beetiger

We just got home from a lovely weekend in Boston, during which projectmothra got to spend lots of quality time with his cousins, and I got to sneak in a bit of socializing with lediva for her birthday. And then we discovered that the heat in the house was not on and it was 37 degrees inside.

How the furnace was filthy enough to be turning itself off and belching smoke when we tried to turn it back on, when I've got a maintenance contract on it, I don't know. But it's been sorta-cleaned now, with more to follow during regular business hours. I spent the earlier part of the evening cuddling a shivery little projectmothra to sleep in my bed, and now I'm here keeping an eye on him while I catch up on LJ and feel very cranky. It's up to about 41 in most of the house now, and probably warmed in here with the space heater on.

I won't say that the pictures are any good or artistic, but I did manage to snap something for each of the days I was away for the Ninety days project. I'll post them tomorrow. Today's is not quite right, but my camera battery died and I'm not up to dealing with it tonight.

Grumpity grump grump.

Paypal's doing a shopping promo , which I believe the way I integrate PayPal on my websites Little Pagans and Mother's Hearth will allow them to qualify for.

Buy $30 of stuff, get $15 back.

Let me know if you try it and it works!

1. In cooking/food chemistry, what are the most unlikely two flavors that
you've come across that actually worked well together?

I once built a chili lime version of Diet Pepsi that was excellent, though no one took me up on it. Once I developed a sparkling drink made out of champagne, rosewater, and red zinger tea which was actually beautiful. And I'm a fan of lavender and chocolate together.


2. What was the atmosphere like at an Ivy League school and did you
thrive there?

I miss college a lot. :) The atmosphere at Yale was pretty complex. There were a lot of really driven people, whom I mostly didn't spend that much time with, and then there were a bunch of really smart slackers, whom I spent more time with. You could tell some people were there because they'd worked hard to get ahead, and they were going to keep at it, but a lot more of us were kind of there as a reward for doing well in high school, and once we were there we didn't care all that much. I remember often having the feeling of "Wow, look at what he can do, and that's with being stoned 75% of the time. Imagine if he actually gave a shit!" in relation to a lot of my friends. I did well at the things I knew how to do, and not that well at the things I needed to do that weren't my strong points. I got the first C's in my life there. I didn't learn how to do things that were hard for me, and really, I still don't know that well how to go from bad to competent at something, though I know how to go from good to better. Yale's very insulated from the rest of New Haven, so we didn't go out off campus very much at all, except when I was brave enough to visit grad student friends.

Did I thrive? I guess so. I had a close group of friends, some of which I still am in touch with occasionally. I sang a lot, laughed a lot, did theatre, learned biology and Irish literature and ancient science. I was heavily involved with a group that read children's stories to each other while eating milk and cookies, every Thursday night. (Gods bless John, the man who brought me into that right after I arrived, by climbing with an invitation into my dorm room window.) Life in the dorms there was cozy – everyone ate together, hung out in a very small number of places. It felt like a big family, which I understand 20 years later really isn't the case so much. I had a serious relationship with someone that went wrong in a way that turned me into something of a stalker and ruined a lot of friendships and at least a good year of my life. My senior project was very haphazardly done, and I didn't understand it at all, really. (I mostly took tadpoles apart and glued them back together again.) Nevertheless, I got into a really good grad program, and did really poorly there. I miss meeting people the way you can in college, always someone new there. I should have kissed more of them.

3. If you could travel to any other country within the next year, and
money/logistics were no object, which would you choose and why? (Up to
you if this is a family or solo trip.)

It depends exactly how far money/logistics would be no object, I think. If we were just talking me, and the time and budget to do it, I'd go take some sort of a short course or theme-organized tour in Greece, in which I'd be able to meet people and learn something as well as see the country. I've always wanted to go to Greece, and I'm really in a mode now where being on my own and meeting the kinds of people who do things like that would be really wonderful. Actually, some of the members of my High Priestess' dance troupe are taking a Greek tour in March, and if logistics were no object, I'd go with them, though I'm not sure hanging around with dancers would be that great for my self-esteem.

If money and logistics were really no object, in a grander sense, I'd take lediva on a tour of Italy. I've promised her this at some point, and I still intend to do it. In reality if this happens it won't be for a few years at least, though.

4. What is your most tender hope for the mothra?
“Tender” is an interesting word. I had to think about this for a while. He's an exceptional person, already, at three, and it's clear he's marching to his own drummer, or possibly to the sound of the woodwinds. I wish him a comfortable balance of groundedness and dream, an ability to function with feet in the both the world of ideas and in the world of manifestation. I wish him love that inspires but does not smother. I wish that he has all the people he could ever want in the world to support him and bring him joy, but that in the end, he be a person who can be satisfied by his own mind and his own company, yet who is always driven to learn and grow.

5. Paper, rock, or scissors? And why?
Well, this is an easy one. Paper. It's the one with the hope of opting out of the conflict and just finding a better solution. You can write poetry on it, you can make paper airplanes, you can craft a letter of apology, you can paint.

I'm getting a new laptop (my current one hs some minor electrical issues that were starting to feel dangerous. I'm thinking of passing the old machine on to projectmothra. I'd like to give him 'net access, since he likes to IM bard_bloom and play webgame tie-ins to kids' movies. And though of course I'm not going to leave him unsupervised wth it for big chunks of time, he's already surprisingly good with google searches, and I think I'd be a bad parent if I didn't put some auto-filtering in place. Does anyone have experience with any of the content-restriction or opt-in kid's browsing programs?

Thanks.

CB I Hate Perfume:
"Forest Floor": That's astonishing. It smells exactly like what is says. A forest floor in the Northeast-- wet leaves, clean soil, spicy evergreens, a bit of moss and mushroom.

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab:
"Arrival at the Sabbath and Homage to the Devil": That's astonishing. It smells just like...delicious caramel candy.

I'm not at Arisia. Nope, I am not. I suspect most of you are. I will be at the Fetish Flea in two weeks, at least for a bit, but apparently most of you won't be. I am probably unreasonably grumpy about this.

projectmothra told me today that one of the figures he drew on the driveway was a goddess. It had more or less the usual toddler-drawn person shape, except it had four arms and a bunch of lines radiating from the head. I asked him what a goddess was and he told me "It's like a regular person, except with a lot of whiskers."

Then again, I got him one of those little primer tablets where you have a space for a picture on the top, and lines to write a story underneath. He's loaded most of the pages with little pictures with smiling ovals with two legs, and has written underneath them "Baa Baa green sheep" or "Baa Baa pink sheep" or whatever color sheep the marker he used for that page was. But strangely, a few of them say "Baa Baa orange sheep.com".

Heads up to the people in my Carnival Diabolique Circle: shadesong,edenssixthday,zoofussa,kueble,atropinesulfate,latzoni,honeycat,prunesnprisms,ekishou,and minnalavendar.

The Carnivale, in addition to having the whole Freak Show, also has a Snake Pit. I'm kind of guessing at least some of you guys will all want that too, but I'm a bit afraid to commit you to twice the financial hit without checking in -- that wouldn't be fair.

The Ballyhoo (aka the 13-in-1) will be $65 including shipping. The Ballyhoo plus Snake Pit will be $120 including shipping. I'll make sniffies of Anaconda for all who are in for the Snake Pit.

I'm going to somehow restrain myself from ordering until I hear from at least most of you. I don't want to wait very long -- I promised you a first-wave order, so please let me know whether you want Snakes and Freaks, or just Freaks, as soon as you can. I'd like to order tomorrow sonetime at the latest. PayPal to vickib AT bestweb DOT net right now would be great, but I'm mostly concerned to find out what you want to do so I can order.

Thanks!

It's rare for me share my choices about charity publically, but I was alerted to the situation at this shelter right as I was in the middle of organizing my own year-end donations, and this particular thing touched me personally in a whole bunch of ways and is very time-dependent. Please go take a look, and if you feel so moved and are able, help these folks out.

Shelter for trans kids in NYC at risk of closing.

I've been playing a lot with getting scented samples of stuff these days, and I seem to have acquired a number of sugar scrubs, which confuse me. What exactly does one do with these, and why?

Thanks for any help.