Greetings from Sacramento, where the apocalypse seems to have begun…
(No, not really. Just playing around with the solarize feature on my phone. And yes, I like that skyscraper a lot. And yes, one of these days I’ll have something substantial to say that isn’t a post with a picture.)
Fiddling around this morning with the phone and discovered how to set the camera in black and white mode. I kinda like this — there’s a solemn majesty in it.
As an interesting compare and contrast, here’s a color photo of approximately the same scene I took just prior:
Photo by retstak
Yah, I think I like the black and white one better.
Found this on the ground this morning as I was walking into work. It was part of a larger chalk drawing. It made me laugh.
There’s more to say, but I’m gathering thoughts right now. Maybe later.
[This entry is also serving to test the new crossposter. If this works, this entry should show up on my LJ and my Dreamwidth Journal…]
Candles at church, by me
I’ve been doing a lot of wheelspinning lately as I try to figure out something. I haven’t figured out much in the way of conclusions because I haven’t had the time to pursue threads all the way out, but there is one thing that comes to mind.
Ignore all that ‘must co-opt pagan holiday’ stuff that caused the birth of Jesus to be moved to the bleak midwinter as opposed to the more logical late spring that all the trappings of the story hint at, and look at it from a different perspective. As a storyteller, there is no better time of the year. The world is at its darkest in the days around the solstice, so much so that we light our homes with blazing electric lights to chase the darkness away. And metaphorically, isn’t that what the Christchild story is? Bringing light to a dark world?
The story demands the change.
Anyway, that’s one of the threads I’m still trying to follow to its conclusion; I may or may not continue to blog about it.
But for those who celebrate it, Merry Christmas! And if you don’t, may you have a good day today as well.
Don’t let clogged drains stress you, call Sydney emergency plumbing today.
A: Seven. Scotty has to report to Captain Kirk that the light bulb inthe Engineering Section is getting dim, at which point Kirk will send Bones to pronounce the bulb dead (although he'll immediately claim that he's a doctor, not an electrician). Scotty, after checking around, realizes that they have no more new light bulbs, and complains that he "canna" see in the dark. Kirk will make an emergency stop at the next uncharted planet, Alpha Regula IV, to procure a light bulb from the natives, who, are friendly, but seem to be hiding something. Kirk, Spock, Bones, Yeoman Rand and two red shirt security officers beam down to the planet, where the two security officers are promptly killed by the natives, and the rest of the landing party is captured. As something begins to develop between the Captain and Yeoman Rand, Scotty, back in orbit, is attacked by a Klingon destroyer and must warp out of orbit. Although badly outgunned, he cripples the Klingon and races back to the planet in order to rescue Kirk et. al. who have just saved the natives' from an awful fate and, as a reward, been given all light bulbs they can carry. The new bulb is then inserted and the Enterprise continues on its five year mission.
Yeah, that’s *my* mint farm! (Or it might just be an anagram for my first and last names.)
Anyway, I need eight more donations of ten dollars each to get to The Night of Writing Dangerously, thanks to a few awesome friends. Can you help by donating?
Also, since a picture’s worth a thousand words, here’s my wordcount per day for this year’s NaNoWriMo excitement:
The blue line is my wordcount per day, the red line is the rolling average. Yeah, it’s very choppy. But I’m writing! I just passed 22k! I keep trucking!
So it’s November. November means it’s NaNoWriMo month, which means that I’m running around like a crazy person. Then I stupidly said, “Ah why not, I’ll update my blog every day this month. It’s not like I don’t have enough to do.” Since I’m sure there’s folks out there that want to keep me honest, guess I’d better get the month started.
Anyway, it was a good day. The kickoff was nicely attended, and I got a good chunk of writing done. I added another six hundred words at the write-in we did for TV. I haven’t watched the clip yet, so I don’t know how much of me made it in, but my highly awesome co-ML,
But the combination of staying up way late for write-in, and then getting up way early for the morning write-in, alongside the timechange, is just making my brain go *splat*. And since that means I’m not coherent, that means it should be bedtime.
But I have nearly four thousand words, and I saw a nice sunset. It was a good day.
Third in an occasional series I call “Tales from the Commute”:
So yeah, even a Monday morning commute is always made happier by having one of these always in sight pretty much your whole way across Interstate 80. There was a couple moments when I could bring myself to believe that the pot of gold was just over the next rise.
On the other hand, the idiots who didn’t have headlights on even though (a) the sun was just rising and (b) it was starting to rain really annoy me.
Now to focus on work.
God, has it been nearly two weeks since I bothered to update my blog?
Ah, here, have a picture:
I took this at the Rivercats game last night. It’s the first time I’ve been out to Raley Field, and, while the Cats sucked rocks through a bendy straw last night, it was a perfect night for baseball, especially as the sun started to set. For those of you who don’t know, the Rivercats are the Triple-A affiliate of the Oakland A’s, and the stadium is just across the river from downtown Sacramento. (That gold bridge on the left? That’s the Tower Bridge, which crosses the Sacramento River, and is generally one of the two things used to as icons to identify Sacramento. The other is, of course, the State Capitol building.
Anyway, just letting folks know I live. I’ll have more to say later.
Yesterday, on my walk between the parking garage and work, I found the following juxtaposition of signage:
The chalked message up close, so you can read it:
Photo by retstak
It was one of those moments where I just had to pause for a moment and laugh (and of course, take a picture). Somebody has a sense of humor in this town, and it’s those sort of wonderful serendipitous moments that I love very dearly. So yesterday, I walked past the message, head held high, as I obviously was a superhero. Only superheroes may pass. The sign said so. Thus, by passing it, I must have been a superhero, no?
I wasn’t a superhero today. We had a spectacular light show and plenty of rain last night, and the chalk was washed away. Mundanity returns. So sad.
It was very strange this morning after I dropped my mom off at her work in Rancho Cordova. Instead of doubling back to Folsom Blvd and following it all the way back down to the office at the corner of Watt and Folsom, I instead got on Highway 50 and headed for downtown. Yeah, the office moved downtown, very close to the corner of 5th and Capitol here in downtown Sacramento. Today’s the first day for the company at the new office. It’s going to take some getting used to.
I’ve already had to move cubes once today as the first cube I chose was driving me absolutely crazy — I’ve found out that I really don’t like sitting exposed with my back to the rest of the office. I’m not sure if it’s involuntary reactions to the times my mother sat quietly behind me watching me do things when I didn’t know she was there or if it’s just the occassional bout of paranoia that I’m prone to. Anyway, I’m much happier in my new cube, where I can see most of the office and don’t feel like everybody’s staring at me when I’m not looking.
Another thing that keeps striking my brain as wrong is the cubicals. Instead of the old full-high cubes, our new cubes are half-height, so if I lift my head, I can see across the office. (This also may have played into the involuntary twitch reaction.) They’re also beige instead of the blue-grey our prior cubicals are. For the most part I like it, as it’s nice to have line of sight to the far end of the office, but I miss the storage space up above the desk that our old cubes had.
But anyway, some normality is returning to my world as Luigi and the bad dudes are now adorning the top of my cube again, the binders with my ESX guides are sitting on my desk, and the only thing I’m waiting on to make my cube fully my own again is to hang up some important papers on the walls. It’s still a bit bare, though. I should find a good Cal picture (or maybe a pennant) to hang in the corner and make this cube even more my own.
Sorry I’ve not been around to update the blog. Life just has eaten me alive, and it’s been easier to keep the twitter feed up to date. At some point, I’ll sit down and try to catch y’all up, but this post is because Baycon is next weekend, so I went and picked up my ribbon order today.
This is the collection of this year’s ribbons:
As I said, if you’re at Baycon and you want one of these ribbons, just hunt me down and I’ll give it to you. In fact, just like last year, I’ll be indiscrimately handing out the katster ones.
It’s Friday, which means it’s time for cat blogging! So here, have a shiny photo of Ebony-kitty outside on a beautiful spring day this week.
So the neighbors made us cupcakes for Easter. This, of course, ends with me goofing around with cupcakes, microwaves, and the digital camera on my Blackberry…
Our story starts with an innocent Peep on an innocent cupcake, a normal residence of Cupcakelandia, on the fair continent of PlasticaPlate. Obviously, all is right with the world. But little does our peep know that the world is going to get very … interesting. Yeah, that’s the word we want, interesting. It is a tale most foul…
Of course, in Cupcakelandia, sitting on a cupcake without the permission of the monarchs is a crime. So our innocent little peep gets thrown to the wolves and is oppressed by the two Peeps who sit in judgment on the Cupcake Thrones! 
Photo by retstak
Oh noes! Our innocent little peep is being oppressed! What is there to be done? Well, it seems the rulers of Cupcakelandia are looking for a peep to be experimented on! And they pick our poor innocent peep! What will become of him or her, as we completely failed to give our peep gender when we started this story!
At the Kenmore Nuclear Test Chamber, our peep is strapped to a gurney and placed inside to be radiated by powerful forces for thirty whole seconds! Will our peep survive such awful treatment? In the wreckage of the test range, we found a journal with the following entry:
Photo by retstak
Subject Y. Peep was accidentally placed in the test chamber for approximately thirty seconds. Subject emerged as a irradiated SuperPeep and stormed off in the direction of the capital muttering something about those bastards on the Cupcake Thrones. I fear the worst.
The scientist who recorded this missive was obviously lying on at least one point, as the irradiation was done quite deliberately and with malice aforethought. Also, I suspect SuperPeep trashed the Kenmore Nuclear Test Chamber before going on his mission to destroy the Peeps on the Cupcake Thrones! This would make sense given his awful treatment at the hands of the scientists at the place. Perhaps our mystery scientist was trying to cover up his role in this plot. We may never know.
Photo by retstak
News photography in Cupcakelandia brought us this last image before we lost all transmissions. It shows an obviously larger SuperPeep behind the thrones, just before SuperPeep ascended the thrones and destroyed them and their rulers. It was a marshmallow bath, folks, and that sort of thing is just not okay for the kiddies to see. I mean, marshmallow all over the place? Are you some kind of pervert or something? It didn’t really matter, though, as our cameras lost power, possibly from SuperPeep’s irradiated hide, shortly thereafter.
(Read: katster got bored with taking pictures and decided to eat peeps instead. Note, microwaved peeps are not as good as normal peeps, as the chewy goodness becomes sugary tasting rubber.)
It’s a caption contest. Y’all know what to do.