Im feeling much better since my last post.
I think its just all about time, I've come to realize that life isnt all about getting married and having kids.
It's doing stuff along the way, every life is different and its just not my turn yet =).
So tomorrow, is going to be an adventurous day, I met this guy online, his name is John/BitWarri0r.
We've known each other for a few months now, have been exchanging e-mails back and forth but never really talked to an extent till recently.
He's been egging me about hanging out over and over again. I kept turning him down,
mostly due to self consciousness, paranoia, social anxiety.
But we've been talking for hours on end and he finally ended up convincing me to go hang out with him.
Im excited about it because we are going out for Sushi and I never met someone who's liked sushi before.
and im nervous because, I havn't actually met anyone new or talked to anyone new in ...years.
and when I mean new I dont mean like boyfriend wise I mean people wise, I dont meet a lot of new people and try to get to know them, so this is really a stretch for me.
We're going just as friends, its not a date, I dont know when I'll be ready to date again, Every relationship I came out of I jumped right back into a new one, and I think I need to take this time to really just relax, and figure myself out before I can share myself with anyone else.
Dan and I are still the best of friends we talk every night, Sunday we're going to a used bookstore =), excited about that too! Need to double check with him make sure we're still going though.
We are going to Wasabi in Johnston, its a real sushi place, im super psyched.
Then we're going to Barnes and Noble in Smithfield to play some board games.
So I guess in thought of that. There are a lot of sushi I dont know the name of but im really anxious to try all the strange ones, so I thought I'd post some of them just incase any of you ever decide to go out for sushi yourselves!
When examples of sushi are used, this often seems to show up due to it being very artistic looking and exotic.
I've been reading about how the eco-friendly ideas have become stagnant, and how we can change it. There's these long, overwhelming lists of how to save the planet. Not only are they depressing and time consuming, they are also unfocused.
Yesterday we simply focused on a Green Thanksgiving. We bought some food for our backyard critters. Root vegetables, cranberry sauce and turkey (shared with the cats). Simple. Not perfect, but better than last year.
I think we need a plan for each biome and local species. Laundry laundry lists are not productive. Find one local issue or species. Make a plan, make it fun.
Proactive ideas are better than depressing stories. Although the information does need to reach us somehow. For example, I was surprised by the pie chart below - look at how much our eating habits affect the rainforests!
What do you guys think is the best approach for getting the message out?
We had a lovely Thanksgiving, and We discovered a new cranberry chutney from Epicurious. We altered the ingredients a bit to make it less bitter.
Spiced Cranberry Sauce with Honey:
Cranberries are a standard Thanksgiving ingredient that most people think came from the New England area. But the Ojibwa and Sioux of the northern plains taught early settlers how to harvest cranberries. Today, Wisconsin is an important cranberry-producing state.
1 3/4 cups cranberry juice
3/4 cup honey
1 teaspoon minced peeled fresh ginger
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 12-ounce bag fresh or frozen cranberries
1 pear
1 apple
1 ¾ cups apple cider
Well after someone got their knickers in a knot over my habit of collecting burning piano shots and posting them throughout my blog on occasion, well one particular one anyway, but much like all the others - dutifully deleted said one on request - this live video from Mythbusters recent episode fills the gap - the magic starts happening around 2mins 50 secs in - but why not watch the lead up as well? Testing the theory that the piano would 'explode' under heat as the strings are so tight - but you'll have to watch and see (on the Discovery Channel website - but also on YouTube):
I'm sitting in Barnes & Noble, trying not to be overwhelmed by another materialistic holiday. I used to love Christmas, but these days it seems to have become one giant shopping/marketing frenzy. Makes me want to give everyone mathoms.
I want to withdraw from the madness and try to remember what the season's supposed to be about. I don't have kids, but if I did I'd want to take them to someplace beautiful, emphasize togetherness, and teach them charity for the poor by going to work at a food bank or something. I think I'd emphasize making crafts for presents, defining them as tokens of meaning, remembrance, and craftsmanship. That's what you do when you don't have money. Often a much more appreciated gift, especially now, when the economy is on the skids. Or (and I have many treasured gifts of this nature) hit the thrift shops and recycle.
All the spending makes me want to throw up.
This Thanksgiving, look around the table at your friends and loved ones, look into your heart, and give thanks for just how lucky we all really are.
This is my 4th Thanksgiving since being diagnosed with terminal cancer. I'm grateful beyond belief to be here, and thankful for all of you.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Sent from my iPhone
I don't mean to come off all environmentally or anything bit still. Why can't trees have Christmas too?
"Dear Congressman: We're melting. Love, the Glaciers." - Al Gore
Okay, I just had to speak up on this mind-numbingly ignorant rumor about Hadley CRU. Background: Fox News is claiming that an email from a university shows once and for all that Global Warming Theory is a scam. Apparently, the University of East Anglia's computer was hacked and the following phrase (ooh, 3 words, that must disprove global warming!) was found: "Hide the decline".
Aside from the obvious question, where's the rest of the frigging sentence, there are several reasons why this proves nothing. Oh wait I stand corrected, this does prove one thing: that Fox News and global warming deniers will do anything to scam the American public.
First off, scientists hide data all the time. No, not to "deceive" anyone. They hide columns or rows just as you would minimize a window if you were working with several Word documents at once. In statistics programs like JMP, it allows a scientist to see data in a less jumbled fashion.
Second, for Fox news to suggest that this proves climate change is a hoax, they would have to prove that East Anglia scientists were the ONLY people who proved global warming theory. (And we know that sentence is redundant, right)? Let's suppose the Large Hadron Collider managed to wipe that university off the map - demolish all the data. We'd still have overwhelming evidence from a Godzillion other places.
Global warming theory has been tested over and over again, by many other scientists. To date, no one has disproven or even come close to disproving human caused global warming.
Global warming is not a political party. It's simply a sub-category of pollution. If you want to understand it, read the primary literature. Don't get your scientific data from television. Please read my Global Warming facts and myths to undersand better. And here's Al Gore. Science didn't work, so he's gonna try crazy.
We're having our bi-yearly alternative Thanksgiving. It's a long drive to my sister's and the holiday food is way too heavy. I don't normally eat turkey or mashed potatoes. My family feels obilgated to make unfamiliair recipes for my diet restrictions, when I'd rather just help out cooking. But they want to be in control, so I just doodle around in the kitchen. I also get tired of people asking why I'm not drinking. Sometimes we spend the holiday with our friends Rosie and Mr. Spacely. Rosie is an amazing cook. We both love the same foods, so cooking with her is a delight. Eggplant, Asian-American fusion. It's really light, healthy holiday food.
We all sit by the fireplace and discuss snowshoeing or winter hikes. They have a pileated woodpecker family that lives in their backyard, so we watch for them. It's all very casual.
This year we'll spend the day spoiling our cats. It will be the new strays' first holiday with us. Sometimes I call my Apache friend, she tells the most amazing Native American stories. Native Americans all take part in gatering the food and preparing the meal.
I think this kind of cooperation is what makes Thanksgiving more special for people like my Apache friend; everyone has a job to do, everyone works to put food on the table. It's more about survival than indulgence. So I'm glad to share the holiday with friends.Happy Thanksgiving, Voxers!
We're celebrating the beginning of the holidays. And trying to keep Sarah and Mike apart.
I've been seeing these amusing Garmin ads on tv recently. They're wild . I like the nutcracker one. We used them in grad school but I had no idea they had such a weird sense of humor.
I had a flashback to one of our grad school forest projects. We worked in teams of four to analyze the community ecology of an Audubon Sanctuary. We only had one day of work left, but a huge snowstorm was on its way.
Two of us decided to just work a few hours to get the data we needed. We were doing some veg inventories (that's a fancy way of saying we had to identify trees, and just by their bark).
Well, the snowstorm started early. We went off trail only to find that the work took much longer than expected, and pretty soon we were in whiteout conditions. Everything looked the same. We had our compass but we were in a hurry to get back, knee deep in snow, freezing cold and not anywhere that a GPS would work. Garmin's ad reminds me of that day, except we were on foot, in the woods and losing light. Whee!
Staring at our compasses (which were declinated all funny for various reasons), I turned to my partner and said, "why don't we just follow our footsteps back"? We found the trail quickly after that. I love low-tech solutions.
