parts is parts (mostly not mine)
lyonesse
11:10P Monday, 12 May 2008

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toe: still broken. apparently re-wrecked it somehow (it was, umm, hurting less and not as red), probably b/c ooh-la-la has about one inch of clearance between the pedal at the bottom of the crank and the ground, and bottoms out on any rough patch of pavement or if, heaven forbid, you have the inside pedal down going around a curve. took ibuprofen sunday morning, forgot today, am regretting it even post-megadose and topical.

backs: ljufur's back is like two soft poofy pillows with a dent in between. stjarni, however, has developed a distinct, if not uncomfortable, spine.

digestive systems: i can't seem to find a single cat food that will handle winter's tendency towards tooth decay, maggie's slightly delicate digestion, and dj spooky's apparently-allergic asthma. next (and this note is the real reason i am making this post) "nutro senior cat" (they previously hated the weight-management version, alas).

sleep: why is everybody always so tired? me included, this time.

to-do list:
check to roofer
shoes to sweden
notary; notarized thingy to dad
check to house cleaner
finish cleaning mud room
update old class laptops
....

yeah, must be time to sleep.

gratuitous icon post...
lyonesse
8:16P Monday, 12 May 2008

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because rising_moon rocks my tiny little world, and because she *knows* what rocks my tiny little world :)

interest: heavy scheduling (riding logs)
lyonesse
7:26P Monday, 12 May 2008

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i still haven't even made notes on last weekend's clinic, and this weekend oodles more happened. so i will start small, and just make notes on saturday's riding/teaching on both horses and sunday's ride/pony-ride on stjarni, for right now:

SATURDAY:

brought a rope sidepull that elf my elf had bought. experimented with it in "bit and bridle" mode with student in tack room, which worked fine. stuck it on stjarni, got on myself. annoyed rather by overly-short reins, but w/t/t/c, halts, turns, lateral work all went just fine. so spent a few minutes on then put student up.

stjarni was alas frustrating for student. it got a little better when i was in the tack room and out of sight, but basically he's attending to me not her, and that is all kinds of bad. i got on again to check the tack; it was fine. eventually put him back in the snaffle bridle, which was about the same. sigh. not a great day for teaching :/

then switched the rope to ljufur, checked him out (my GOD he's fat; he wobbles when he walks). walk, turns, halt, back, tolt, all fine (bareback). put student on. he's quite willing for her, but not quite always able to figure out what she wants. for all i know he'll end up being the better schoolie.....!

SUNDAY:

late start (eventually will post about scul mission maybe?) elf my elf came to play with ljufur (i free-lunged him, which i forgot to mention i'd done on saturday, and taught elf my elf how). i gave whitebird (in town for reasons possibly further discussed wrt the scul mission, as funnier in that context, plus he took photos which might eventually illustrate alla this) a pony ride, and he had the typical tolt grin, which pleases me no end. meanwhile seniormost tried schooling cheyenne in the sidepull, which may turn out to be a reasonable thing, but switched him back to his regular bridle before seniormost and i went out on the trail. meanwhile ljufur got the sidepull, and elf my elf did more ground work with him. (it's not enough that *i'm* busy, i have to drag everybody i know into doing everything *with* me....) elf my elf also mounted (very funny, he just swings his leg over :) and did some work from ljufur's back, which i think went quite well.

i wanted to talk briefly about my trail ride -- it was TEH AWESOME. we started at the water jump, which cheyenne was looking dubious about; stjarni and i walked right around him and plunged in. brilliant :) then we walked over the hill, past the barking dog without a sideways glance. as soon as we hit the far side of the bridge we headed out to joe's barn, and except for a few steps where we turned around, we did not walk a single stride. slow tolt, fast tolt, nice trot, lots of cantering, a teeny bit of hand gallop at the end. then the "ghost trail" back, including pointing pony at a fallen tree a foot or so off the ground -- and stjarni's little ears pricked up and he picked up a canter and whee! right over it! and then the necessary bushwhacking since the ghost trail doesn't really end anywhere useful, and i just sort of aim my faithful steed uphill and duck the branches and away we go. and cheyenne with us every step of the way. not the longest ride in the world, but perhaps one of the most perfect.

horses make me happy. sharing the joy of horses with people makes me happy too.

Monster Madness!
mamishka
2:43A Monday, 12 May 2008

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So a certain subsection of my friends that I've been out of touch with for awhile have clearly been, in catching up on their Live Journals, obsessed with a vampire TV show called Moonlight. I remembered hearing about it coming out, but unlike Pushing Daisies or Chuck I didn't hear much about it other than that and had actually forgotten all about it since it first came out. But I've been in a big fantasy/sci fi downloading kick lately and suddenly thought, "Hey, I should check it out and see what I think!" I have to admit, I'm not generally big into the vampire TV shows. I find most of them just too cheesy for my personal tastes. I caught one episode of Blood Ties and it didn't work for me at all. I think the only vampire show I've seen and liked was Angel, and I already had a pretty heavy bias going into that thanks to Buffy ... plus Joss Whedon is, on occasion, my Master. ;-)

So tonight I thought, what the heck and watched the first episode. First thing that struck me was the female star. Recognized her right off, but couldn't place from where until I did a search on IMDB. Turns out she's Sophia Myles, who played Reinette in possibly one of the best Doctor Who episodes The Girl in the Fireplace. Okay, now I'm intrigued! Guy looked familiar too. Seems that he played the brother of Jonathan Rhys Myers in August Rush.

In a total aside here, ever notice how it seems like nearly everyone in American TV shows are actually not Americans? To give you a few examples we have Apollo from Battlestar Galactica (English), Harry from The Dresden Files (English), John Amsterdam from New Amsterdam (Dutch? Danish?), and now these two ... just to name the ones that I know about. Most of them have such flawless American accents I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't looked them up on IMDB. I was interested to learn that the reason why this is because there apparently is a dearth of 30-40 year old high quality actors in the United States. Hummmina-wha? But yes, I read that apparently if you're an actor in the states of that age you either suck, have quit being an actor, or have made it big time and have no interest in doing television. Actors abroad, however, are talented, beautiful, and totally willing to put on American accents and do television. Fascinating. We really do have to import everything nowadays, don't we? So to all you 30-40 something actors out there? Dust off your resumes, cause apparently there's work now!

But I can't say I'm complaining, because there has been some mighty fine acting going on. And despite myself I find that I am now completely obsessed with Moonlight. I don't know if I can rightfully say whether it is 'good' or 'bad'. All I do know is that is apparently is as addictive as crack for me personally. There have definitely been some wince worthy moments and the cheesy sort of stuff that always seems to happen when you have a show about vampires ... but here I am, still watching and craving more like a junkie who needs her fix. I have been watching episode after episode and now that I have finished episode 5 I am chafing at the bit as episode 6 is still downloading, kinda hoping against hope that somehow it will be done in the next few minutes, rather than the next few hours that Azureus is telling me. ~whimper~

I'm obsessed, or repressed, or one of those 'essed' words. Argh! And yes, writing this post is in no small part a stall tactic in the hopes that the 3 hour wait time will have magically dropped to 3 minutes by now. Lordy, how pathetic I am!

nutshell
lyonesse
12:28A Monday, 12 May 2008

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stuff i always talk about:

saturday: ride stjarni, ride ljufur, scul mission
sunday: ride stjarni, school ljufur, elf and ljufur

other stuff:

lots

(overall, panic < < squee, yay :)

Four by Five Thousand
solarbird
2:52P Sunday, 11 May 2008

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Four by Five Thousand

I like this little tree; there are two of them at Murkworks South, fairly low-growing, with these large clusters of highly aromatic flowers I'd walk under in the spring. They've been on site at Murkworks South for a long time, though I don't know how long; we'll get a small number of seedlings every year, so last year I brought one up to Murkworks North and planted it. It must like the location, since it's flowered right away.

too damn big
solarbird
2:50P Sunday, 11 May 2008

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( Scattered Petals )

Your Loooooooove Doctor!
mamishka
10:22A Sunday, 11 May 2008

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darthhellokitty posted this first, but it's so brilliant that I gotta share the loooooove! So without further delay, come on board the Love Boat with the Doctor! >;-)

"Oh yeah. I can FLY."
annathepiper
11:18P Saturday, 10 May 2008

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spazzkat, solarbird, and I just got back from seeing Iron Man. And okay, yeah, sure, we're a week late to the party... but now at least I can join my voice to the chorus of DUDE THAT TOTALLY ROCKED.

( Spoilers at 10 percent... )

Book Log #31: The Queen's Bastard, by C.E. Murphy
annathepiper
5:00P Saturday, 10 May 2008

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There are times when I read a book so well-put together, so deliciously complex, and so generally OH-MY-inducing that I despair of ever trying to write anything as good, much less sell it. The Queen's Bastard, latest offering from the redoubtable mizkit, is one of those times.

For starters, the setting is quite unusual for a fantasy novel. This thing is basically alternate history fantasy--all the names have been changed, but any reader will definitely recognize Europe of the 16th century here, complete with a queen on one of the pertinent thrones that we all should find very, very familiar. ;) And there's magic--or rather, I should say, very interesting telepathic and telekinetic abilities possessed by the most major characters, the source of which is hinted at to be something rather more appropriate to a science fiction novel.

And the sex... oh my yes, there's sex. But I am quite satisfied (aheh) to note that this novel has, hands down, the most effective use of sex I have read in quite some time. Our heroine cuts a swath through any number of men through this novel, from a lowly coachman clear up to a prince who turns out to share her secret abilities--and yet, every single sexual encounter is a means to an end, propelling Belinda through a web of increasingly complicated intrigue, and some of them come back to haunt her and hard. One scene in particular--you'll know it when you get to it--was quite intense, almost alarming, enough that I found myself genuinely challenged about whether I actually liked the heroine. (I'm still pondering that! Belinda is extremely effective as a character, but all throughout the book I was rather torn between cheering her on and muttering "Bitch!" at the page.)

It amused me, too--and this may well amuse Kit when she reads this--that I got a big Elfquest vibe off of this story. And in particular, a vibe of Belinda as a very young Winnowill. Particularly in that aforementioned intense and alarming scene.

I finished this thing up this afternoon, and am in awe. Awe, I tell you. Four stars!

More on the papers relased on the Pentagon psyop
solarbird
4:10P Saturday, 10 May 2008

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Glennwald's column today is largely the words of the Director of DoD Press Operations, evaluating the results in 2005 of one of their more recent domestic propaganda operations.

If you didn't read yesterday's round of quoted excerpts from these papers, please, please do. This isn't at all interpretive. This is entirely in the source material. The source material talks very explicitly about the goals, intents, and methods. This is entirely about the administration, DoD, and pentagon setting up hundreds of supposedly "independent" analysts as propaganda distributors. They are the ones using the term "echo chamber," they are the ones talking about how to eliminate off-message voices from the air, they are the ones telling people what to write, and in some cases even doing the editing.

And I remind you again that covert domestic propaganda operations by the US government exactly like this one are illegal, but this one was massive.

Surprisingly coherent
solarbird
12:16P Saturday, 10 May 2008

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This weeks This American Life (Chicago Public Radio / Public Radio International) spends this week talking about the subprime -> mortgage -> CDO -> credit crisis in an hour-long segment, and it's the best coverage I've heard of it in any formal news media. They let the ratings agencies off way too easy - that bullshit was fraud outright - but even given that, it's not bad. If it hasn't aired in your area yet, or if it's going to repeat, it's worth catching, or recommending to people who still don't understand how we got here.

mostly economics, but not all
solarbird
12:20A Saturday, 10 May 2008

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cedarseed is blogging about the Hez uprising in Beruit, her home town. Wish her luck.

As everyone knows, there are lots and lots and lots of houses in various stages of foreclosure, particularly in places like California. In California, a lot of those houses have swimming pools, which are now neglected, which is to say, stagnant, which is to say terrifying West Nile virus-carrying mosquito breeding pits.

See credit use. See credit use soar in March. Soar, credit use, soar! Well, at least we know how consumer spending was less down than expected. At least the reserves failure has stopped getting actively worse, with the banking system only at -US$127B or so in reserves default, which is actually an improvement.

But CMBX spreads have started spiking up again in all categories, and the ABX markets are uniformly down. (All that is bad.) Professor Roubini says that things are not fundamentally improving, and the Fed is getting desperate. His track record as of late has been unfortunately very good, so pay attention. He also has a piece on car loans and car loan funds going south, which, you'll note, the Fed is now taking as collateral! Yay! By which I mean ARG OMG DIAF.

In completely unrelated but better news, impressive data recovery lets a physics experiment lost on Columbia be analysed and published, and EA has backed off from the worst of of their latest round of hating their customers "anti-priracy" protections, but I'm still amused by the comic.

a clinic note: personally disturbing
lyonesse
1:20P Friday, 9 May 2008

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so we were doing an exercise going over two tiny crossrails in a bounce. and we did it with one hand behind our backs, then one hand raised in front with arm extended. as i did the second, my instructor called out, "great, heil hitler!"

i was appalled, and i had no idea how that could be "great", and it was just totally a mindfuck.

when she did it again to a second student in the other lesson, i went over and said, "could you not call that move 'heil hitler'? because i find it really distressing," and she said okay and it didn't happen again (though i'm not sure anyone else did quite that exercise afterwards either.

Great Big Public Service Announcement
annathepiper
9:21A Friday, 9 May 2008

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For those of you who are registered members of GreatBigSea.com, they just put Fortune's Favour up for pre-sale. If you order through the site, you ALSO get extra bonus download links for not only "Walk On The Moon" but two extra songs as well that aren't on the album!

Go! Order! Purchase the shiny new Great Big Goodness!

it's ALL GOOD
lyonesse
12:10P Friday, 9 May 2008

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sensesurfer phoned, and for some reason with his kind voice on the phone, i looked someplace i had ALREADY LOOKED SEVERAL TIMES and there was my id.

plus i found my ipod.

BOO YAH!

The latest rendings from the slow-motion train wreck
solarbird
9:04A Friday, 9 May 2008

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A brief note on oil, then to politics; oil is currently acting like a mo-mo stock, hitting $126.25/barrel this morning. In the short term - heading into a recession - I think the momentum of the last month or so is unsustainable, even in a flat production environment. You're also seeing a lot of press idiocy about oil being up each day "on a weak dollar;" the dollar is actually stronger, very slightly, than it was when oil was hanging around $105/barrel, and has been gaining strength the last couple of weeks while oil shoots up to the moon. (The US dollar is up 2% against the basket as oil goes from $115/barrel to $127/barrel. There is cause-and-effect here, btw.) But hey, what's reality got to do with news?

Talking of news, Glenn Greenwald today reports on the broadcast media's continued refusal to cover the illegal domestic propaganda campaign waged by the Pentagon, no doubt because they helped so much. There's been a document dump, and amoungst the things you can trace in those documents are the locking-out of analysts who went off-message, and the co-ordinated attempt to discredit Amnesty International's report on conditions at Gitmo. I wonder how long the network news organisations can continue their silence on this matter?

Meanwhile, Senator John McCain continues to run for Chief Executive Bush's third term, claiming the problem with abuse of power in the Bush administration has been not any claimed powers of the executive (including but not limited to being above both Congressional Law and Constitutional restraint, being able to spend against Congressional law and to block spending by Congress, and, oh yes, editing laws at his whim), but "activist judges" who get in the Chief Executive's way.

This leads, in turn, to that latest attempt by various Democrats to revive retroactive immunity for telecom lawbreaking in illegal domestic spying by the administration. The ACLU has an action item up against it, along with more details than previously reported. The reported plan is to work it in to a "compromise" bill that grants Chief Executive Bush basically everything he wants, as always. As always, it's about closing down the last functioning route to investigate these crimes, and making clear and obvious lawbreaking retroactively legal. I strongly recommend you take action. (Pointer courtesy slashdot and hubbit.)

In other politics, the American Psychological Association has, inexplicably, named two determined opponents of the transgendered to a work group assigned to revise the Manual for Diagnosis of Mental Disorders in preparation for the DSM-V. On the Task Force assigning the workgroup members is Dr. Ray Blanchard, a proponent of the idea that people with gender identity disorder are actually paraphiliacs, or men who have a fetish for forced feminisation. (The proponents of this theory ignore ftm men - half the transgendered population - pretending and sometimes even stating outright that they don't actually exist.) He's assigned Dr. Kenneth Zucker to the workgroup as chair; Dr. Zucker is a proponent of "reparative therapy," a hobbyhorse of the anti-gay "ex-gay" movement, only this time applied now to gender identity disorder. There is, of course, no doubt that this would, if institutionalised against GID, also be used against lesbians and gay men.

[ETA:This story must be going around, as elfs also posts about it, and adds Obsidian Wings' coverage of an NPR story that follows two GID children, one getting okay-let's-deal-with-it treatment and one getting reparative therapy. Guess which kid is all screwed up? ;_; ]

And in other outrages, this story of gang-rape going unprosecuted will be disturbing to anyone sane. And apparently some are shocked! Shocked! that proponents of Michigan's anti-gay anti-marriage amendment would lie about its impacts on domestic-partner benefits. Blocking recognition and benefits for even the children of queers was the entire fucking point, and if you listen to them talking to their core, in their own media, they'd say things like that out loud. But, as always, the mainstream media takes liars at face value without the first hint of fact or consistency checking.

So there you are. Good morning!

the art of losing
lyonesse
11:49A Friday, 9 May 2008

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so now i've spent a few hours looking in all the likely places, & had moved on to the unlikely ones. not only have i not found my cards, i haven't found my camera or my ipod, both of which have been missing too. what i did just find was my letter from my grandma congratulating me on defending my doctorate, and now i want to cry.

EDIT: i take about five per cent back; i did just find my ipod.

i suck
lyonesse
11:35A Friday, 9 May 2008

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sometime between leaving work yesterday and this morning, i seem to have lost ALL MY CARDS -- driver's license, credit cards, bank cards, health insurance, id's, the fuckin works.

teaching log (clinic notes)
lyonesse
2:26P Thursday, 8 May 2008

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the other student i taught at the instructor clinic was a tough one -- a working student at the barn, and an infinitely better rider than myself. so i decided to go back to total basics, and we'd work on the halt and circles.

well, the halts just sucked. little v (one of the school horses, who are in general well-trained) just drifted mildly along, not halting. my student's biggest problem seemed to me to be that she is very tall and long-legged, and is used to reaching her heel up to poke a horse's sides, and therefore doesn't ground well at all through her feet. and grounding is key to halting in the centered-riding way. but i didn't seem able to say anything that fixed that, so when she said "i'm getting frustrated with the halt" i just said "okay, go trot around a bit and relax."

this reminds me of one of my worst problems as a teacher -- i can't just tell when people are getting frustrated, at least not before it gets to the point where they're taking it out on the horse. i like it best when people just tell me, as this rider did, but you can't really count on that :/

anyway, after the trotting, we turned to circles. and i did make a point of telling the student to not lift her leg -- her calf's pressure against the horse should be an adequate aid. "but what if it's too light and she doesn't listen?" said the student, and i waited, and then she said "oh so you follow it up with a tap from the crop", which is correct. (adding more and more leg pressure doesn't leave you with a light, responsive horse, but with one who always needs a lot of leg pressure. not that the occasional heel-to-the-ribs doesn't work, but it can't become a habit, both for the sake of the rider's balance and the horse's sensitivity.)

anyway that went rather well, and she said afterwards she got better circles and corners than she had ever before, which was nice. i still don't think i managed to fix her "bottom building block" as it were, but one thing at a time, right?

house net crashed again
lyonesse
12:53P Thursday, 8 May 2008

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hate, hate, hate. plus some hate.

last night's dinner: the lazy-ass gourmet
lyonesse
9:23A Thursday, 8 May 2008

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so last night for dinner seniormost and i fixed a quick dish i used to make a lot in grad school:

. put clean baby spinach in strainer
. put halved grape tomatoes in same strainer
. boil some fresh pasta
. drain over veggies
. dump into bowl
. salt, butter, olive oil to taste

with the utterly gourmet-value-added addition of:

. while boiling pasta, poach one fresh duck egg per serving
. with slotted spoon, place over plated pasta

mmmmm :)

Wizards for Voldemort
mamishka
10:17P Wednesday, 7 May 2008

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What is the world coming to? I guess they figured out he's a Death-Eater?

Magic Trick Costs Teacher His Job

Ahhhhh
mamishka
9:56P Wednesday, 7 May 2008

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In the dark of the night, in an eerily quiet U-District, someone in the distance plays the sad and forlorn taps on the trumpet.

I don't know why, but it was an exceedingly cool moment. ;-)