But there's always later today. 

Engraved on a sample of cherry hardwood flooring, about 4" wide. 

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10/30 '19 11 Comments
That looks great!
Thankew!
What did you use to do the engraving?
Laser cutter/engraver
That's pretty cool. I might just have to look into such things. :)
You can't carry it around in a backpack, so feel free to store it at my place. ;)
You are just SO selfless! Thank you for that. ;P
That's fricking amazing.
Thanks! It's not much artistically but it's got a fun texture.
This is gorgeous. Where did you make this? At a maker space with a laser cutter, or do you have one of your own? [drooling with envy if you do]
I have one; it's taking up like half my studio space and is a constant source of frustration, joy, and extremely unpleasant fumes (which are vented outside, but still). Learning how to use it has been most of the last month's work and I'm just beginning to get a handle on technique.
 
 
This is not a self-referential poem.

In fact, it's completely obsessed with talking about all of 
the other poems that influenced it, those poems which

once

were read by poets come and gone, or in other cases come
and not gone so much as moved quite far away, or had their
weltanschauung changed so greatly that this poem is not any
longer
particularly
impressed
as such things go

This poem is extremely, embarassingly well read;
it just finished
the Cantos (that wretched man),
and
the Duino Elegies (translated, sadly (but well-)
and it re-read
The Sonnets
for the umpteenth time just last weekend... this poem has an inferiority complex

It wants to apologize for its existence, but it can't seem
to find the right words. Which is just so...much...a thing It has big important neighbors, this poem, and often gets
lost in the shadows, but at least it's not a self-referential
poem...this poem doesn't like self-reference, and honestly
resents being the work of a poet who does This poem would consider itself a complete failure if it
didn't have something in common with the Iliad, namely,
this poem doesn't end, it stops
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10/29 '19 5 Comments
Well. That was familar. :)
I had forgotten about it completely!

Apparently I made some edits in 1999? So this is the final draft :)
Actually I don't remember reading it -- for all I knew it was brand new. However, it is a headspace full of sentiment as familiar as a pair of old shoes.
But I was still waiting for a closing parenthesis!
 

We usually wear name tags in choir. There's  more than a hundred of us so. Anyway people like to be creative with them. I have a hallowe'en themed one I'm wearing this month but needed to make one for November. 

It's a kind of intarsia with felt and foam. I cut the pieces on the laser. It was "fun" working with the different colours. Did you figure that cutting blue/violet things with a blue/violet laser might be very different than cutting black things?  I spent hours working on the right settings and insets to get the kerfs to match. 

I have to glue all the bits to something, probably black construction paper, but that's a project for tomorrow. 

oh, yes, I'm singing alto. 

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10/25 '19 8 Comments
Seriously nice work. I too love the type and the colors. Really good stuff.
So pretty!!! I love it.
Thank you! I had kind of a vision for what it would look like and I'm tickled that the result looks so close to it.
Looove the colors; looks great! And that "a" in Sean is especially satisfying. (I love typefaces.)

YAAS to you singing alto! (I sing tenor and even baritone.) Woot woot!

Also, I don't think I knew your pronouns are they/them. Thanks for this! Noted!
The typeface for the name is called Bullfinch and was digitized directly from an early 20th century typography sample book. It's so elegant!

One of the nice things about our choir is that no one calls the SAs "ladies" or the TBs "men." While I'm the only AMAB person in the SAs (trying to be a trendsetter here) there's a lot of AFAB people in the TBs and it's wonderful.
The detail in this is magnificent.
This is so gorgeous.

When I was in a choir, I had a range from soprano to tenor, but I'm so tone deaf that I had to sing soprano because it was the range in which I was least tone-deaf.
After a couple hours singing alto I am sometimes sure at the end of it that I'm just making tuneless squeaks but no one has yelled at me yet. Tomorrow's our 7 hour retreat so I'm sure I'll get at least one dirty look. Or not!
 

I woke at three in the morning to answer a call of nature. I'm one of those people who has to have moving air on me at all times when I sleep. So, in a pitch black room I open my eyes and I see a halo of light in front of me. I quickly blink to see if I'm hallucinating, but nope, it's still there.

Because I'm me, I alternately close one eye and then the next. The halo disappears when my right eye is closed. Hmm, says I. What fresh Hell is this? I lay there while my sleep-addled brain turns this problem over.

Finally, I realize that my right eye has the perfect paralax to see past the spinner of the fan and be able to observe the faint spark from the brushes in the fan motor glowing in the dark room.

Cool.

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10/18 '19 7 Comments
That is cool. But yeah, it sucks we're now at that age where our first line of questioning often is "Wait a sec. Am I having a stroke?"
Too true. We're all riding out the clock until it's adult diaper time.
I'm a fan.
What you did there? I see it.
Getting old sucks. I find myself second guessing _every_ weird sensation no matter how clear the cause is.
And dreading every doctor's appointment.
I probably would - if I was making any. *cough*
 

POODOO INHINT
  CA Q
  TS ALMCADR

  TS BANKCALL
  CADR VAC5STOR

  INDEX ALMCADR
  CAF 0
ABORT2 TC BORTENT

OCT77770 OCT 77770
  CA V37FLBIT
  MASK FLAGWRD7
  CCS A
  TC WHIMPER -1

  TC DOWNFLAG
  ADRES STATEFLG

  TC DOWNFLAG
  ADRES REINTFLG

  TC DOWNFLAG
  ADRES NODOFLAG

  TC BANKCALL
  CADR MR.KLEAN
​​​​​​​  TC WHIMPER


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10/17 '19 5 Comments
Not with an HCF, but with a WHIMPER.
Eeek! I don't speak Ferret.
I think “POODOO” is Huttese.
As in "Bantha Poodoo"?
Exactly. But this code predates Star Wars...
 

Yesterday my hubby and I chose to skip a JMU production of Twelth Night that we had bought tickets for months ahead of time in order to see Alien on the big screen in Charlottesville. At first I felt a little bad because I'm sure the students did a really good job (they always do), but I'm deciding to consider it a donation to a favorite institution. I'm sure the people who were sitting in the seats next to ours wondered why anyone would not show up to something for which they had paid $40 (the show was sold out), but it wouldn't be the first time. We've attending many events at the Forbes Center where we knew seats were sold and then not filled, so I'm sure we weren't the only ones who didn't show up. I wish I could've done both events, but the showing of Alien was a last minute thing (as far as I can tell) and there were only two showings on Sunday, both of which conflicted with the play which was going on right in the middle of them. So we chose to spend another $25 (plus the gas to get there) and see one of my all-time favorite movies on a giant screen. And we were not disappointed! I've watched Alien countless times, but I was only 11 when it came out and apparently I missed the re-release that happened for it's 25th anniversary, so I was thrilled to celebrate its 40th anniversary with about a dozen other fans in the theater. It doesn't matter how many times I see that gruesome thing pop out of John Hurt's chest, I love it every time! Definitely money well spent!

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10/14 '19 1 Comment
The college box office could really use a way of letting you tell them "I don't want my money back, but definitely resell our seats!" Never feel bad about having too many good things to choose between!
 

I have tried both Google's my maps and scribble maps and boy, it is a pain in the ass to just... make a map of an interesting route. With some waypoints and some connecting lines. it's not impossible, it's just so fussy that I say forget it. Is this always so bad? Is there a tool that everybody swears by? should I just give up on the idea that I should be able to do this on my phone?

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10/12 '19 3 Comments
I’ve tried the same thing, using Google, and I never achieved it to any satisfaction.
For a route, are you talking about public roads, or are you on a bike?

I generally don't have issues with Google Maps (shhh - don't tell the boss), but I'm not sure how many stops you're talking about / publicness of the route / etc.
 

So it took me a little while, but I just realized that I had accidentally created two accounts on here. At least I never wrote anything on the other account. My first clue was the fact that I couldn't find the couple of other posts I had made on the other account. I figured they had just been deleted because I hadn't written in so long, and I was ok with that. But then I saw my own name in the people list and I'm like "Wait a minute!" LOL So now I'm good, just excuse my stupidity. :)

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10/11 '19 1 Comment
Welcome! Given I just discovered I'd hidden 3 posts for months, you're not alone in the doing it wrong!
 

It's October, and Halloween is right around the corner. I haven't painted myself into the corner, but I've had some pretty good Halloween costumes in years past. No easy task for my panoramic physique. I've been assembling elements for this year's costume, but y'all are just gonna have to wait for the big reveal.

My dog, Gna had a tumor removed in March of '18. The biopsy results were that it was an aggressive cancer. And while my vet got narrow margins, with this type of cancer they'd like wide margins. It was located close to her genitals, so there was just no room to get wider margins. This morning I noticed she has another mass in almost the same spot. I'm bringing her in next week for my vet to have a look-see. She's 8-9 as near as we can determine, so it's going to be a judgement call. And there's always a chance that things have gone seriously sideways internally. Today has been really hard, I've been sitting at work torturing myself with what-ifs.

I turned in my submission for my monthly writer's group and I'm really happy with it. I suck at short stories, but this one came in around thirteen pages and just under 4,000 words. The 30,000 foot view is it's a sci-fi/milfic/vampire story that takes a hard left turn into Lovecraftian horror. The writer's group meets on Friday. I'm looking forward at least that far.

That is all, and I think that's enough on my plate for right now.

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10/9 '19 12 Comments
Poop on dog cancers. I lost my Best Dog Ever to nose cancer last year about this time. I hope Gna's prognosis ends up being a better one.
Thanks, I've lost two of three dogs to cancer. I hope it's not soon to be three of four.
For those following along at home, Gna had her second lumpectomy. The mass is going out for a biopsy, but it looked identical to the first. Sort of like Satan's Cauliflower. The first was a malignant cancer of the apocrine gland, a sweat gland. But on a dog they are located in the hair follicle and excrete a fatty oil that gives a dog their doggy odor.

She was stoned out of her gourd for a day and a half, but is back to her normal, pre-cancerous bouncy, happy self. Other than the inflatable horse collar to keep her out of the stitches until the incision heals. Biopsy comes back in two weeks so we'll know more then.

In the mean time the weight of the world is off my shoulders.
>"...is back to her normal, pre-cancerous bouncy, happy self..."

Happy to hear it! Keeping my fingers crossed whenever I don't need them for driving etc. :)
That’s good news! I very glad.
I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed for Gna.

I really would like to make it to your writer's group one of these years...

Can we read the short after the group has had a shot at it?
Once I get it back from mangling by the writer's group I'll share it out.
Good luck to you and your girl. You'll do the best you can for her, and she's lucky to have you. xoxo
Thanks to both of you for the kind thoughts.