| 2012! Destruction and floods! And in such large helpings! |
[Nov. 12th, 2009|02:47 pm] |
Wow, that was a bad movie. And 3 hours long. The trailer was the best part, they killed off every one of the characters I most liked (I admit, I have eclectic tastes), and talk about plot fail! Physics fail! Geology fail! Ship design fail! Ugh!
...The effects were nice. That's why Meesto drags us to these things- as a business expense. So we can oooooh at the effects. Pity about the ewwwww at the story.
---
We also saw (in an attempt to go 180 degrees the other direction) Ponyo. Ponyo is cute and strange and seems to be a story symbolizing the patriarchy's exhausting attempts to make girls smaller and how that's not working out for them. Blood and sirens! Giant fish women! Destruction and floods! Dinosaur fish! Wooooo!
It was bizarre. I think I liked it though. |
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| Farmers' Market with Hatted Birds |
[Oct. 11th, 2009|06:53 am] |
Some months ago Meesto and I went over the mountains to the Solway Farmers' Market, and Meesto liked it so much he wanted one here in our town. Then he got involved with the local group who do things like that, and they pointed Meesto at the Woman-in-Charge who had been working to organize a FM for our town for a while. She had everything all together, permit for road closure, etc. All she needed was marketing material. ...So Meesto volunteered himself- and then he drafted me and volunteered me, too.
So I made marketing material (logo, website, copy, posters). Since it was pro bono with a brief of 'medieval stylings' and 'local', they gave me my head and I decorated everything with local birds wearing medieval hats. Mmmm, hats.
Woman-in-Charge was oddly charmed by the hatted bird theme, and so had me design billboards, etc. and I may later (if the permits go through) get to do a public mural with yet more hatted birds in the new Farmers' Market space. Mmmmmm, public art! (Meesto is all: mmmmm, veggies!)
http://www.upperhuttfarmersmarket.org.nz
( Read more... ) |
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| Well, heck. |
[Oct. 11th, 2009|12:31 am] |
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ambientspace/3998711059/
Here's what Meesto's and my pottery experiments are turning out like. He throws and then we together place the handles, we bisque them and I draw with oxides on them, then we glaze them.
Unfortunately our South Island pottery supply place is terrible. They replaced their artist clay mixer with a scientist clay mixer and now their stoneware clay bubbles even at low temps. We bought clay elsewhere, and now we have discovered the foodsafe glaze we bought from the South Island supplier is not actually foodsafe. So our cunning plans to give this stuff to family and friends as holiday presents is all for nought and we'll likely have to destroy it all (we have lots more). Crunch, crack, whack! I am so annoyed. |
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| The chickening! Part one. Photo heavy! |
[Sep. 12th, 2009|03:52 am] |
This was our model for the chicken coop. That is my 5'2" self inside it and I built the model based on how big the roof tin we bought was. It is all accurately measured, each cardboard centimeter representing 10 real world centimeters; the number of centimeters that those nesting boxes and perches are raised off the floor is all researched and intentional and stuff.
( The great chickening begins! ) |
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| A photo of a rabbit in a diaper. For iibnf, with thanks. |
[Sep. 1st, 2009|10:21 pm] |
Diapering a bunny took some figuring out. We have to cut up the diaper quite a bit so it doesn't fall off/get kicked off. So, after some practice on both the humans' and the rabbit's parts, it's working. He's actually much happier now that he's not always soaked with pee. I think having urine-soaked feet every day was making him depressed. |
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| Oh, bunny. |
[Aug. 30th, 2009|01:52 am] |
Phil the rabbit is still not doing well. He has occasional good moments, but they are getting to be less and less. It used to be that when I brought in the daily rabbit salad, both bunnies would run to me and chow down. Now only Daphne runs and Phil just looks at me. Eventually he'll wander over and eat. Eventually.
He's recovered from the operation, finished all his antibiotics, seems not to be infected, has a bladder that should be significantly freed from sludge, and has been on pain meds so he should be more comfortable. Nevertheless he seems to be totally incontinent. He just lies there peeing all over himself, so we bath him twice a day and blowdry him. He still ends up urine-soaked a lot of the time, and his fur has dropped off the insides of his back legs, and he was getting urine scald, so we are now putting protective creams on his bare skin as well. Each bath and blowdry takes two people, two towels and half an hour. Twice a day is all we can manage; we are running out of towels constantly as is. We already spent far more hundreds of dollars on vet bills than I like to think about, and they can't really do anything because he's at the end of his natural lifespan and this is apparently how rabbits go- sudden organ failure for no real good reason.
Meesto can't stand this. I'm not real happy either, but I figure rabbit hospice can't last much longer. Phil's never had visible third eyelids before, but they started showing yesterday, which means rabbit heart disease. We're at that unpleasant bit of waiting and choice-making, where we try figure out if our palliative efforts are enough or if it's time for that final decision. Right now: time for another bath. |
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| Music, movies, and microcode, and apple pie. |
[Jul. 26th, 2009|01:47 pm] |
Saw this video on Ann_mcn's IJ and oh! Ow. I love this, I so love this and...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0
It's so ... American.
I've been here in NZ for a longish time now, and I'm not likely going back any time soon if ever, and I'm very happy here and it's not often that I'm struck with any homesickness, but -oh, this one got me. Right through the heart. Owww.
NZ has some fine British flavour with secular liberal European sensibilities, and some fabulous stuff all their own, but this- this earnest, cornfed, outright sappy romantic, unselfconscious ridiculousness, complete with shiny clapping religiosity- oh, this, this could only be found in the US. And I'm native enough to miss it. And likely only an American who wasn't in America could even see what so Americanly awesome about this. I know my Kiwi friends would prolly look at this and think it's totally stupid. And an American, swimming in it, maybe wouldn't even see it.
Travelers to the US always ask what they can bring me. I try to think of things, but no one can bring me thousand mile highways and fat crew-cutted boyscouts and painted altar girls and glacier-rutted hills and blue herons and cardinals and dangerously flooded rivers filled with vicious turtles. (They bring me Americans and real maple syrup and art supplies though, and that's pretty good.)
America, sometimes I really miss you though. <3! |
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| This Morning's Typical Dido Dream |
[Jul. 11th, 2009|03:50 pm] |
I was hired by a cookie store to decorate cookies. The store was staffed by about ten butch lesbians. I was sitting at a table with them all, decorating cookies. I had vanilla cookies shaped like Christmas trees and bags of green and white icing and little fancy candies to stick in the icing. I was decorating my tree cookies and attempting to learn the names of all the butches. Cookies, yum. It was awesome.
...And then I woke up.
Once I dreamed about picking and eating raspberries. Raspberries, yum. It was awesome. And then I woke up.
This is entirely boringtypical.
Okay then. I'm thinking that my special dream message that my inner self is trying to tell me is:
You are hungry! Get up and go get breakfast! Breakfast, yum! It's awesome!
What? Hungry sleeping brain does not do profound. |
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| Bzzzzzzzt. Fail. |
[May. 13th, 2009|07:52 pm] |
Now More AuthorFail, now with authors I have actually read. Recently. And aloud. Oh, Lois Bujold, no. D:
I am reading an unfamiliar new book aloud to Meesto. I have not read it before, my reading it aloud to Meesto is my first exposure to it, too. So far there have been 50 pages of horse-riding and exposition and so far we both can't stand the POV main character who seems to be a stupid 15 year old whiny boy. Ugh. It has a Newberry Medal and is Young Adult. It had better improve fast and cut the boy-whining.
On the other hand no matter how hard this new book I'm reading sucks, it can't possibly suck as hard as Failingtonia, The 13th (oh, please). So I'm going to go read my new book aloud, secure in the knowledgedesperately hoping it doesn't suddenly smack me in the face with something genocidal and evil.
Maybe I should stick to the internet, which has stuff about point of view, science, reactions, choices, and Little House on the Prairie. |
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| The end. |
[Apr. 30th, 2009|01:14 am] |
It has been my husband's and my ritual, that while he cooks, I read aloud to him. Meesto's territorial about our tiny kitchen and doesn't much like kitchen assistance, but at the same time doesn't much like cooking alone, so him cooking while I provide audio entertainment is what we have done... well, for a shockingly long time.
Since reading aloud is quite hard work, I've mostly only bothered to read things aloud that I have read before and that I personally judge to be awesome. I have read him science fiction, fantasy, romance, economics, and how-to. After several years of this, Meesto is either used to, or else quite likes my taste. Over several years, I've read to him all my favorite single non-series books from my library. Then I went on to series.
I recently read the entire Temeraire series (so far) out loud to him, and that was excellent, except for my execrable French pronunciation. Meesto can speak French, so he kept lifting his lip and coming over to look at the book and correct me until finally I began editing things to, "and Laurence said something in French and Jane replied..." which did not actually save me from Meesto coming over to look. But they were still good reading aloud books.
So.
This evening I have at long, long, long last finished reading aloud to him the entirety of every single book, short story, and series that Lois McMaster Bujold has written. This was a spectacular run. Bujold's books are even better and more torturous when read slowly aloud to a victim. Meesto loved this run particularly. And now I am going through my library looking for something to read to him after Bujold- and I got nothin'. Everything on my shelves has either already been read to him or is simply not worthy after Bujold.
*sigh*
Maybe I'll just buy some Jane Austen or something. As everyone knows, a married man is in want of audio entertainment. Maybe. Hmm. |
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| Octopaisley! |
[Apr. 23rd, 2009|02:51 pm] |
This took me a lot longer than I thought it would.
To see it repeat properly, choose 'half-brick'.
I have ordered myself a fat quarter just to see how it turns out. I have plans to make several more colorways of this pattern. What do you think? Orange octopi? Pink?
Since spoonflower is still in beta, they do not as yet have their site set up so the general public might buy my designs. While they figure out how to do that, they are doing a thing where people vote for whatever is coolest that week (Contests are here.) and then they sell samples of the winner on Etsy. ( Spoonflower Etsy here.)
The upshot of this is- if you'd like to buy some Octopaisley, you should get a Spoonflower account and then, if by chance they ever decide my fabric should go in their weekly contest, then obviously you should vote for Octopaisley. Votes for Octopi! |
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| Harvest 2009 |
[Apr. 7th, 2009|08:33 pm] |
This is just some of our harvest of squashes. There's More scattered around the house, and basketfulls of zucchinis that got given to our neighbors and relatives.
Last year we managed to get our stored squashes to last months, and I've been reading up on how to make them store well for months and months. I don't know how long I'll get the zucchinis to go, though.
These are our cherry tomatoes in the greenhouse, still going even though it's fall. They've stopped flowering, but there's still lots of green tomatoes there. We'll nurse the plants along and see how late we can get them to last. |
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| Cannon update. |
[Mar. 30th, 2009|04:02 pm] |
They weren't cannons. It was dynamite. The town had hired blowy-up-people to blow up some dead trees on the high ridge of the park that had been ringed 20 years ago, were too rotten and dangerous to cut down with chainsaws, and too sturdy to fall down by themselves. They blew up 150+ trees on Wed, Thurs, Fri last week and may blow up some more starting this next Wednesday. .... :/
Meesto was away last week doing a film shoot in Auckland, but it doesn't look like he has to go up there again this week. Which is good. Yes, I'm so glad he'll be here this week. Perhaps his reassuring presence means the cat won't spend so much time in the closet. |
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| Cannon. |
[Mar. 25th, 2009|09:35 am] |
I woke up to cannon fire this morning. Car backfire? Whatever. I put my head back under the covers and tried to go back to sleep. A couple of minutes later the cannon fired again. And was definitely a cannon. This time I jumped out of bed, dressed, and ran around the house looking out the windows. The cat hid at the back of the closet like she does when there's lightning. There is no lightning; it's a beautiful morning. No people with a cannon in my driveway either. So I make breakfast. And the cannon fires again! I run to the window. Birds are tearing across the sky in terror. Is it cannon or is it dynamite at the construction site at the bottom of the hill? What is it?! Are they going to do this all day? Gah! My poor cat is still in the closet.
ETA:
4th boom at 10:13 AM.
5th boom at 11:32.
6th boom at 12:08.
7th boom at 12:22.
8th boom at 1:11.
9th boom at 1:33
10th boom at 1:49
11th boom at 2:04
12th boom at 2:29
13th boom at 2:50 (they are clearly getting faster at loading the thing.)
Arrrrrgh. |
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| Guests and Things. |
[Mar. 20th, 2009|04:28 pm] |
Our guests were AwesomeStepdad and ArtisticGodfather and ReverendGodmother. We had a lovely time and did lots of local NZ tourist things and had fabulous meals. Stepdad and LittleSister went to the South Island and had a fabulous time, while meanwhile I fixed up Godfather's website and the Godparents helped us enormously with our garden (I will have to post pictures one day). Then the Godparents went to Tasmania (and we'll see them back around Easter.)
In those few moments when I've not been entertaining guests, I have read 95% of RF09. I am interested in these ideas and must subscribe to more newsletters!
Meanwhile Meesto has been engaged in landing a very cool freelance job.
Stepdad went home to New England the other day. Then we had more guests arrive. Sweet Boston Family were here for just one day on their way to the South Island. They are off to more adventure now.
And then we heard that Meesto's grandmother died. She was 101 and a very cool lady. Meesto couldn't go to the funeral (which was earlier today). I didn't know her as long or as well as her blood relatives of course, but one of my funny memories is that she secretly loved good shoe design. Her memory was going at the end and I remember her complimenting my sandals every day she saw me one summer (because she had forgotten she had seen them the day before). She liked her own shoes in good order, too. We still haven't heard BigSister's impressions of the funeral. *waits*
And then we got a call from Stepdad's girlfriend that Stepdad, after having been home one day, is having his appendix out. Like, right now. Yeah. So we're sitting here by the phone. ETA: It's out, he's fine, he can go home tomorrow.
*puts head on desk* What a week. On, no wait, it's been a month. o_o |
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| Wheee! |
[Feb. 23rd, 2009|11:54 am] |
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I have been madly cleaning the house in anticipation of our guests arriving (which is why I've not much been on the internet) and now our guests are here. Guests are my stepfather-in-law, my godfather-in-law (www.jonbrooks.org), and my godmother-in-law. So now that they are here, I shall again not be much on the internet. See ya'll later! |
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| Luv. Tru Luv. |
[Feb. 16th, 2009|03:53 pm] |
For Valentine's Day, Meesto and I went over to LittleSister's house, which she and her roommates were moving out of, and while they were moving all their stuff out, Meesto and I cleaned. We both variously vacuumed and scrubbed, and Meesto used a rented Rug Doctor (wet vac for carpets) on every carpet, and I scrubbed all 3 toilets/bathrooms in the house. Since two of those toilets were entirely used by girlfriend-less filthy young men, you can imagine how entirely scary these here toilets (and walls and floors and sinks and tubs and lightswitches and and outlets and stairs and freaking ceilings) were. I was on hands and knees scrubbing piss off every surface for nine solid hours (except for those moments when I was scrubbing while standing).
That's love for you.
Also, to all you young ladies out there who wish to receive their deposits back on rental places- boy roommates are so disgusting that they are simply not worth the seeming help on rent. They spatter pee like firehoses and then they wipe their hands afterwards on the lightswitches. True facts. Run. Run away. |
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