beetiger

They sent me an invite code because I'd been poking around with OpenID. Don't think I'm migrating or even crossposting right now, but the account's there as beetiger, and I don't need a code from anyone whose list I was on. If you are migrating or posting separate content there, do let me know.

Thanks!

As I was drifting off to sleep last night, the sound of the thunder and rain outside turned into chattering insectile robot voices saying the same thing over and over, just a little too fast to be processed consciously. It was something important, and a general broadcast, not to me specifically. I woke up feeling like I internalized something from that, but I have absolutely no idea what it was.

projectmothra stayed at my sister's last night. He got to see my nephew's Little League game, eat ice cream, and stay up too late watching godawful things on YouTube that said nephew decided to show him, and eat Apple Jacks for breakfast.

bard_bloom and I got to go into Manhattan to see the dress rehearsal/performance for this week's Prairie Home Companion, at the Town Hall. It was a good show. Elvis Costello was one of the guest stars; he was sweet and funny and played "Sulfur and Sugarcane" from the album he will be releasing in June. I realized by the end of the show that I usually listen to Prairie Home Companion in snippets rather than straight through, and that two and a half hours straight of it might be too much for me. Also, there was the strange experience of having someone at the end of my row faint, and in falling somehow get his head caught between the seats as he went unconscious. Or at least that's what I gathered happened after talking to people at intermission. At the time, I mostly heard a loud thump and a lot of commotion but no call for an ambulance or anything.(They got him untrapped before he came to, and he did come to within a few minutes, so all seemed to be relatively well.)

This afternoon we met a friend/former student/former coworker of bard_bloom's at the NY Coffee and Tea Show. projectmothra was way more polite than about half the other patrons, and scored free products by sheer cuteness. I was overall pretty unimpressed with the coffees but amused by quite a few of the teas, and by some varietal honeys from Greece. Afterward, we went to Books of Wonder, where I finally picked up a copy of the Graveyard Book (yay, supporting indie bookstores) and then to the attached Cupcake Cafe (yay buttercream).

I still seem to be really amused by the fact that I now have two-tone hair. I still lose a lot of hair in the shower, and when I see I'm holding strands of two notably different colors, it makes me giggle.

Is this Dreamwidth thing an add-on that people are attaching to livejournal, or a way people are interfacing with LJ, or is this a thing people I know are migrating to and I need to use openid and follow in a new place or two places or something? I am confused, and I am tired of chasing people around social networks.

Stolen from eisa

Dear readers,

I have suffered complete identity loss amnesia. Please fill in the blanks. Tell me who I am!
I trust you, my friends, to tell me only the truth* and to steer me in the right direction.


* Yeah, right

I've just recently realized -- though I suppose I've been aware of it all through -- that I've got a bunch of old wine in my basement, not particularly well-cellared or anything. It's mostly either stuff I bought in a shopping spree when I realized we were leaving Ithaca in 1996, or stuff I bought when I needed to use up my liquor allowance quickly when I was getting laid off from Seagram in 2002. I stopped drinking when I started to try to get pregnant, right at the end of that year, and I didn't really back to drinking outside of social events (that is to say, out of my own home) until I weaned in 2007.

So I've got stuff that dates back to 1990, and although it was decent enough, it's really not doing anyone any good, or getting any better, by staying in the basement. So I'm going to try to start opening it up on a regular basis, and I'm giving myself permission to dump it if I don't like it.

I opened up a Late Harvest Riesling from one of the good Finger Lakes wineries tonight, from 1990. The cork came apart with the corkscrew, dropping its bottom quarter or so into the bottle. The wine had a little less sweetness than it should have, and a lot less of the acidity, so it was pretty bland and insipid. Bleh. Gave up after half a glass.

I'll be curious to see if any of the French import reds, mostly vintage 1996 or so, are still worth drinking. But not tonight.

I'm taking koogrr to this on Wednesday. Anyone else in the area care to join us? It will be much fun.

A chat with one of the 1st graders whom I help as a Reading Volunteer:

Me: (after a quick off-book chat about pets) Let's get back to the reading, you are my last student today and then I need to go do some work.

She: You have a job? Where?

Me: I work at my house, editing and writing on my computer.

She: Do you have to do that so you don't lose your house?

After many many years of fussing about it, I finally decided that my body is at the stage where all kinds of permanent changes are happening to her, whether I like it or not, so I might as well go ahead and make a change that I liked.

So I finally went ahead and had a tattoo done. I went to Craig Cooley, who was recommended to me by redbird on the basis of some detailed naturalistic work that she'd had done by him.

It didn't hurt as much as I thought it would, and I found it significantly less unpleasant than the dental work I had had done the same week. I was surprised to find that the pain felt more like hot cutting than like repeated stabbity. And Craig was very friendly and sweet. We talked about bees a lot while he did the work. I'm really happy with both the whole experience and the actual tattoo.

I didn't want to post for a few days because the white part of the flowers was a little bloody and brown, but even though things are not totally healed, it's clear enough to take a decent picture. Obviously there's a skill to tattoo photography that I don't have, but you should be able to get the idea. It's on the outer side of my right calf, and it's about 4 inches tall.

(p.s. Just in case it's not obvious, if you have something negative to say about the image, please keep it to yourself. I'm going to be wearing this for the rest of my life, and I'm the kind of insecure that doesn't let stray comments let go easily.)

Bee on Apple Blossom on Calf

I never do this sort of thing. But I'm trying to be more open to connection, so I thought I'd put a little opportunity out there. Romantic, non-romantic, and anti-romantic messages all welcome.


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