled in favor of long walks through snow-covered streets with a camera. The hills echoed with the shrieks of the kids sledding in the closed-off streets. A flock of snow geese, never before seen in my neighborhood, gathered in the local park.To my absolute delight, I got in a few hours of urban cross-country skiing through the local neighborhoods. That first night, with the deepest snow, I went skiing through a hushed and still Washington arboretum, watching the snow fall through the trees and obscure the tracks I was leaving behind. Perfect crystalline beauty.
And we haven't even gotten to Christmas Eve yet. The holiday is still to come.
Peace to you and yours. Every day brings us a little more light.
- Mood:
mellow - Music:Miles Davis, "Sur L'Autoroute"
When I was a teenager in the 1980s, no one I knew paid much attention to Veterans' Day. Memorial Day, sure, but Veterans' Day was just another of those "hey, the banks are closed" holidays in the fall.
I had family who were vets. My step-dad served in Vietnam. Both my grandfathers served in World War II. Only Grandpa wanted to talk about his war, and rarely about his part in it. He was fascinated with the accounts of others, the naval battles involving the ships that he helped to build. Still, none of them made a big deal out of Veterans' Day, so I didn't either.
Lots of years and a couple wars later, and even with our all-volunteer military, I'd be amazed if there's anybody left in the country who doesn't have a few friends or family who have served a tour of duty or two. (Or more.) Veterans' Day is different when you're honoring not just a tradition of service, but people you know.
Thanks aren't sufficient, but it's a start.
- Mood: contemplative
- Music:Miles Davis, "Nuit Sur Les Champs-Élysées (Take 2)"
Personal to
kathrynt: if you ever decide you'd like to record a follow-up to your massive hit "Who Brings The Cheese On April 3rd?," one of my more Many thanks to
spoomeister and pinky_ki for hosting, and to everyone else for good food and good company.- Mood:
sleepy - Music:Muddy Waters - I Want You To Love Me
I paused in the middle of dumping another load of pine needles and recyclables and listened to the neighborhood. I live in a quiet corner of the city, but when you stand outside during the day, you normally hear cars and joggers and dog walkers and airplanes passing overhead and the occasional power tool or three. Today: silence, save for a distant jet carrying a load of passengers over the horizon.
It's been a good holiday, full of friends and family and an awful lot of good food. I've been working on and off on school projects and contract work but have otherwise been staying as far away from my keyboard as possible.
I'm grateful beyond words for the new year. 2007 had some glorious moments, but on the whole was one of the worst years I've had since I moved to Seattle. I consider it a major victory that my family and I have emerged from the year with health, marriages, schooling, etc. more or less intact. I have higher hopes for 2008.
I'm not doing resolutions this year, but I hope to write a bit more.
- Mood:quiet
- Music:Marcos Valle - Abandonu
Sunrise this morning was at 7:55 AM. Sunset will be in just under an hour, at 4:20.
Back in my old hometown of Philadelphia, they're getting almost an hour more daylight than we are on this shortest day of the year. In my birthplace of Phoenix, it's two hours more. They're just that much farther south.
This time of year, it's usually grey, and dark, and cold, and summer seems very far away indeed.
And so we celebrate, and light a candle against the dark, and remember: the seasons always turn. The sun will come back. It always does.
Happy solstice, everyone.
- Mood:
busy - Music:Sarah McLachlan-Song for a Winter's Night
An unrelated follow-up:
The good news is that Cherry's fracture appears to have healed well. No further surgery is anticipated. Thank God.
The bad news is that he's got fairly bad skin problems from having been encased in a bandage for so very long. The vet re-wrapped him in a bandage (without the splint) on Friday and told us to in no uncertain terms to leave the waterproof covering of the bandage off, whenever we can, to let air circulate to the leg and help the skin to heal.
It took about 24 hours for him to soak the bandage enough that it needed to be replaced.
He's back at the vet one more time, his head in an E-collar (one of those cone-head things that dogs wear to avoid disturbing surgical stitches or skin). They're letting the leg dry thoroughly before they wrap it one more time. With luck and care we may be able to keep the bandage on for a few more days, at least long enough that his skin won't itch quite so much.
- Mood: tired
- Music:Paul Oakenfold-Dread Rock
spoomeister's celebration of yet another year on this planet, I dug back into the dusty archives and found J. Michael Straczynski's explanation of:What is spoo?
Spoo is/are (the plural of spoo is spoo) small, white, pasty, mealy critters, rather worm-like, and generally regarded as the ugliest animals in the known galaxy by just about every sentient species capable of starflight....
Spoo are raised on ranches on worlds with a damp, moist, somewhat chilly climate so that their skin can acquire just the right shade of paleness. Spoo travel in herds, if moving a total of six inches in any given direction in the course of a given year can actually be considered moving. They stay in herds ostensibly for mutual protection, but the reality is that if they weren't propped up against one another, most of them would simply fall down. They do not howl, bark, moo, purr, yap, squeak or speak. Mainly, they sigh. Herds of sighing spoo can reportedly induce unparalleled bouts of depression, which is why most spoo ranchers wear earmuffs even when it's only mildly cold, damp, wet and dreary outside. If there is any life-or-death struggle for dominance within the spoo herd, it has not yet been detected by modern science....
Spoo are the only creatures of which the Interstellar Animal Rights Protection League says, simply, "Kill 'em."
Fresh spoo (served at an optimum temperature of 62-degrees) is served in cubed sections, so that they bear as little resemblence as possible to the animal from which they have just been sliced. Spoo is usually served alongside a chablis, or a white zinfandel.
The Earth food most similar to spoo is meat jello, served chilled.
Happy birthday, my meat-jello-wrangling friend.
- Mood: busy
For
eac, emmacrew, euphrasie, firni, hippybngstockng, kathrynt, peaseblossom, pinky_ki, sarrabellum, terreciel, twistjusty, and all the other moms reading this...Happy mother's day. Every day of the year.
- Mood: working
- Music:Rush-Animate
Just saying.
- Mood:acquisitive
- Music:Shadowfax-Neither Here Nor There
bubblesutonium!- Mood: sleepy
- Music:Queens Of The Stone Age-No One Knows
bubblesutonium and I are passably sober and un-hung over. Must be the end of our break. Once more into the breach, dear friends. (Actually, Bubbles doesn't go back to school until next week, though she's working.)"Casino Royale" was a good movie, by far the best of the recent Bonds I've seen. Daniel Craig's Bond seems to have a penchant for random acts of violence against buildings. My only complaint: when the writers make you care more about the wanton destruction of a lovely Aston Martin than the death-by-offscreen-torture of a Bond girl early in the picture, something's wrong.
Happy New Year, everyone.
- Mood: groggy
- Music:Yo-Yo Ma-Legend of Herlen
spoomeister!"They say that age is all in your mind. The trick is keeping it from creeping down into your body." - Anonymous
- Mood: busy
- Music:Tony Levin, "Places to Go"
bubblesutonium and I stood on a ferry in front of more of our friends and family than I've ever seen in one place and promised to love and respect each other, and to see through each others' eyes as well as our own.Three homes, an advanced degree or two, thousands of miles of travel, a few knock-down-drag-out fights, and several shared wonders later, we're still facing the world together.
It's a great feeling. Thanks, love.
- Mood: accomplished
- Music:Robert Miles, "In The Dawn"
sarrabellum!- Mood: contemplative
- Music:Gravity Kills, "Enough (Martin Atkins White Light Mix)"
It's still been a lovely holiday weekend.
I see from my friends list that many of you spent the weekend at one of the 8000 festivals, or at cons, or doing other fun vacation-type things. More power to you. I spent most of my weekend in the kitchen, and was damn happy about it. Saturday: God's own grocery store run, an hour and a half and twice the normal grocery budget. Sunday: terrible bacon and eggs for breakfast. Clearly I haven't figured out my new kitchen yet. I redeemed myself with a grilled Copper River salmon marinated in a soy/ginger thing I frapped up, and brownies a la Haagen Dazs for dessert. Monday: Dutch fondue for lunch, bratwurst with grilled corn on the cob and roasted beets for dinner.
Up until today, the weather encouraged indoor pursuits. Sleeping was high on the list. So was unpacking: we got about half of the office and most of the bedroom put away.
bubblesutonium disappeared with a friend for an afternoon and came back with carrying armloads of clothing and shoe boxes. Clearance sales are, evidently, the hope and goal of every fashionable law student.Time for bed, before my eyes start crossing.
- Mood: contemplative
- Music:Robert Miles, "Children (Dream Version)"
bubblesutonium has been more busy than I have since she's also trying to do some laundry and get started on her schoolwork.We have a short week ahead of us, but Bubbles and I are slowly getting back into our normal lives. Both of us are heading back to work, though Bubbles gets one more week before she must plunge back into the classroom grind.
My six-week vacation is coming to a close, so I'm taking stock a bit. On the minus side, I'm even more out of shape than I was when I started, and I didn't get as much done on my book project as I'd hoped. On the plus side, I'm caught up on sleep for the first time in about five years, I'm much more relaxed, and I've figured out my career path for the next few years. I have to call it a success.
Meanwhile, courtesy of
docbrite, have a meme:( The Last Things of 2005 )
- Mood: contemplative
- Music:U2, "New Year's Day (Live)"
So my wife, my sister and I spent the evening at home, eating too much food, drinking too much wine (in two cases), and watching the fireworks on the Needle while munching cupcakes.
May your new year be full of love, joy, and grace.
- Mood: happy
- Music:Iron Chef America
