Bye bye, '09

(I stole this from Sundry.  Did it last year too.)


1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?
Learned to teach a class, and somehow managed to teach it several times without making a total ass of myself.  Earned a fancy "title" to put on my business cards.  Told off a co-worker when stuff he did made me look like a fool.  Started sewing a real quilt.  Made a bunch of homemade stuff like salsa & pasta sauce & pumpkin puree.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?



Kind of.... I didn't really make any last year though, come to think.  I really don't like making yearly resolutions.  I've found it's easier to set monthly goals - it gives me a better sense of accomplishment which in turn motivates me to keep going.  It worked for me this year with going to the gym, until I caught a cold & couldn't go, then spent a weekend in the hospital and still couldn't go... threw me completely off.  But this year, each month I'll re-set my goals of eating healthier and getting more exercise, creating things and staying motivated at work.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?


Friends back home had another little girl, & cousins did too.

4. Did anyone close to you die?


No.  Which is good of course.

5. What countries did you visit?


No foreign travel yet.  I think I visited one new city in the U.S. - the booming metropolis of Yuma, Arizona.  Good times!

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
I'm hoping that the company will have more money so that I have more opportunities to DO stuff.  Also a kitten.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
God, I suck at dates.  My trip to Phoenix & Yuma, and when B & I went to Chicago.  Whenever those were.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?


Teaching that class, especially the one time in Phoenix when I totally had to wing it.  That felt pretty good.

9. What was your biggest failure?
My attitude about a lot of stuff.  And dropping out of therapy.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Nothing major, but there was this story which was kind of funny.  Also was diagnosed with Thoracic Outlet Syndrome which sounds unpleasant but it just leaves me a bit sore.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
I would say my Macbook, but I didn't buy it.  Woot!  Hmm, maybe my food processor?  It gave me the means to turn a mountain of tomatoes into a freezer full of pasta sauce and salsa.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
I'll have to say B again, who made a difficult decision to ensure his well-being and take some strain off our relationship.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?


The aforementioned co-worker that I finally worked up the nerve to tell off.  But then he apologized and was pretty sincere about it, so while he royally pissed me off I've managed to let it go.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Rent, groceries, credit card debt, and the university.  Did you know that when you cook at home, you have to buy a lot of groceries?  It's appalling.

15. What did you get really excited about?
An idea I ran past my bosses that was completely out of left field, and they are so far totally supportive & enthusiastic about it.  Ask me again in May, and we'll see where it goes!

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?
Sara Bareilles' cover of Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay, from her live album.  It gave me goosebumps the first time I heard it, and both B and I love it.



Also, Supermassive Black Hole by Muse, it was my go-to driving song all year.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

– happier or sadder? Neutral.  Things have changed, but not for the better or the worse, just changed.
– thinner or fatter? Fatter I think.  It's all this cooking.


– richer or poorer? Always poorer!

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?


I wish I had gotten off my ass more.  At work, at home, with exercise and creative things... I could have done so much more than just SITTING.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?


Spazzing out about stupid stuff that wasn't worth spazzing out about.

20. How did you spend Christmas?


Just B and I, a lazy day.  We'll celebrate with the family tomorrow.

21. Did you fall in love in 2009?
Erm... well... I developed a couple new crushes.  But they don't really count.

22. What was your favorite TV program?


Leverage and Bones.  Which, if you haven't seen Leverage, you should!  January 13th!  Season two starts up again!



On DVD, I caught the Wire bug (ha!!) and have gotten a little hooked on Angel too.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?


There were some people that I severely disliked during the course of the year, but it's mostly okay now.

24. What was the best book you read?
Hunger Games and Catching Fire, the whole Percy Jackson series, An Echo in the Bone, and World War Z.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?

The White Rabbits


and Sara Bareilles.  If you get beyond the annoying song from the radio, the chick has an amazing voice.

26. What did you want and get?
An awesome computer, and Photoshop Elements 8.

27. What did you want and not get?

Something out of therapy.

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
Avatar and Star Trek.  Done and done.  Those two will always be on my favorites list.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
We had a real party this year!  And I have no pictures except this one, which is sadly sober!  Considering I turned 30, I would have thought I'd be drunk off my ass by this point...

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
More work opportunities.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
Getting away with jeans when I could - or at least until HR sent out a memo.

32. What kept you sane?


The couch.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Christian Kane.  I mean, really.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?


Climategate and the whole climate change/global warming load of crap.  Urgh.

35. Who did you miss?


My friends from home.

36. Who was the best new person you met?


Lisa, one of our reps in Chicago who unfortunately isn't with the company anymore.  But she's still awesome.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.


My inner critic is a raging bitch.  I'm waaaaay too hard on myself and take things waaaaay too personally.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.


I couldn't think of one last year, but this year I'm cheating a bit because I have a particular song lyric typed out and taped to my computer monitor:

"You don't always have to hold your head higher than your heart."
Hope - Jack Johnson

Nap, please. PLEASE.

Is this the face of a terrorist?

The answer is, abso-friggin-lutely.  This psychotic, annoying little beast kept me awake ALL NIGHT.  She has it in for our humidifier, and no matter what I do she insists on trying to tip the damn thing over.  I'm a horribly light sleeper, so every time she gives it a yank it wakes me up.  Add to that her habit of jumping up on the bed right next to my face and demanding attention by standing on my boobs with her 20-pound feet... AND THEN when I booted her out of the bedroom and shut the door, she scratched at the carpet and the door, shaking the whole thing in its frame.  So I booted her down the stairs (I really had to refrain from throwing her at this point but I probably would have thrown my back out too) and shut the door at the top of the stairs and the bedroom door so I couldn't hear her attempts at taking it off the hinges.

Then there's this guy.

He's not a little dog, but he's usually allowed to sleep on the bed because of his wonderful ability to curl up into a ball the size of a pumpkin.  However the past couple of weeks, his skin has been dry and his ears have been bothering him.  He's kind enough to not scratchscratchscratch on the bed, but it means that he's getting up and down, on and off the bed all. night. long.  Last night he got the boot too.  Tonight, he'll be quarantined to his bed on the floor.

Needless to say I'm a bit tired.

Add that to the uncomfortable state of my girly-bits and I really wish I was back in bed!  I started reading up on the side-effects of birth control after reading this article by Amalah, and I thought that I would try going off my pills for a while and see if it improved my state of mind and energy levels.  So far, so good, but of course I totally forgot what it would do to me physically.  Bleah.

***

The bright spot today was the LEED Green Associate test this morning.  I spent most of yesterday evening cramming for it - because with my memory, it was utterly hopeless to try and study in advance.  Some of the stuff I was reading left me thinking, the last time I checked I'm not an architect or a general contractor... WHY do I need to know this stuff??  Apparently, they expect their GA's to double as HVAC experts?  Well, regardless, I passed it.  So yay for that being off my shoulders!

***

Christmas was nice and quiet, just B and I.  (Except when he woke me up at 6:30 in the morning, demanding pancakes.  There was some grumbling then.)  It was a pretty lazy day, and didn't entirely feel like Christmas, but it was good.  I had ordered a package of wild game steaks from Cabela's as part of our gift for ourselves, and I grilled the Nilgai Antelope for Christmas dinner.  (Random factoid: Nilgai is native to India, but is ranched for hunting in Texas... apparently there are now more of them in Texas than in India.)  It's pretty good, tastes a bit like pork.  We're saving the rest of the package (elk, wild boar, venison, & bison) for other special occasions.

I scored big points by surprising B with a circular saw (I know!  I managed to pull off a surprise!  I was so proud of myself.) and he scored big points by visiting the Brighton store for a pair of earrings & bracelet for me (canaries! squee!).  He also used his student discount to get me Photoshop Elements 8, which I've been playing with a bit.  I'll start posting some of my experiments with it soon.

Otherwise... yeah.  I'm pretty fried.

Merry Christmas!

Make a Smilebox greeting

Personal Soundtrack

Like Avitable, I could have sworn I'd done this before... but I can't find it.  So screw it.

1. Open your music library (iPod, iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every stage of life, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new stage, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool…


Waking Up: Rock & Roll - G. Love & the Special Sauce
First Day at School: Rebel Child - Gretchen Wilson
Falling In Love: Island Girl - Elton John
Fight Song: Things Ain't Like They Used to Be - The Black Keys
Breaking Up: Stoned Love - The Supremes (Forrest Gump Soundtrack)
Prom: Where Did I Go Wrong - Martin Sexton
Life: It's Kosher - Dialogue from Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels Soundtrack
Mental Breakdown: Get Up Stand Up - Bob Marley & The Wailers
Driving: Lot of Leavin' Left To Do - Dierks Bentley
Flashback: After Hours at McGann's - Gaelic Storm
Wedding: On the Road Again - Willie Nelson
Birth of Child: Black Magic Woman - Santana
Final Battle: Wrong Way - Sublime
Death Scene: Love Live Rock - The Who
Funeral Song: The Heart of Life - John Mayer
End Credit: O Tannenbaum - Nat King Cole

My Two Cents: Avatar (SPOILERS!)

Saw Avatar last night.

(If you haven't seen it, STOP READING.)

In the immortal words of Keanu Reeves....
WHOA.

Ahem.  Seriously though, the story has been told before.  Dances with Wolves popped into my head of course, but so did Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest (does anybody remember that movie?  Robin Williams as Batty?  No really!).  It's classic: "civilized" people invade the world of supposedly "uncivilized" people because  there's something there that they want, and they'll destroy whatever gets in their way.  Lots of "they're savages" and "so-called deity" and such.

There's a bit of a Wall-e feel too - humans have destroyed the natural resources on Earth, so we head out to destroy other planets too.  The difference here is it's in the name of profit - there doesn't seem to be any sort of "survival" side to the story.

The antagonists are somewhat stereotypical of this kind of story - we have the greedy businessman looking to make a butt-load of money off whatever it is they're stealing - in this case, a mineral called "unobtainium" (which admittedly sounds a bit hokey, but then I guess it's supposed to) - and we also have the military guy, in this case a hard-core Marine, who will do "whatever it takes" to get the mineral, including destroy the indigenous civilization.  Both of these characters are in the movie, which might be a little much.  But Giovanni Ribisi, the business guy, was absolutely brilliant and played the character to just the right extent where I truly felt uncomfortable.  Not just "oh he's the bad guy" but "shit, there are actually people like that in the world."  The Marine however, was played by a type-cast hard-core military-esque guy and yeah, he was kind of over-played.  Granted, there are people like him in the world too, but it's just not quite as believable or scary to think about, in my opinion.

The protagonists balanced it out though.  Jake Sully, the hero, was a great character.  Trying to still be a Marine despite being paralyzed, but then being drawn into the society of the Navi (the indigenous tribe on the planet) and inevitably taking up their cause and abandoning his own people - but it didn't feel forced.  It wasn't overdone.

The chick - there had to be one, right?  Otherwise why would this guy go through all this? - Neytiri, was AWESOME.  The new female hero of our time.  Seriously.  I loved Zoe Saldana as Uhura in Star Trek, but she was amazing as Neytiri.  Okay, so she wasn't physically playing the part - although she kind of was, through motion-capture - but it was still her in the character, and wow.  Harsh, raw emotion... powerful warrior... all in a hot (blue) package.  I'll say it again: AWESOME.

But then there's the film itself.  Holy CRAP.  I can't describe it.  Okay so after seeing Transformers you could say "the CGI was really awesome!" - you can't just say that about this film.  Because really?  It was more like "what CGI?  There was CGI?"  Really.  It was absolutely breathtaking.  When have you ever seen a CGI character smile with their eyes?  And the scenery, and the animals, and the... the whole frakking thing left me exhilarated.

There was only one thing that I was really "meh" about.  One character, actually, and that was Sigourney Weaver's character.  As a human, she was good - typical bad-ass Sigourney Weaver, attitude galore, but then as an Avatar... erm.  Hers was the only one that I thought looked fakey.  Her face was too soft, too girly for Sigourney Weaver.  And the Avatar side of the character was completely different from the human side.  It was a weird dichotomy that just didn't mesh for me.

In the end, I had a hard time getting to sleep last night because I was just so PUMPED about this movie.  It is an EXPERIENCE.  Period.  I'll be seeing it again.

Love/Hate

I have a complicated relationship with winter.

Well, actually most of my relationships are complicated, but let's just focus on this season for now.  No need to psychoanalyze everything.

I love living in an area with four seasons.  I think I would go bonkers in California - not just because of the liberals either.  As nice as the idea of continuous 70-degree days sounds, I think I'd get tired of it pretty fast.

I like the variety of food that comes with a seasonal climate.  I mean, if it were 80 degrees in December, who would want to eat soup?  Or roasted turkey?  Or baked squash?

It's easier to get warm than it is to cool down.  I'm pretty sensitive to hot weather, and get heat exhaustion easily.  So no desert life for me.

I love the sound of snow.  That eerie quiet when you wake up at 4 a.m. and just know that it's snowing.

Christmas lights without snow just aren't the same.  The snow lends a little extra sparkle to holiday decorations.

Also, deciduous trees just look sad and dead without a coating of snow.

I don't particularly like driving in the snow, but now that I have all-wheel-drive it's not so bad.

I also don't like cleaning snow off my car, but that's what a garage is for.  (Or a husband!)

I hate the static and dry skin that comes with cold weather.  We don't have a built-in humidifier, and while we run a small one in the bedroom at night the house is still really dry.  So is my office.  I hate getting zapped by everything I touch, even my cubicle walls!  And I always get the worst dry skin in the places I can't reach very well.  Sometimes I can get a helping hand, sometimes not, and sometimes I make a trip to the bathroom at work with a bottle of lotion.  (Wow, that doesn't sound right.)

What about you?  What's your relationship with Old Man Winter?

SORRY. I had to do it.

Yep, I've switched back to Blogger.

Wordpress seemed great for a while, until it stifled my creative flow & insisted that if I wanted to get all fancy-pants with my blog I'd have to pay.  Ugh.  No.

I've said it before, I'll say it again - I'm not really trying to impress anybody or gain a big following or anything.  I write because it's an outlet, and it's kind of fun.  But I like making it pretty and froofy and being able to do what I want, and Wordpress... well, it's for serious writers.  Which I'm definitely not.

And I like this sassy chick in the corner better than the polar bear.

(If you were subscribed or following or whatever, you might want to double-check your settings.  Sorry.)

Traditions

Swiped from Swistle.  Merry Christmas all!

Eggnog or hot chocolate? I like hot cocoa but my favorite is hot apple cider with a splash of Captain Morgan.

Does Santa wrap the presents or leave them open under the tree? When I was little, Mom and Dad would sign their gifts as Santa & Mrs Claus.  We don't have kids but usually stocking gifts get signed from Santa.

Colored lights on a tree or white? Colored on the tree.  If we did outside lights they'd be white.

Do you hang mistletoe? We didn't this year, I couldn't find it in the box.

When do you put your decorations up? My rule is usually the weekend after Thanksgiving but this year it was the weekend before.

What is your favorite holiday dish? I don't really have one - we usually do something different for dinner each year.  But Mom's "Pink Stuff" was a favorite when I was a kid.

Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? No.  But growing up we did.  Because we had so many people at our house on Christmas day, it made sense for us to open ours the night before.

How do you decorate your Christmas tree? We have a fake, pre-lit tree (B begrudgingly agrees that it looks nice), with a garland of red, white, & green wood beads and a garland that looks like hard candy.  Lots of glass icicles, and a hodgepodge of fun ornaments.  Nothing fancy, but it's cute.

Snow: love it or hate it? It's pretty to look at, as long as I don't have to go out in it.

Can you ice skate? I could when I was a kid, but I haven't tried in years!

What is your favorite holiday dessert? Pumpkin pie!

What is your favorite holiday tradition? B & I haven't really established any yet ourselves, but my best friend and I usually call each other on Christmas day to compare our loot!  And my dad would always put a train around the base of the tree, more for the cats than for us though.

Candy canes: yum or yuck? I don't like peppermint, but other flavors are sometimes okay.

Favorite Christmas show? A new one this year, Prep & Landing!  It's hysterical.  But always, Charlie Brown's Christmas.

I had to add a couple more...

Favorite ornament: We have a lighthouse that B's dad gave us that plugs into the light string & blinks, and I also love our silver pinecone.  It makes me think of home.

Favorite holiday movie: Growing up we started watching The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, and B's family watches National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation every year too.

Most memorable gift you received as a child:  I remember the doll that Mom made for me, and the wooden cradle and high chair.  She made me clothes and bedding for it, it was so cute.  I kept all of it, but it's in storage somewhere.  Once I get it all together, it will have a special place on a shelf.

File under: RTT

Ladies, you know you're having a bad hair day when you can't even get it back into a decent looking ponytail.  My biggest problem with my hair is the fact that I have two cowlicks on the back of my head which generally results in a bald spot, unless I back-comb the crap out of it and beat it into submission.  Oddly, I find that my hair cooperates more when I wear it down than when I try to pull it up.  It drives me insane.

***

I had a very vivid dream last night, about an old friend of mine.  "The one that got away" in my book.  He has very bright blue eyes, and while supposedly dreams are never in color, I distinctly remember that blue in my dream.  Weird.  On top of that, it was another zombie dream.  Apparently, they can't surf.  Wha?

***

Speaking of T.O.T.G.A., do you ever look back on your life and think, "God, I was such a naive little idiot"?  I'm hard on myself in that way - I was only 18 for pete's sake - but I really was an idiot.  Not just about this guy, but about school and life in general.  I totally missed out on a lot of stuff, just because I was naive and self-centered, all wrapped up in my own little world and not paying attention to what was passing me by.  And now I look back and really regret a lot.  I just hope I can make up for some of it.

***

I finally broke down and bought a small humidifier for our bedroom, and holy crow has it made a difference.  Even the cats love it - they were both sitting right in front of it the other night, blissed-out looks on their faces, little noses working over-time.  But then Lily's curiosity overcame her and she tried to tip the effing thing over.  I don't know what her deal is with things that hold water - she always has to dump it all over the floor.

***

I also broke down and got on e-bay.  I've never tried buying anything from it before, but I was missing an ornament in my collection of Hallmark carousel animals, and I'd also missed buying the carousel itself when it was available in stores.  So I did some digging and found a couple of auctions with decent starting prices and reasonable shipping, and I won!  I think I paid a decentt price for both the ornament and the carousel, including shipping, so I emailed Mom and Sister to tell them I'd bought my present from them already.  :-)

***

B and I are spending Christmas Day on our own this year.  (We're celebrating with family on the weekend after New Year's, when his brother flies home from Montana.)  And at Christmas, I like to do something different for dinner than turkey or ham (to me, turkey is Thanksgiving and ham is Easter), so I ordered some game steaks from Cabela's.  I've had elk before - one of my absolute favorite things EVER, and if you've never tried it YOU SHOULD - but the package also comes with antelope, wild boar, and venison steaks.  So we're barbecuing for Christmas, with sweet potatoes, sauteed green beans, and pumpkin cupcakes.  Yummm.

***

I spent the better part of the day yesterday fighting with my blog, trying to find a stupid book list that had a widget that was compatible with Wordpress.  NONE.  Stupid WP.com and their restrictions on java and flash.  The only thing I could find was on Goodreads, and it's just a button that links to my list on their site.  All I want is one book list that posts to both Facebook and here, in a pretty little widget.  GAH.

I was still l considering switching back to Blogger, but (a) now that I have the work blog set up on here too it's more convenient to have them both in the same place.  I'm all about convenience.  And (b), frakking WP doesn't import into Blogger.  So I guess that idea is out anyway.  And no, I'm not going to pay to upgrade to WP.org - why would I do that?  I'm not some big writer-type with profound things to say and a massive readership.  I can't justify it, at least not yet.  So I'll just bitch and moan and drive everyone bonkers instead.

Smile... no, SMILE.

This weekend I decided we should take our annual "Christmas picture" to put in our e-cards to friends and family.  First off, yes, I send e-cards instead of paper cards. I hate spending a lot on postage, so this way I can send it to more people, I can attach multiple pictures, and I also don't feel like I'm adding to the after-Christmas-massive-amounts-of-paper-waste-stream as much.  (Read: I'm a cheapskate.)

Anyway, the pictures.  The dog is apparently afraid of the tri-pod, so I couldn't get him in any of the pictures even by sitting on the floor:

(Also, hello chins?  Plural?)

So I cropped Jake's (worriedomgwhatsthatblinkingthingwithlegs) face out and got a halfway decent one.

And yes, B has a beard.  And yes, that's exactly how it grew in.  There is no hair between the 'stache and the goatee.  It's kind of weird, yet I'm glad because can you imagine if it was all filled in?  Yeesh.  As it is, he's a pretty decent looking mountain man.  Also, note the side-swept bangs that happen to perfectly cover a massive volcanic zit on my temple.  Ta-daa!

Then we got the giggles, trying to take a "scenic overlook" type picture (you know, the ones where you hold the camera at arm's length) but the timer was still on so B's holding the camera out there for a full ten seconds...



...which morphed into this:



....and then we have the Gaping Nostrils of Doom:



....yeah.

Speed Reader

I have a little notebook that I carry in my purse, specifically for making a list of the books I want to check out from the library.  We like to hang out at the big bookstores, a cup of a flavored coffee concoction in one hand an a stack of books and magazines on a table to browse through.  I try not to buy a lot of books anymore - for one, they're expensive, and for another we don't have a lot of space left on the bookshelf (and they're also a pain in the ass to move with).  So I've been giving the Lucas County Library system a lot of love this year.   They usually get the new releases within a couple of weeks, although there have been a couple that I just can't find (Boneshaker for one, which I've heard so many good things about I may just buy it anyway).

Yesterday I finished the first book in the Percy Jackson & The Olympians series, The Lightning Thief.  I remember eyeballing it when I worked in the kid's department at B&N (I know, the kid's department!  I was bribed.) and when I saw the trailer for the movie I decided to give it a try.  There are a lot of great young adult series out there - the obvious being Harry Potter, but I also really like Artemis Fowl and Eragon (don't even bring up Twilight or I'll blow my lid!  Ugh.), and there are classics from when I was young that I still love like The Dark is Rising Sequence, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Time Quintet.  Like those, this book didn't disappoint.  Yeah, the main character is twelve, but the story is fun and well-written, and made me interested in Greek mythology again.  I can see how it would really pique the interest of a teen and maybe push them to do a little more research into the subject - hell, I had to get on Wikipedia a couple of times myself.  Anyway it was an awesome book, and I have #2 on reserve at the library.

My "to check out" list also includes books that you might say "I can't believe you haven't read that!" about.  For example the Dune Series, Terry Pratchett, and Terry Goodkind - I like good fantasy fiction but I'm not really into sci-fi, so I know I'm probably missing out by not having read any of these.  I've read some Gaiman but not all, so I want to read the rest of his books too.  But when I'm browsing at the bookstore, I write down anything and everything that catches my eye - The People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks, The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe, the In His Majesty's Service series by Naomi Novik, Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris... it all goes on the list and gets requested from the library at some point.  Right now the Garth Stein is on reserve along with the second Percy Jackson.

What's on your 'to-read' list?

(And for the sake of transparency, yes, most of the links above are to the B&N website - I like their search function and their synopsis the best, but I'm not saying you have to buy from them!)

A couple more articles

Thanks to @ScottWGraves for posting the links to these articles...

Understanding Climategate's Hidden Decline

Climategate reveals 'the most influential tree in the world'

The science behind the controversy basically shows that the "hockey stick graph" created by Michael Mann was truly created - the data they used to estimate atmospheric temperatures pre-dating modern diagnostic equipment was essentially hand-picked in order to show the image of global warming that they wanted to show.  The tree article above does a good job of explaining it in simple terms; the first article above is a little more scientific in nature.

I don't want to spend too much time on a soapbox, so I'll sum up:  while climate change is a real thing, it's a natural cycle of the planet.  The world is not going to end in a big flaming ball of doom and destruction because of it.  The 'solutions' that everybody and their dog have come up with are good solutions... to other, more pressing problems. The media is good at making a mountain out of a molehill, and ignoring the news that doesn't support their agenda.

All the news that's fit to report... er...

So has anyone else been hearing about Climategate?

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.4101412&w=425&h=350&fv=autoPlay%3Dfalse]

more about "Daily Show: Scientists Hide Global Wa...", posted with vodpod

Basically it boils down to this: Al Gore is a marketing genius, but otherwise a damn fraud.  All the "science" and "data" pointing to anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change has been a bunch of bullshit all along.  Thank god for whistleblowers.

As for media coverage... wait, what media coverage??  Oh yeah, they're all tied up with Tiger Woods.  Comedy Central Scoops Network News on Climate-Gate Scandal

Here's the background:  Climate sceptics claim leaked emails are evidence of collusion among scientists

[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/7945623]

Over 31,000 scientists have signed a petition agreeing that "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing, or will in the foreseeable future cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."

And where's Gore?  Climategate goes uber-viral, Gore flees leaving evil henchmen to defend crumbling citadel

RTT: Minimalist

So a while back I entered one of the bazillion blog contests out there - the leave-a-random-comment-and-we'll-draw-your-number kind of thing - through BlogHer.  Mona's post about her fart-iferous household made me bust up, and I didn't even pay attention to what the prize was, I just wanted to share a laugh.

So about a week ago I'm sorting through a boatload of junk email that I hadn't bothered looking at (until I realized that my comment notifications from this blog were being filtered there.  Whoops.).  Lo and behold, I come across an email from someone at BlogHer, saying essentially that, out of the kindness of their hearts, they'd been holding on to the prize I'd won until they heard back from me.  Holy cannoli!  I won something!

How fitting, that a post about farts would win me a box full of Febreeze!  So thanks Kirida & BlogHer, for a very fun and sniffy little prize!

***

Why didn't anybody tell me about Angel sooner?

Hello.

***

We put up our tree the weekend before Thanksgiving.  Earlier than we usually do, but I'm glad we got it done.  Christmas decorations make it feel so cozy.

I'll add better pictures later.  I'm too lazy trying to think of other things to talk about.

***

Thanksgiving dinner was a success, although the raspberry jalapeno chutney was a little too zingy I think.  The Christmas Potluck is coming up at the office, and I signed up to bring a cake.  Not my usual fare at Christmas, so I'll have to find something creative.  Chocolate zucchini maybe?  Or pumpkin?

***

Yeah, my creative juices are sapped today.  Sorry folks.