Quote of the day: “The world is a state, but the play is badly cast.” Oscar
Wilde
Song of the day: None.
State of mind: Frustrated
Date: January 28th, 2012
There are volumes of text in any library or bookstore about the meaning of
life. What it is. A dream. A challenge. Another turn on the wheel. A box of chocolates. According to
McCormick spices, life is like a pulled pork. M’kay… But for me it always seems
to be more like one of those sliding tile puzzles that you get in grab bags at
Christmas from someone that has only 10 bucks to spend on 20 kids. The game is
made of cheap plastic that has bumps that keep the tiles from sliding smooth,
made of neon colors, and going only from 1 to 9.But as a kid all you know is it’s a toy and
you're going to play with it. I never had much trouble with those puzzles.
Except when the tiles stuck and you had to use your finger nail to un-wedge it
so you can move it in place. But then at the time I had no idea that the rest
of my life was going to be the same as that damn puzzle. No matter what it is I
have to do, I always seem to need to shift around at least 5 other things in
order to do it.
For instance, I finally bought a lap top. I'm typing on it right now. I
actually kind of like it. This is the fastest I've been able to convert thought
to word in a long long time. (This from a person that bought a micro recorder
so I could just talk my blogs. That didn't work, BTW, which is why you'll never
hear my voice on the Internet.) But this post isn't going to make it to the web
for days probably. Why? My PC is broke. Tower keeps turning off by itself. I
think it's the power supply. At least, I hope that is all that it is, because
if it's the mother board, I'm screwed. What does that have to do with my
laptop? My wifi. I can't get my wifi to accept this lap top without going into
it (on my PC) and telling my wifi it's OK.But I can't fix my wifi until I fix my PC. I can't fix my PC till I
figure out what is wrong with it. And once I do I have to get the parts to fix it.
Shifting tiles.
Or, I could just plug the damn thing directly into my internet cable. Yeah.
That works too.
Show quote of the day: “So. Did you
defy the chicken?”
this idea was floated around on twitter & I guess we are looking for volunteers so we can get all 50 states. Just to cover all the bases. Already have at least one volunteer from Canada, but more are always welcome. The plan? Smudge away 2011.
As per usual, this time of year makes me want to change things up from my normal routine of just getting by and living in chaos that is completely me made. So, goal one: I would like to clean out 2011 and greet 2012 with the house completely scrubbed. I want to hoe out everything non essential. Stock up on groceries so that I can focus on anything but having to constantly stop at the store. It’s insane the amount of time I spend pushing a shopping cart. No matter how thorough the list, I always need to go back within two days.
I also to make a schedule for the year. This has actually worked out for me before. One year I made a list of things I wanted to do within that year, such as concerts, and I actually went to all of them even though I didn’t know that certain bands on my list were even going to be touring in the area. So, goal two: a list. Events, projects, travel, events, appointments, ect.
I’m not all the superstitious but I do want to employ as many New Year’s good luck traditions as possible. So naturally I turned to the Internet. To me, superstitions are basically a mental exercise for a person to take charge of a situation, or accept it if they can’t change it. Hypothetical internal dialogue: Life sucks? Well, I don’t accept that. So… First I’ll do this weird series of actions, and then do something about it.
Snopes.com actually had a huge list of fun traditions to bring good luck in for the New Year, such as don’t do laundry on New Years Day, or have a tall, dark haired man come in right after the stroke of midnight with a token gift and then leave through another door…, ect. If I could get the tall, dark haired man to do my laundry on New Years Eve, that would be better, in my opinion. Take a look and find a few to try out for yourself.
Love books? Like thumbing your nose at authority? Here’s a fund raising effort where you can combine the two. You have 5 days left to help Uprise Books put banned or challenged books into the hands of teenage readers (that meet certain income requirements. I figure that means, “If they can’t afford to buy the books themselves”).
I adore this idea, because it’s a novel (har har) approach to getting kids to read; especially kids that are probably the least likely too. Why? 1) By making the books available to begin with and 2) all teenagers want to do what they are told by adults not too. In fact, a local high school English teacher uses this very approach in her class. She gives the students a list of banned books and tells them to pick two to read. Suddenly students that normally balk at assigned reading were eager to participate. (Kids. So damn contrary. I was never like that...)
Which the people behind this project know as well. From their site:
So, hark back to when you were young and rebellious and give Uprise Books a hand.
Show quote of the day: “Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower, or a-a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and-and-and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is a - it, uh, it has no-no texture, no-no context. It’s-it’s there and then it’s gone. If it’s to last, then-then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be, um, smelly.”
Quote of the Day: “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.” ~Adelle Davis
Song of the Day: Hit Me With Your Best Shot by Pat Benatar
Date: October 6th, 2011
Wow. Where has the time gone? Summer came and went with a ton of rain. Good news for the apple crop. So as per usual I bought too many. Which is good news when I actually decide to cook. One of my favorite fall comfort foods is brown rice with sautéed apples and onions. Add cooked chicken or sausage and you’ve got a feast.
However, the other night I had no apples. I was running out of a lot of things, and that box of what I thought was broccoli (my other comfort food) was in fact spinach. Ick. I had one lonely piece of chicken breast, the runt of the little to boot. And half a red pepper. Hmm.
Well now. You can never go wrong if you can sauté some veggies. This is what I came up with:
Put a pack of spinach that you thought was broccoli in to boil. Throw in a handful of peas if you want.
Start the water for the angel hair pasta.
Pound out a chicken breast nice and thin, Schnitzel thin.
Put a good hunk of butter in a frying pan, medium heat.
Sauté half a red pepper, cut into whatever sized chunks you like, a slice of onion, chopped. After a few minutes, put in the chicken. Being so thin, 3 minutes a side is usually all it takes.
Put the pasta in to cook.
Drain the spinach and peas. Set aside.
When the chicken is done, remove from the pan to cut into pieces. Turn the heat down to low on the pan. Add about half a cup of ranch dressing. (No, I’m not kidding.) A table spoon of brown mustard, a couple of table spoons of water from the pasta pot, 2/3 cup of white cooking wine. Stir together. Add salt and pepper because nothing is done till you season it.
Drain the pasta and mix in the sauce, chopped chicken, and as much of the spinach and peas as you please. Mix. Eat. Enjoy. There should be enough for two if you’ve got a date you need to impress.
Show quote of the day: “You say tomato, I say pimp.”
Quote of the day: “I'm always collecting emotions for future reference.” ~Harlan Howard
Song of the day: The Drum Song by Florence and the Machine (another new obsession of mine.)
State of mind: busyA Plethora of Pyrex
Quote of the day: “I'm always collecting emotions for future reference.” ~Harlan Howard
Song of the day: The Drum Song by Florence and the Machine (another new obsession of mine.)
State of mind: busy
May 12th, 2011
Why does anyone do the things they do? Why do I sell insurance? I wish I knew. Why did this woman collect dolls? What was it about her life? Was it one specific moment where she suddenly said, "I know... dolls." This was said by someone other than Fox Mulder on the X-Files. I remember that episode even though I haven’t seen it in over a decade, and I remember being quite smug because I didn’t have a collection obsession.
Or so I thought.
If I had looked around then I probably would have realized I had a few, as I do today. If you were in my house you would see a series of ‘collections’; some purposeful, some not. Like things with pigs on them. I don’t know where anyone got the idea that I liked pigs, but they did and I ended up with quite a few items as gifts that came in many piggy forms.
I also have a number of watches. But in my defense I did work at a jewelry counter for many years and it wasn’t that I had to have many, it was just I kept seeing watches that I liked and would buy them. That’s not much of an excuse, is it?
Books. OK, I do collect them, but they aren’t just to sit pretty and I don’t shop for books the way people do things like Cherished Teddies or cat figurines. Each book was bought for what was in it, not just because it was a book.
For a short time though when I was around 9 or 10 I did fancy myself a music figurine collector, but it pretty much consisted of a porcelain nurse that was a gift to my dad from his mother when he was sick once and another of two swans that I think I picked up at a flea market. Two is not a collection. And as it turns out, music boxes & figurines bug me. They collect dust and the music they play isn’t really all that nice, so this foray into actual collecting didn’t last long.
I think this makes me a sampler. I am content with just some while others have to have all.
But then Pyrex happened. It started quite unexpectedly. I wasn’t looking for a hobby. I hadn’t even realized I already had a collection until I looked at what I had in my kitchen after finding out that my favorite set of mixing bowls was actually a trio. Then I noticed the name on my mother’s set of casserole dishes that I use at least twice a week. And the serving dish that we pull out only on special occasions. It was everywhere! And some of it pretty heavily used and missing things, so I did what anyone in my situation would do. I turned to the internet.
Holy cow. There is a lot of Pyrex out there and in so many colors! The mind boggled and whispered, “Get it all.” And that was it. An obsession was born.
I needed to know what exactly I was missing in sets I already had and where I could replace just those pieces. Then I had to find out what else was out there, the patterns, the colors, which was rare and which was common. A lot is on eBay, the hell spawn of online purchasing sites. Not so much on Craig’s list. Etsy was a surprising source of pretty mixing bowls in a rainbow of colors. I found a juice pitcher that we had all the time I was growing up that went missing just before my dad died. I suspect he broke it and just never bothered to mention it. But suddenly I wanted it back and made my first online purchase in my new hobby. It arrived a week later and I was giddy; until I opened the box and discovered a juice pitcher that was too small. That was when I was told, “Guess what”? The pitchers came in a set as well! Great. Now I have to find the other two sizes, the one I was trying to replace and the smallest of the trio I hadn’t known even existed!
But it’s not just completing sets I already have. I haven’t actually purchased that much so far. Just the pitcher and one mixing bowl. But I like looking. I like seeing what is out there that I could buy. And seeing the patterns in photos online always make me think, “home” and “mine”. It’s familiar and comforting and I want as much of it as I can. Also, it is pretty.
It’s even grown in my mind to the point that I’m designing a kitchen in a house I don’t own centered on a cabinet with glass doors that will house a rainbow of glass and pattern. And in my head it isn’t just a house, it feels like home.
Quote of the Day: “Once confined to fantasy and science fiction, time travel is now simply an engineering problem.” ~ Michio Kaku
Song of the Day: 46 & 2 by Tool (It’s been a Tool kind of month.)
State of mind: Obsessed and contemplative
Date: 04/07/11
Since the trailer of season 6 of the Nu Who I’ve been obsessively browsing YouTube for clips of the show. Mostly because I missed the show being on and also because I started wondering ‘what if I could travel in time and show the producers of the original series a clip just so they could see how far the show has come from when they had it’ and ‘which clip would I show them?’ (Yes. This is how I think. No thanks I am sure to watching shows like this to begin with.) As I perused the plentiful choices, I came across two snippets from one of my favorite two-part episode, Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead.
This episode introduces the smart and sassy Professor River Song as an archeologist that has a definite history with the Doctor, even though he doesn’t know it yet. Unlike almost everyone that knows him she treats him like an equal. She calls him, “sweetie” and “pretty boy”. My girl crush formed immediately.
I liked her because she’s not a “companion” in the traditional sense of the show. She’s more of an ally. It seems to be widely accepted by most fans of the show that she is in fact his wife. The clues are pretty blatant in Library in those two clip. But also she has a sonic screwdriver of her own, she knows how to call him through Time and Space, and she has a diary of all their meetings and implies he does as well. Adding fuel to this theory is the fact that in later episodes it is revealed that she knows how to fly the TARDIS (better than him), knows the ancient language of the Time Lords, knows how to get his attention through time and trusts that he will show up whenever she needs him; as she demonstrates inher second appearance in the series in Time of the Angles/Flesh and Stone when she walks out an air lock into empty space completely confident that he will appear in time to save her. (Which, according to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the improbable odds against being rescued being 2 to the power of (the Islington London flat phone number) 2079460347.) That’s trust incarnate.
Although she has only appeared in 6 episodes overall, (3 two part episodes, the ones mentioned above and the season five finale:The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang.) the speculation on the Internet is vast about who exactly she is.
So far I’ve seen theories of her being:
Rose. Well, an altered version of her. I think this theory is floated the most by Rose/Doctor shippers for the sole reason that they miss Rose. There is no actual logic or evidence in any argument I’ve seen as of yet however.
Donna. Another altered version idea. And again it’s because people miss Donna. Hell, I miss Donna. She is by far my favorite of the companions. But no, she’s back home, married, and a lotto winner. Leave her be. (I say that with a lump in my throat, BTW.)
Future Amy. This is based mostly on Amy’s surname being Pond, which is another water source like River. And they’re both red heads. Maybe the names aren’t a coincidence, but until more is put forth to support this one I’m going to say “no” to this idea. Mostly because I’ve seen people look at pictures of themselves from their younger days yet when River first met Amy, she didn’t even blink. (Ha. Blink. It was an Angels episode they first met…. Nevermind.)
Amy & Rory’s daughter or granddaughter. Well why not? She could be. But why does she have to be related to any previous companion of his at all?
Jenny. Ick. Jenny’s his daughter, sort of, and even for an alien that’s just gross.
Jenny’s daughter or granddaughter. See reason for a big “no” under “Jenny”.
The Rani. As someone not that familiar with the original series, I can’t say with any authority why it couldn't be her except from everything I’ve read she’s a cold hearted bitch and major enemy. Why on any of the Earths would she make herself human and an ally of the Doctors?
Romana. No clue.
Some other unnamed Time Lady. Maybe. No reason why not.
Madame de Pompadour. This theory intrigues me because Girl in the Fireplace is one of my favorite episodes & makes me understand all the people who want River to be Rose. (And what is it with the Doctor & having feelings for woman with names that start with R?) The evidence: That River knows the Doctor's name not because they are married but because she read it in his mind when he was looking in hers when he was trying to figure out what the clockwork robots wanted with her. And she refers to him as "my love" in her letter to him just like River who calls him that when in the TARDIS (just before it blows up.) However, there is the problem with Madame de Pompadour being dead so reason says she cannot be River Song. But like the Doctor told Renette, "you never want to listen to reason." So, this is on the 'maybe' list.
The Silence: Ah. Now this one… means nothing actually. It just names her. But it’s damn interesting and if true really adds to the epic feel of her character. The ‘evidence’: The first episode she appears in is called, “Silence in the Library,” and who do we find there? River. Also, when the TARDIS explodes the voice says, “The Silence must fall.” Everyone assumed the voice meant the universe, but what if it meant River specifically? What if she was the target all along?
A future regeneration of The Master.No. No. No. No.The Master was, in my opinion, an awesome yet tragic villain and the relationship between them was a brotherly love/hate eons long battle. I can’t see it coming to a close because The Master made himself a human woman. I’m actually a little insulted on his & River’s behalf that this idea is even out there.
A future regeneration of the Doctor himself. Wow. How much of a narcissist does the Internet think he is? Galaxies of “no”.
Jack, who in the future has turned himself into a woman. Really, Internet?
The TARDIS which has managed to create itself in human form. Although I am on board with the idea that the ship has much love for the Doctor, to the point where in the scene after Rose looked into the Time Vortex and says, “I want you safe. My Doctor,” I am not entirely sure it was Rose saying that, but the TARDIS through her. And it would be bitter sweet, but I don’t think so. That’d be too fan fiction-y for even me.
I suspect she’s a Time Agent that might have gone rogue, like Captain Jack in The Doctor Dances, (an episode that was also written by Moffat).
River the bold, brash, confident, and merciless…I think River is epic...and that worries me. Epic is sometimes ruined when it’s explained. The greatest examples I can think of are from Babylon 5 and Star Wars. In "Episode III", there was a small scene between Luke, Owen, and Aunt Beroo that was reduced by the stories after. Owen reacted like a man wounded and hurt. A man betrayed by someone he admired and loved, Luke's father. All of that was ruined in the prequels with Owen and Anakin being relative strangers. They only met once! On Babylon 5, the fact that the war was ended between the Minbari and Earth when the Grey Council discovered that Sinclair had the soul of a Minbari, and that they couldn't continue to make war on humans believing that their ancestors were being reborn as human... wow! The very idea of one race coming back as another and just the largeness of it was daring, I thought. And was ruined by the reveal that Sinclair travels back in time and becomestheir legendary hero Valen & that in fact no other human has a Minbari soul. Disappointing. (Why didn't they make him King Arthur while they were at it?)
I think River Song is River Song. Just another brilliant character. Not a TARDIS reborn, A Time Lord with a Fob watch, or anyone else in some new form. She’s just…River.
Interesting dialogue, just for fun:
The Doctor: Ah, now sorry, there you are. So, where we, I was summoned, wasn't I? The Ood in the snow, calling to me. Well, I didn't just have to come straight here; had a bit of fun you know, travelled about, a bit of this and that, got into trouble, you know me. But it was brilliant. I saw the phosphorous carousel of the Great Magellan gestalt, saved a planet from the red carnivorous Maw, named a galaxy Alison. Got married, that was a mistake: Good Queen Bess! And let me tell you,her nickname is no longer... [clears throat] anyway, what do you want?
All this means is that the Doctor is flippant and maybe a bit hedonistic. Shocker. But also, that being married, (which if he’s telling the truth here), isn’t that much of a big deal if he doesn’t want it to be. And later the 11th Doctor supposedly marries Marilyn Monroe in The Christmas Carol. So, well, all I’m saying is that he must really want to be married to River. And she treats him like an equal because she is his equal, and he treats her the same way. Even if from his perspective they aren't married yet. So it's sweet and yet doesn't make any sense. Ha!
The Doctor: Are you married, River? River Song: Are you asking? The Doctor: Yes. River Song: Yes. The Doctor: Hang on, did you think I was asking you to marry me or-or-or-or asking if you were married? River Song: Yes. The Doctor: No, but was that yes or yes? River Song: Yes.
And one last exchange, which is funny since it's their first. Sort of like how they are, all backwards. ;)
RIVER: OK, shall we do diaries, then? Where are we this time? Uh, going by your face, I'd say it's early days for you. Yes? So, um... (she flips pages in the book) crash of the Byzantium, have we done that yet? **Season 5**
RIVER: Obviously ringing no bells. (she turns several pages) Right, um, oh. Picnic at Asgard. Have we done Asgard yet?
RIVER SONG: Obviously not. Blimey, very early days, then. Huh, life with a time traveler, never knew it could be such hard work.
RIVER (whispering): Look at you! You're young.
DOCTOR: I'm really not, you know.
RIVER SONG: Nah, but you are. Your eyes. You're younger than I've ever seen you.
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