The next 50 years

I can remember a time when nobody could really say for certain that the moon was not made of cheese.  Scientists perhaps were a little more sure that it wasn't, but the general consensus was that it could as well be made of cheese, or be a silver disk, or turn out to be a hole in the night sky!  Then one day we all crowded around these funky little glass cathode ray tubes with the images painted on the inside of the glass and watched as humans finally found out just what was the moon made of. We were quietly disappointed not to discover moon men, nor any trace thereof, but openly thrilled to have flung men so far from home and brought them back to tell the tale.  they were even able to bring back bits of the stuff and it was certainly of this world. Of late we are factually learning almost as much about Mars, a comet, and an asteroid, I think, from landed robots, and nearly as much from satellites around most of the nearby planets!  Our children are growing up in a...

I knew the sewer was going but I thought we'd try and fix it ourselves.  Today it went, and it only covered a small part around the drain.  So I put the wet rugs in the washer and didn't tell Dan because he was on a rampage over his flat tires and the van battery being dead again.  But then he came in to use the toilet and I had to stop him.  He wouldn't listen but finally I thought he was agreeing to not use the toilet.  Then I hear noise, flushing, and swearing and I go down to find he's got sewer water, with actual turds floating in it, all over the basement, all the way out the hall to the stairs. So I get to waste 2 hours sanitizing while not having working drains  before I can even begin to deal with the sewer itself. Seriously?  I'm so angry with him right now! He should have done as he was told and left it to me till tonight and got on with his day.  He won't trust me, no matter how many times I prove myself trustworthy and it's infuriat...

I'm having a blast writing descriptions for my new trunks.  Each one is described as though it were indeed a travelling suitcase made of sapient pearwood.  Each one has it's own name and unique character!  The first listings I took it seriously and listed them as little works of art.  Not a one sold.  I knew the format was too dry but I was stuck in that. This time I have some inspiration thanks to Terry Pratchett and it makes each little box have a personality that comes from it's colours.  I don't even know exactly what I'm doing when I start, only what colour range Im' using and whether it's formal or casual, natural or urban, supernatural or mundane, and so on.  From that then comes a character that becomes a personality.  The last few were pretty much completed before the personality came along, but in fact as soon as I began to write the ideas came. I'm going to paste them here, it's just so fun! 01 Bob. This funky prototype is just a bi...

No really, I don't know what I"m going to write about and when I leave it blank till later I forget entirely and have to go back in to edit.  Whew, I FELT that run-on sentence!  I'm a criminal when it comes to run-on sentences.  Comma splices are my primary weapon.  I'm forever trying to remember when writing and I think I do okay.  Not perfectly, but it isn't important on a blog or I'd go back in to fix it. Yes, I do this as the rough draft, just wing it and it comes out in prose.  Spelling and all, yes.  Yes, grammar too.  That's part of why I say that University's best gift to me was learning how to read and write.  It's not a flippant comment at all.  To read, that's not just being able to translate the written word, that's being able to walk into a large old library and find your section. Then to plumb the depths of a dozen or more books in order to glean or prove one or two facts.    To write, that is not only to transcr...

I did it, sent in my application for a vendor's spot on Broadway.  I didn't realize those were saved spots, but I should have.  I guess I just didn't think past "need a busker's license to vend."  Well in fact they have a separate setup for vendors vs entertainers!  I could do it with a blanket but I want to do it with a table so I picked spots in the area across from the theatre where the table vendors always set up.  I had to pick 3 spots and see what I get.  I dont know if I'll like the neighbors but I expect we all watch out for each other on breaks and I can probably just have an extra blanket to toss over my stuff for bathroom breaks. I sat and did some estimates on how much stock I might make and for what I might sell it.  I could get enough to take care of the costs of selling it at least.  Let me not put numbers in my blog, since it's more private than even my innermost thoughts.  Well, only because it's much more useful in causing ...

Writing in the blog, that is.  I didnt' write saturday because Tom was over.  didn't write sunday because Dan's home and I don't like writing when he's here.  I don't want him reading this one day and putting me through an emotional wringer for what I write.  Since I write about him, after all.  Monday and tuesday it was simply that I had printed boxes to work on and was painting all day.  I don't like stopping even for food when I'm painting. Dammit, I also don't like sneezing fits.  3 kleenex later, am I done yet? I"m painting a black pinstripe trunk and a fine sparkle blood red with red gold borders.  The pinstriping borders aren't decided yet. I think I'll use that deep black sparkle paint I like.  I primed the base with three clear coats to fill in the voids and smooth it, then a coat of black which being on black plastic needed only one coat to get effect.  Then I painstakingly taped out the fine lines I painted in with silver. ...

spent yesterday doing chores then visiting with Tom.  I also worked a bit on my boxes.  Today I'm going to spend my blogging time taking timmy out for a walk because it's warm and he's crazy bored. cyal8r

Hoo boy, I'm sore.  Been painting mostly all day.  Not much else besides painting and cleaning prints.  The clear looks really groovy in this object.  My back hurts all the way to my ankles with muscle spasms travelling from my wrists to my ankles via my back.  No really, they're from my hands to my feet!  I've got sores and paint on my hands too.  I must really love doing this, LOL.  Lavendar Leopard is well underway with just the spots and top coat to be done tomorrow.  I've blended from soft mauve out to royal purple with matching glitter layers to create the effect of darker and lighter patches like I did with the cheetah. I was going to add that in the last blog but I forgot. You can see the cheeta has light places around the joints of it's "limbs" and it's belly.  So I did that with purple blending opalescent purples of different shades and then matching purple glitter shades over top.  The combination helps hide the f...

Hand finished!  I've got 3 painted boxes now, the 3rd is getting it's finishing coats.  It's done in cheetah.  I pictured leopard but wrote a synopsis for cheetah. I felt very clever with my little story but not so clever to realize my mistake.  So the less exciting print of cheetah rather than those leopard rosettes wound up being made.  However, I can say it's gorgeous.  It's not as tidy as I'd like in this world of digitally printed applied vinyls and vacuum molded perfection, but it's hand made and unique.  AKA "OOAK." I've finished printing another white box then switched to the clear. It's the most affordable plastic although not the easiest to put paint on.  The paint is already too transparent and unless you're working for that look it gets challenging to get a smooth finish.  Even when I was chasing a transparent look with soft colouring I still couldn't eliminate uneven colour spots.  The shape catches paint in it's c...

It was a life skills course, the subject was community support systems. They talked about the various roles people play in each others' lives.  There were descriptions of personalities and the things they do for others.  There's the helper, a person who always comes by to help.  There's the one who cheers you up when you need a break.  he's usually goofy, entertaining, and these days quite popular.  There's the advisor, someone sober, perhaps a bit negative, but with experience and insight.  There's the comforter, the one who  soothes you when you're upset. These are just a few of the roles people might play and it's perfectly normal to be lacking in your own community.  Personally I've tried to be a helper, and I'm built to be a source of info.  But because I'm female and built attractively, my info was never trusted.  People assumed I was wrong.  Assumed I'd make mistakes interpreting, understanding, retrieving, or storing informa...

Last night's print came out so horribly I decided to tweet it as a general sort of example to the community of how bad it can be when a print goes awry.  Within the hour I had a very good answer to the problem, one I never would have realized was to blame.  I knew we had filament spooling problems but I didn't know that tension was producing the blorps as well as the voids!  The voids were hidden by support material so till I started cleaning the print off  I didn't see them.  I have thrown it in the trash and pulled it back out several times this morning and finally decided that with heated tools and sanding and so on, it just might work anyway.  So I'm going to refurbish another crapped out print.  I've done a few!  If parts don't break off in the process, I can usually make it work, and often a bit of wire and nail polish reattaches very well. Okay, let me make it more concrete because I might have someone's attention, though I doubt it. ...

When I put on my new cheap socks for the first time they stink of the factory.  It makes me worry.  I wonder about the people getting paid too little and what atmosphere they have to work in.  I wonder, if they get liberated, how much will it cost to live over here?  Will we still be able to feed our little dog so well, or ourselves?  What is the real cost of these socks?  And what in heaven's name makes them stink like that?  Is the air over there so saturated with petrochemicals?  I feel sorry for China, I want to do better for those people.  When I learn how social they are, I want even more to care about them.  The people seem to have taken confucious and Buddha to heart and become really peaceable as a society and there they are working for peanuts to provide Walmart with a profit off cheap socks. Walmart has done what I warned and killed off Canadian stores.  The only one big enough to stand up to them is Superstore/loblaws....

I'm so proud I finally made my own object.  There's more to come!  I only have one copy of it so far, it's a steamer trunk with four shod feet.  The interior is blacker than black with depth and shine at the bottom, murky and deep.  the bottom has a similar colour blend with flat black at the edges and dark black shimmer in the middle.  It's a black glitter polish I got in a cheap gift set.  They're always having to sell them on clearance so I pick up some groovy polish cheap. I painted the exterior with much love and layers so the purple/blue base paint has depth in strong light and the gold/brass strapping seems to glow.  On the base paint I applied assorted printed patches representing travel stickers I printed off the internet.  I ordered them by location so that a trip was mapped out by which ones went on when.  There's a variety of african ones, the first being from the Sarenghetti, so I say the trunk, whose name is Bob, comes out of A...

I tried to watch a Dr. Phil bullying show but he missed the point so badly I had to stop. The "shovel girl" was in the hot seat for grabbing a shovel.  Dr. Phil clearly watched that video, but he didn't see it.  I watched it way back at the beginning and I saw it.  He kept grilling her about being friends and the sample bully who'd filmed it was insisting they'd been friends.  At one point she kept trying to insist it wasn't, she called out "no, it was fake, it was fake" but Dr. Phil, the boy, and her mother all kept on talking right over her. I saw her tour the gang round her place.  Desperately trying to meet the mark of "don't bug her" with friendliness, trying to keep the situation calm, knowing with dead certainty that it wasn't working. It was clear to me that this was a pack of bullies playing with it's prey.  She knew, her mother knew, and those "friendly" kids knew but they know better to EVER admit it. Th...

I'm watching The Flash tonight. There's a villain who inspires strong emotion in people to the degree of disabling or manipulating them.  Anger, fear, sorrow, he tosses them off like bullets.  When he hit the hero he seemed to pick up his victim's feelings in return. I thought, yeah, have him hit someone like me.  A peer abuse survivor knows anger, fear, and sorrow in measures that would make this villain rock in place and cry in anguish.  His petty manufactured emotion would just be a teacup dropped in a vat of existing emotion, all carried and managed expertly by an experienced survivor. Not that hollywood understands anything that deep.

This beats all.  I actually witnessed more violence in my family than Dan did.  His dad was horribly verbally abusive and would drink till he was miserable and berate his mother.  Turns out there wasn't a lot of physical assault, just flying debris on occasion to accent the drama. Then there's me, remembering the all-out physical assaults from both mother and father.  Mom liked to use small wooden weapons. The wooden spoon was a fave.  She'd attack our thighs and buttocks because then she wouldn't worry about hitting our kidneys but could deliver a good sting with every twap.  The trick was to redden the child without lasting marks.  Breaking the weapon was a bragging moment for both mother and child. If I called my mother "mother" instead of "mom" (my mom, there's mom, there's my mom, etc) I got slapped.  Mother was too formal, it suggested a lack of affection. Can't have that, she's my MOM and I'm required to love her!  My act...

I was waiting for Dan but the moment I started this, he came out of the can.  How in hell does he go in there for so long at a time?  I can't imagine wanting to spend so much time in there outside of the tub.  It's cold, the seat isn't exactly ergonomic.  it smells to some degree or another at least when in use. Well anyway.  Found some inspiration for my 3doodler pen so after a year of owning it and being merely offended with it, I think it's going to become useful.  I've ordered some PLA with it. Why they included 2 abs and no pla sticks I don't know.  I've learned that I can make a surface sticky with hairspray, paper, or acetone melted abs to get the drawing to start.  I've learned from my 3d printer what sorts of structure forms to aim for.  Now I've seen some ideas where you start on the flat but peel up the 2d into 3d space and add more on the 2d level as you go.  Or build in flats and glue together at angles to each other, etc. ...

There's a poster on G+ that I follow.  She's really smart and I really like reading her stuff.  There's always comments but the comment field always tells me comments are disabled.  Sometimes it's lots of comments, other times only a few.  I find it weird but today thought, hey, maybe I've been specifically blocked from commenting by the OP?  Maybe it's personal?  Maybe my comments when I first found her angered her or were deemed unworthy.  Maybe I'm way stupider than I think I am, on top of being far more selfish than I realize, far more controlling than I intend to be, so on.  Lately I've really been doubting myself like that.  Thinking perhaps I'm all these awful things people hate, completely, and quite obnoxious beyond reason.  The only answer I can think of is to remove myself as best I can from human society.  It's what they clearly want.  They don't want my comments, ideas, thoughts or opinions and I can't be present w...

Whenever I see someone on TV digging a spoon into a little round carton of icecream I remember this story.  I was just a little kid.  Over 4 but not yet in school.  We moved to the "new" house, where we stayed put till the kids were raised, when I was four.  I went into kindergarten a little early, so this must have been that first summer.  Well for that first year I only went to school half days and Mom was stuck being a babysitter the rest of the time.  She sure was happy when the school took over the next year.  So I remember playing on the kitchen floor, whatever I was doing.  My mother called to me and I looked up to listen to her talking to me.  She was standing there eating her icecream.  We had those square blocks of neapolitan out in the chest freezer and she had this fancy crap, hagen daz or whatever they had in the 60s.  She's chowing down with a spoon across the kitchen and starts explaining to me that she's sure I'd lik...

Just another wasted day....  Well, it feels like it.  I always feel that way if I don't get enough done to brag about it.  I did some knitting, some 3d printing, and the few daily chores I always do.  No main project, or cleaning.  No good excuse either.  What I did spend time doing was watching youtube and knitting, mostly.  I watched my old vlogs from 2006.  I really enjoyed it too.  I like my face, my voice, etc.  So I did a new one for 9 or 10 years hence.  I didn't really say anything purposeful but I rambled, so, well, so what?  I'm considering doing more vlogs more often again, even though nobody else will ever reward them. And that's about how interesting today has been.  Even for me. Oh, outside?  Fucking goddamn bitching cold, that's what.  I mean -20C for the "hey it warmed up" temperature and -37C for the "did you see how cold it got last night?"  Yeah, that's cold enough I don't go out for ent...

Ah the smell of roasting turkey.  So delightful!  I was going to ride my bike to the bank today but it's bitterly cold out and we discovered that some of our debits are, in fact, coming out the other bank, making it less of a critical concern than it was.  Now Dan can deposit the catch-up cash on Monday and it'll be soon enough.  So I'm pleased about that and got my chore list addressed instead.  It really is awful cold, by anyone's standards!  Minus twenty-seven point six in the daytime bad enough for you?  It's actually pretty reasonable to cycle in aside from the extra effort it takes to push in cold temps.  It's an odd phenomenon.  You're wearing more, so you're heavier, sweatier, and have your joints stuffed with insulation where they normally bend.  Then you're on a machine with stiff grease in all it's bearings, slowing you down.  Lastly, there seems to be some thickness to the very air, even with good synthetic winter grease...

It sucks being smart in a world of morons, it really does.  Nobody to talk about interesting ideas with.  I tried to float my space time ideas with Dan and he just couldn't even understand enough to not understand.  I mean, didn't even try to picture what I was telling him.  He'd rather go on at length about political rebellion.  Everything that man thinks is about rebellion, not much else.  He's one of those "what are you protesting?" "what have you got?" types of men.  Just try and tell him he has to follow along with the crowd and you'll see how little reason plays a part. So. Time is not real.  It's not a thing.  Let that idea go.  Time does not exist except as a function of measuring entropy.  We created it.  We made it synch up with our observable universe so now it appears to be proved by same, but it's not real.  We're stuck in 3 dimensions because we cling to it, rather like someone insisiting the surface of the...

There is a lovely woman on my google plus feed who is also a surgeon.  Not just any surgeon, but a thorassic.  Heart surgery and stuff, you know?  I mean, it's so very traditional male, right?  And she's young and beautiful.  I do mean beautiful.  So pretty she knows it kind of lovely, and nobody argues.  this woman could be modelling, acting, or just attracting a heart surgeon, but she isn't, she's doing it herself. Why is it so rare?  Are women in that career still rare?  Well, I don't know, but I know it's startling and i know why.  Not so much because she's female, but because she's a pretty  female.  Do you know that people think they have a stake in a woman's beauty?  That even strangers sometimes think it's important enough to address?  Apparently so!  I ran into it and I wasn't even all that pretty.  Oh I was a lovely young woman, but pictures would have shown a pretty ordinary level of pretty, not ...

I only had 3 drinks, why the hangover? Okay, let's calculate, one personal bottle of champagney stuff is 1.5 drinks, and then I had a snowball with a generous pour of advocaat, probably 2.5 oz.  yeah, that's three drinks.  Then I woke up 5 hours our with severe dehydration headache and barfed up two glasses of water and got the runs. And why does a caffiene headache show up when you're late for the morning coffee?  I drink caffiene up till 6 pm, shouldn't the headache wait till 6? yeah, so, I'm feeling a little on the crappy side today.  Good food and hydration are my plan for recovery. Poor little Timmy seems to empathically get ill too.  Or we fed him something wrong, hard to say, but the timing is wild.  I woke up with a full bladder and Timmy sprang from bed crying.  I made him wait in the tub while I emptied said bladder but he was miserable to get outside and poop.  When 9 am came he was so again, so he's got the runs at least a bit, poo...