Tomorrow R & I are off to Montana for the holiday weekend. I'm looking forward to spending time with my family, especially the young uns' that I don't see very often. One of my nephews is going to have his first birthday party while we are there! =)

Hope you guys have a nice holiday!

http://www.arts.ouc.bc.ca/fina/glossary/j_list.html

Yesterday I finished an excellent book: I, Lucifer. I tore through it in one day, and it was well worth staying up late and messing up my circadian rhythms for. See, God decided to allow Lucifer back into Heaven if he would live out the rest of the life of a mortal man (this particular man had just committed suicide). Lucifer agrees to a month-long trial period. Debauchery reigns supreme! There are lots of little jokes about Elton John, how Lucifer wishes he invented ice cream, what it's really like when a human is possessed, and so on. If you don't know your archangel trivia, you will when you finish this book. This book also happens to have a soundtrack, which I bought long before I had heard of the book. It is performed by the (real) Tuesday Weld. It is on my excellent scale as well. :)

http://www.elitedesigners.org/

Queenrider! Like Brekke and Celina, you would ride
a gold dragon. Although you are not the senior
werywoman, you have both intelligence and
compassion and are one of the most respected
people in the weyr. You fight Thread with a
flame-thrower from your dragons back, assist
the senior weyrwoman, and help keep the weyr
running smoothly.


A Pern Quiz: What Color Dragon Would You Ride?
brought to you by Quizilla

Stolen entry

I am copying down an entry I read today on http://www.fussy.org. Hopefully she doesn't mind, but it's so well said and....somehow fits today:

Wednesday, November 17

I had a teacher once who advised us to take a poem of someone else's that we liked and copy it out longhand, word for word. He said it would slow down our reading and make us think about the poem differently. I liked that, and started copying out poems in a special notebook. One day I showed the notebook to a boyfriend and he shut me down by saying "Why, so you can pretend you wrote them all?"

There's a woman named Robyn who practices yoga at the same place I do who just went through her first pregnancy. She did variations on third-series ashtanga until her belly was as big as a sack of groceries and she had modified her practice down to, like, two poses. One of which was handstand. She'd just float right up there and serenely stand on her wide hands for minutes at a time. I guess it felt good. It certainly kept her arms strong, and the rest of us amazed.

The other day I was about three-quarters of the way through my yoga practice when it came to the point in the middle of backbends where you do handstand and balance by yourself for twelve breaths. I'm more of a flinger than a floater, so my teacher catches my hips, then he stands there and counts slowly to twelve while subtly, telepathically adjusting my posture and watching for signs of collapse.

I didn't collapse; though I've been sick on and off for two months and my attendance at practice has been abominable, I still managed to stand there on my hands by myself for twelve breaths and then float my feet down to my mat like two delicate, giant flakes of snow. And my teacher said, That was good. And I told him, I was imagining Robyn while I did that. And my teacher said, That's a Vedanta technique called Sampad. It means "same foot." Where you imagine your foot standing in the foot of the Vishvedevas*. Or in your case, your hands in the hands of Robyn.

And it's twenty years too late to tell the snarky ex-boyfriend**, but I guess that's another reason to copy someone's poem, so you can gain understanding from standing within a stonger person's words. For the time being.

*"The mind is certainly infinite, and the Vishvedevas (high beings) are infinite. Through this meditation one wins an infinite world." From the Brahma Sutra Bhasya of Shankaracharya. Footnote: "Vishvedevas occupy the mind for the time being."

**Why, yes, I do seem to hold grudges.

Woo!

Exciting news of the day was the bright green 90 written at the top of my math test. Yay!

Vancouver 2004

R & I made one of our biannual trips to Vancouver a few weeks ago. It was very enjoyable, and not terribly expensive. I did manage to acquire about $40 worth of candy, but it's yummy Canadian candy, so well worth it. :)

The main purpose behind our trip was to see the Massive Change exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery. The curator of the exhibit is Bruce Mau, he & his design team were behind much of the work there. Massive Change " investigates the capacity, power, and promise of design." Some of the topics were genetically modified foods & plants, genetic research in humans and animals, harnessing solar power, human powered vehicles, and activism. The solar & wind power exhibits were really interesting, the theory is that many of the world's poorest countries are those that have the most sun. If they were able to effectively harness solar power (in an affordable fashion) they could be some of the wealthiest countries. I also learned about the Rocket Stove http://www.efn.org/~apro/AT/atrocketpage.html. I didn't realize that so many people are still dying because of cooking fires....I can't even imagine what it would be like to live with a fire pit in the middle of the living room in my apartment. We were able to read about the creation of GoreTex, CamelBak hydration packs, Crazy Glue, MRE's, and much more. The most impressive room was painted a really bright, orange-red color (The Wealth and Politics room). Hanging from the ceiling were various silver inflated glove-shaped objects. Each of them represented some sort of statistic...such as when a single text message in the Philippines allowed for a huge protest against the government. A little more can be read about it here http://massivechange.com/index.php?topic=wealthpolitics. The official Massive Change website http://massivechange.com/ is pretty interesting, and there is a book as well (which I'm coveting). I found the whole experience pretty inspiring. Of course, over time that inspiration drifts away, and despondency can settle in again. I'm hoping to find something to supplement my need for inspiration at home. I highly reccomend the exhibit, and it will be moving to other locations so keep an eye out for it at a museum near you.

This summer when I was at "architecture camp" we used Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto for inspiration in the studio. Certainly helpful for a designer who is trying not to think, but does need to think. ;)

We also made a nice little discovery about downtown Vancouver, you can park in the city lots (usually found underneath shopping centers) for only $4/day on the weekends. We were misinformed about disabled parking, though, someone told us we didn't have to pay, and we returned to the car the next day to find a ticket. I guess you shouldn't believe random people who come up to you on the street, eh? Next think you know, I'll be believing that if I pray to Jesus I'll be able to walk again!

Lesbians, very little smoke, lots of rock!

On November 3, R & I went to see Tegan and Sara play at the Crocodile. It was a nice show! They always seem to start out their shows a little uncomfortable with the audience. They aren't uncomfortable with their music nor their instruments, but it takes them awhile to make eye contact and begin their trademark stage banter. They played just under one hour, I wish they had done a few more songs on the encore. R claims I'm bordering on stalker-fandom with T&S...however, I deny this because I don't really have any interest in *them*, just their music.

Afterwards, Melissa Ferrick took the stage. I had not heard her music before, but I enjoyed it and seeing her perform. This is a pretty accurate review http://www.advocate.com/html/music/0499_ferrick.asp. She played for a loooong time, possibly 2 hours if the clock & my mind were correct. Part of the enjoyment of that show was the audience, which I would say was 97% gay women (plus R, me, and one other guy). They were reallyreally into her, screaming her name, singing along, laughing, catcalls...at some shows this would be annoying, but this enhanced the effect for me.

Since it was an all ages show, there were very few smokers. I think most smokers are in the late 20's on up age range, which was not a significant population at this show. I caught the scent of a clove wafting over to me, but otherwise I was able to breathe pretty freely, and my clothing didn't reek afterwards.

Anyhow, if you haven't heard T&S's new album, So Jealous, let me know and I'll hook you up. It's a good time! If you've only heard the mp3 samples from their website, you owe yourself another listen, because those are really poor quality. My one complaint with their music is that they have quite a few songs dedicated to how hard it is to be on the road and miss you loved one(s) at home. This theme is tiring to me if I think about it too much.

What about TeamJulieGrant.com?

Some of you may wonder why I am not publishing on TeamJulieGrant.com. I plan to, but I don't really have the time to dedicate to do it nicely right now. I'd rather not do a half-assed job, so until I have the time, everything will be here. :)

Politics

I'm not going to say much about politics....I don't know if I really have anything to add that hasn't been said much better by others. Yesterday when reading www.salon.com I read an interesting letter that someone had sent in. I hope they don't mind me re-posting it here:

I voted for Kerry, and obviously I'm angry and extremely discouraged at the outcome of the election. But it is high time that everyone acknowledge that the majority of this country has put its support behind President Bush.

You can say all you want about the Republican fear machine -- which is not to say that it isn't a powerful force -- but you have to hold everyone accountable for their own actions. And if the country can't see the problems with Bush now, can they ever? There is a much larger, and yet simpler problem here than you seem willing to admit: The majority of people in the United States support what Bush stands for. They oppose gay marriage, they believe Saddam had a hand in Sept. 11, and they believe that we can and must, indeed, that we have a right to eradicate all our perceived international threats. You saw it with your own eyes.

I watched at 7 in the morning here in Barcelona, Spain, as the popular vote tally of my home country gave an advantage to Bush of more than 3 million votes. Can I blame Bush for the votes he has received? The true identity of this country must now start to become apparent.

-- Zach Green

I don't like the feeling that my beliefs are so different from so many people in this country. I don't like that so many people are so judgmental, because as the media is telling us, this race was won/lost because of "morals". I know that it was a small margin, but it still feels like a lot of people (because it is!). None of this has made me doubt my beliefs, but when people say "Yay! America's Great! It's just Bush that's bad!!" they obviously are deluded. But I doubt that anyone, in any country, feels that they agree with the rest of their country about most values.

I've seen a few people comment that "this isn't the country we learned about in school", but in some ways, it is. This is the America that destroyed the native people of North America. This is the America that wanted to keep slavery, to prevent women from voting, that had the Stonewall Riots.... We are moving more and more towards an America where one cannot choose their own religion without persecution, or live their lifestyle without being disenfranchised. It scares me.