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There's a local tempest in a teapot, so I went to read the local newspaper article about it, and the comments by readers.

At least 75% of the posts were mostly enraged yelling at the 'other' political party, with no content and barely a nod to the actual topic of the article. About 10% were ad hominem attacks on the officials or committees involved... with no actual content or proof of the hinted misdeeds. There was actually some discussion in the remaining 15% but as it was free of name calling, nobody responded to the ideas therein.

Much heat but no light.

Huge thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday, and extra love to those of you who helped me celebrate it. Nothing says lovin' like waking up in the morning going "Why does my hand smell like maple syrup?"

I've decided that I'm going to spend this first week of my 35th year re-defining what "Be Good To Yourself" means. I just spent close to a week indulging myself like crazy, and I am definitely feeling it. I started re-reading the Tao of Pooh for the first time in decades, and it's helping me See some things that I'd kind of forgotten. I'm forming a list of things I need to remember and I'm going to spend at least the next week actively remembering them:

- Drinking alcohol always makes me sad the next day.
- Eating foods that are low-carb and as lightly processed as possible makes me feel like I have more physical, mental and emotional energy.
- Dancing and moving around makes me feel better.
- Cooking meals at home from fresh ingredients not only helps with eating energy-making foods, but also makes me feel accomplished and content.
- Drinking coffee makes me anxious and jittery.
- Getting started on homework assignments long before they are due can at the very least provide a backbone of Being Done for when you go to finish it at the Last Possible Minute.
- Belongings are very distracting and many serve absolutely no purpose.

In other Project thoughts, dreda posted a very nice poem for me for my birthday. I am thinking that I might post a Tamil Poem A Day for a month or so.

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Project day happened. I got my new device all colored, in triplicate, using period crayola colors. Lissa and Violet helped me make beef pies. We even have the first 55 pies done and in the freezer awaiting feast. Strawberry crack, black raspberry merlot made an appearance (NOM). I love brewers. Sioban helped with the sugar salt dishes. The last 7 are done, and that gives me one for each above the salt table. This weekend will be painting and varnishing. Ian and Annys worked on Scrolls. The menu scroll is going to be freaking awesome!

Yule food trials are nearing an end. Tried the fried dough. Everyone thought it was great (I suspect it was the sauce). I was a little disappointed with it. Ok... a whole lot disappointed. It was like chewing sweet shoe leather. So we are keeping the sauce, and ditching the dough, and going with the fried profiterole dough (still period- and the one we had at court of love) with the spice royal sauce. That will be better all round. The cheese and meat platter for the first course went over really well. Last up on the list will be the venison slated for this weekend.


Swan is done. Debating as to actually entering it into A & S. There is documentation for the swan, but I am concerned about the duck tape and rice crisp/marshmallows. Even though modern foods were used, the construction is pretty much the same as they would have done in period.

50 yards of linen will be coming my way this week, including all the materials for the King's waffenrok, and her Highness' saree (yes... that is the project for next year, list legal saree in time for Pennsic).

Lastly, I purchased The Princess Bride book for my winter project of philosophical analysis of fiction and society. Now all I need to do is find a period style of philosophy that I like to use as the basis for analysis.

Highlights (the children's magazine) has free downloads of their find-it-in-the-picture game. This month it's Thanksgiving, and near as I can tell, they actually did some research on pilgrim costumes. Shocking -- not a giant buckle in sight!

http://www.highlights.com/hotlink-main?ccid=EMC-1000-1002006

Also saw this in Michael's this weekend; supposedly a birdhouse, but it's such a classic rocket shape anyone with an SF bent will love it.



Michael's Arts & Crafts is selling it for $8; this picture from somewhere online selling it for $20! It's 10" high. Be sure to examine the glue joints and pick the best one on the shelf; some are pretty poorly made, but others are fine.

The little flyer with it shows one painted with a white nose cone, blue body, red fins, and red around the port and the nose cone bit. Gold stars are sprinkled over the body.

Edward Woodward, the fine British actor best known for the American television series THE EQUALIZER, has passed on at age 79.

He also gave award-caliber performances in THE WICKER MAN (the original, not the remake), and BREAKER MORANT. I will strongly recommend both of those films to you if you've not seen them.

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So, here is my schedule at Philcon:

Fri 10:00 PM in Executive Suite 823 (1 hour)
SOCIAL NETWORK SOCIAL

ZOMGWTFBBQ! Come and hang out with your fellow LJers, DWers, FBers,
Tweeters, and any other *ers we haven’t thought of yet at Philcon!
Hopefully this year we'll be able to answer the age-old
question...Is there anyone here who's NOT on Hugh's friends list?


Sat 10:00 AM in Crystal Ballroom Two (1 hour)
PHILCON 101

[Panelists: Hugh Casey (mod), Suzanne Rosin, Emily Tullis]

Maybe it is your first Philcon, and your're wondering what there is
to do. Or maybe you've been here before , but feel like you're
missing something. Stop by and we'll tell you what you need to
know


Sat 1:00 PM in Crystal Ballroom Two
DIVERSITY IN SF AND FANDOM

[Panelists: Hugh Casey (mod), David M. Axler, Orenthal Hawkins,
Stephanie Burke, David Silverman]

RaceFAIL'09. MammothFAIL. The Open Source Boob Project. SF
writers, editors, and fans publicly commenting on race, faith, or
sexual issues that other find offensive. Lately it seems that
issues about racism, sexism, and other types of prejudice have
exploded all over professional SF and its fandom. Is fandom rife
with bigotry? Or are people being too sensitive or making
something out of nothing? Or is the truth somewhere in between?
And, maybe most importantly, is it even POSSIBLE to have a civil
conversation about any of this? Well, we're going to give it a
try. Wish us luck.


Sat 3:00 PM in Crystal Ballroom Two (1 hour)
PIRATE, NINJA, SUPERVILLAIN, VAMPIRE

[Panelists: Hugh Casey (mod), Dusti Lewars, Phil Kahn, Sally-Rouge
Pax, Ruth Lampi]

First we had Monkeys. Then Robots. Then Mad Scientists. Now,
Philcon's most fun panel is back... now with BLOODSUCKERS! Watch
as our panelists are each assigned one of these four character
archetypes, and then BATTLE IT OUT to see who reigns SUPREME! Or
at least, SUPREMELY FUNNY!


Sat 4:00 PM in Crystal Ballroom Three (1 hour)
STAR TREK: WHERE DOES IT BOLDLY GO NOW?

[Panelists: Keith R.A. DeCandido (mod), Hugh Casey, Terri Osborne,
Lawrence M. Schoen, Samatha Kwait]

J.J. Abrams rebooting/revisioning of STAR TREK seems to have
re-invigorated what many thought was a dying franchise. But where
should it go from here, and what kind of stories should it tell?
Is it still true to Roddenberry's vision, and how important is it
that it remain so


Sat 10:00 PM in Plaza IV (Four) (1 hour)
WHAT'S A HOT ORION LIKE YOU DOING IN A CANTINA LIKE THIS?... FLIRTING
AND DATING

[Panelists: Hugh Casey (mod), Dusti Lewars, Genevieve Iseult
Eldredge, James Prego, Jo Blu Pax, KT Pinto]

The stereotypical fan is someone who lacks a bit in the social
skills department. So, if you're one of those fans, how do you go
about learning them? Simple... you go to this panel! Bring a
sense of humor, and you may learn something along the way


Sun 11:00 AM in Crystal Ballroom Two (1 hour)
SCIFI SAVED MY LIFE

[Panelists: Hugh Casey (mod), Patricia M. Cryan, Jay Smith, Crystal
Paul, Ray Ridenour, Tobias Cabral]

For many of us, science fiction and fantasy are simply entertaining
escapes. But for some of us, they are much, much more. For some
people, they become a lifeline. Come and hear stories from our
panelists, and share your own.

It seems I forgot my personal rule about LJ title construction... I aim to fix that. :)

---

That aside, this is a picture post. I had two serendipitous things happen at the end of last month (three, if you count starting a new job): first, I saw this cool leaf on the curb outside the train station one evening, sprinkled with perfect round water drops, each one picked out by the headlights of a nearby car. I saw it, and I did the mental effect that they showed in the movie about Weegee... I saw what the photo of the scene would look like. That's a skill which I envy in good photographers, and which I usually don't manifest myself.

I got off about 5 shots, but in the last three, the car had moved and the light was no longer optimal. I was pleased with what I had, and a teeny bit disappointed that the wallpaper orientation hadn't come out well. :(

Then, I heard a review of Mobile Photoshop for the iPhone, a product I had poo-pooed. It's apparently one of the better iPhone image modifiers out there, and it's free. It's really just some filters... but filters in the right hands can work magic.



It doesn't hurt that there was something interesting in the shot to begin with. :)

-ir out.

Philcon panelist schedules have begun to go out. If you're a panelist and you haven't gotten yours yet, you should have it shortly.

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Had a very quiet day on my birthday but got about a gazillion birthday wishes from friends. Thank you all so very much. She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed made me a cake with candles and everything and gave me a big Yankees World Series Champs mug. The really big present was going to the Star Wars concert last Tuesday. Seeing a concert quality orchestra perform while recording for a film has always been one of my dreams (Yes, I am in fact a geek!) and this was as close to that as you can get. I still can't get over the virtuosity of the musicians.

I once got tickets to see Les Miserables (I've seen that show about a couple of dozen times, no joke!) and the tickets were in the boxes stage right so we were looking down at the orchestra. I watched them more than I did the show. Hell, I could read their music! Hey, that's part of the weirdness that makes me so charming, don'tcha know!

We watched one of Burt Lancaster's early movies, The Crimson Pirate, which is a great popcorn movie as long as you remember that it's a Hollywood fable and forget history. This has nothing to do with history and everything to do with Burt Lancaster and Nick Cravat's bodies and their athletic talents.

Next is 100 Minutes War and then our anniversary is on the 25th. Which reminds me, please don't be insulted if I see you and can't remember you name, I'm horrible with names. Ya see this is our 37th wedding anniversary coming up and after 37 years I still call her Sweetie Pie and she still thinks it's a term of endearment. Maybe I should have her wear a name tag.

Y'all have a great week and if you see anybody famous, tell em Da Coach says, "Hey!"

Coffee is good stuff. In fact, I've been so productive this weekend that I'm going to make the big pot of coffee this week to see if I can continue the momentum. Friday was Social, Saturday was Creative and today was Productive. Monster Cat is done for the week though I'm still prepping the posts. Laundry is, of course, on-going but big box store and grocery shopping is done. The kittens have been good this weekend and, of course, Mr. Paw has been a love dove.

I've re-started Nanowrimo. I'm vaguely on track if I stick to a revised pace.

(soft-core spoilers for The Fourth Kind ahead)

( The Fourth Kind... kinda disappointing... no plot give-aways, just meta-spoilers. )

Cross-posted from digital-tree.com...

Sugar swan is done. No more hoodies, no more yamaka, no more duck tape. Complete with royal beak markings. I will be adding crown and chain and water later this week.

Project stats:
2 large boxes of substandard rice crisp cereal
2 bags of generic marshmallows
2 stick of butter
10 lbs of fondant
1 lb of gum paste
4 wooden dowels 1/4" diameter
2 yards of duck tape
2 tubes of epoxy

~500 individual feathers
Construction time: 4 weeks

I've been on a genealogy roll this week. I re-signed up for Ancestry.com and they have SO much more crap online than they did the last time I got bitten by this bug.

One of the things I started to touch on the last time I was researching was that my maternal grandmother's family seemed to be primarily from Massachusetts. I thought that was kind of interesting and cracked a few jokes about Mass being my Ancestral Homeland (for those of you just joining us, I grew up in Seattle and the past few generations of my family were West Coasters).

So today I started poking at that line of the family. Discovered the kind of neat fact that my great-great-great-grandfather, Fletcher Newhall (of Lynn, Boston, and Everett), shared my birthdate (Nov 15 1816). So that was kind of cool. And then I just kept rolling, to see how long the family had been in Mass.

I finally, finally tracked back to Nicholas Potter, b. 1604 in England and came to Massachusetts in 1634.

This is just incredible to me. I have assumed for years that my family were recent immigrants. I really never expected to find that they were some of the earliest white folk to colonize these parts.

Crazy. Weirdest birthday present ever.

So!

This weekend was K-man's Boy Scout trip to Mystic CT. He was grub master, which meant that although his behavior was less than promising (or age appropriate) during the week, he had to go as he was responsible for the food. :) I finally brow-beat him into making up a shopping list on Tuesday, and then we played the "What did you forget" game until we had something we could work with. It took until Thursday night to get to the store, but that's kind of what I'd had in mind anyway. Food was purchased, and we didn't even go too far over "acceptable"... $15 a head for the whole weekend.

Friday night the weather was bad, so the troop didn't leave until Saturday morning - at 6:30 am. Got up at 5, packed the food in the car (remembering all of it), packed the gear in the car, packed the boy in the car, and got him there in time. Much of the troop gear had been packed the night before, so there was some concern about getting all of the personal gear and patrol food in as well, but they managed it.

It wasn't until they'd all left, the last of the dads had chatted, and I'd gotten back in the car that I noticed K-man's raincoat and jacket.

I called Christoffel and Izzy, knowing that even in Waterbury, they were closer to Mystic than we were. I also knew they were at St. Eligius... but I figured I'd at least try. :) We didn't come up with anything, and I didn't end up having current phone info for lord_strider , who was also in the general area (usually). In the end, I called one of the Asst. Scoutmasters who usually looks out for K-man and let him know - he reported that K-man was fine, and so was the temperature, and they'd address if and when it became a problem. Apparently, it never did.

The food worked out well enough, with the exception of Saturday breakfast which fell by the wayside with the rescheduling. We ended up with the pancake mix, but someone else went home with our unopened bottle of syrup which we donated to save costs. :(

He had a good time, toured a schooner, and hasn't once said he wants to quit BSA over anything this weekend. :) Also, he wants to be a den chief.

---

Saturday included project day at alysten 's, complete with total melt-down quality nommage. CHEESE, GROMMIT! The first Yule remove will Not Suck.(tm) Nor will the dessert.

annyswolf and I even got some scribal work done, which seldom seems to happen - the girls were well-behaved enough to allow that. We progressed on the wordsmithing for one scroll and the illumination for another, now we can cut down the paper and start scribin' fo' reals.

Today was less productive, although laundry happened, as did showers and hairbrushing for the girls. annyswolf just got home with the groceries, and I've done a little (very little) more work on layouts for sexy reports. Seriously, it's better if you don't ask. It's not worth it.

-ir out.

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Today we went to Pennsbury Manor for the hearth cooking/baking demo. We took the full tour of the buildings, then spent some time in the cook/brew house. Joe spent more time there than I did, I wandered out to the kitchen garden -- and got lots of pictures of herb markers. Hope to go back when the place is all in bloom.... Also played with macro and super macro on the camera (teasel heads). Photos are here. It was a glorious day.

This area has lots of these historic and interpretation houses -- one not far from our house even (Pennsbury is about an hour away). Need to hit more of them...

Bread is currently rising and I have beef stew in the crockpot. Nom nom nom!

I did some raking and bagging of leaves. Still millions to go. The firewood is finally all stacked. (I'm not impressed with the quality of at least half of it - buggy and some rotting, likely due to the wet year. So those logs will get used first and the majority of the good stuff is out behind the shed in the main woodpile.

Laundry's done, but not yet folded and put away, the sheets have been changed, and round one of the dishes is done.

In case you didn't see what I did to my car.

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My sugar swan has had some issues. I came home one day, and it's head had come off. Since then it has self decapitated 2 more times. So....

Each time the royal icing has been applied (think spackle) and allowed to harden. This gets roughed up and sanded. A 4 inch wooden dowel gets inserted into the head. Epoxy is used to cement the 2 pieces together, and gum past is used (think cauking) to fill any gaps. Allow to cure/harden.

After the 2nd time (the neck broke in 2 different places), I applied duct tape to the whole neck to offer stability. And so far.... no self decapitation. (woo) This will then be covered in sugar and fondant feathers.

I think I have nailed the cause of decapitation to substandard rice crispies and generic marshmallows. The rest of the bird is rock solid and not going anywhere.

The swan is 95% edible, 3% wooden dowels and 2% duck tape. Ironically... we are using the standard non-period method of mending anything broken in the SCA. It is almost apropos.

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The concert yesterday afternoon went pretty darn well, I thought. Just before that, I caught the first half of Luke Ski's, and he was in fine form and having fun. After, I hung out in the hall for awhile, talking to many nice people (including Bob Passavoy, who I never see enough of). Then I went back up to the room for awhile.

I'd got it into my head that the Masquerade was at 9:00. Well, at 8:20 I was getting ready to go down, and I looked at the program book to see where it was, and discovered that it was at 8:00.

I was downstairs by 8:25. Got backstage literally three minutes before I had to go on. Fortunately, it was before, so I got up there smoothly and got right into it... as it was announced that the masquerade winners would be announced after 9:45.

So I'm suddenly committed to an hour and fifteen.

Noooooooo problem. Rocked the house. I've done almost four hours of concert this weekend, with only two repeats ("Two Guys Kissin'" and "Rocket Ride").

Then I went to the open filk for a bit. Bill Roper, Kiki, Matt, others. Some guy noodling very well with a banjo. A new kid, Ray I'm pretty sure his name was, wrote a song yesterday morning, and he's got a very soft voice but the song was good and his guitaring is also good. Another new person, a young girl about the same age, did a couple of songs I presume are some kind of alternative folk-rock. Nice voice, good stuff.

Today: packing up, hanging out by the dealers' room for awhile, Closing Ceremonies, home.

How's by you?

Happy Birthday baronernst! I hope your day is full of all the things you love.

Tired - I hope this is coherent!

I did manage to get to bed before midnight the evening before. Yay! I swore years ago that I wouldn't do the up all night before the event deal, since I was going to every event underslept and cranky. I've *mostly* stuck to it!

Things were a bit slow in the morning, including tearing apart the house looking for the pegs for the Glastonbury chair, and jump starting the minivan.

Jeff headed out first to set up before we got there, but the procession and all of that had already started, so he skipped setting up the tent. We need to make a gallery so we can have shade/rain protection without the big annoying tent. It was cloudy and nice yesterday, so we perched our chairs on a rug and were quite happy.

I arrived with the boys, and Edward had slept in the car, so he was grumpy upon arrival. Eventually, both boys fell right in with the other kids, playing, running around, etc. They had a grand time. We'd dropped the toys off in Eadric's tent early on, but never ended up going back to pull them out.

The best part of the day was Faye (not on LJ?) bringing her daughter, Laurel, who was willing to run around after the boys all day. I'll bet Laurel slept *really well* that evening.

The other best part of the day was seeing the highest concentration of well-dressed, single period people in one event. The shot below of the fancy hat club was taken after about half of the fancy hats had left. It was amazing.

The event seemed very short. We arrived, set up, sat down for a bit of chatting, did one round of visiting, and then it seemed like it was over. The boys and I didn't stay for feast, but Jeff stayed to run the table service. I think part of the short feeling is that it gets dark SO early right now. By 5, it was almost completely dark, and we were packing out.

If anybody has pictures of the table service schtick, I'd love to see them!

I could swear I took more pictures than this. But the hat made me feel really handicapped. This is definitely a rich woman's style.

( Pictures! )

We'll be at Holiday Faire next weekend. I hope we can find a sitter - it's a crummy event to take the boys to. If we can, I'll probably wear the hat again!

Lily pictures are forthcoming, but in the meantime...

( A little boy is dressed in the style of the 15th century, from the skin out (no un-toward nudity )

I'd like to try this again when taking more time...

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So, it's 8pm Saturday night. Haven't really done a thing all day. Was up at 4:30am. Didn't stay up, as there really was nothing to do, motivation-wise. Even now, I know I want to do dishes (or, well, I know there are dishes to be done), but we'll see which way that one falls.

Work has called innumerable times in the past 24 hours...being on-call and having a big project happening this weekend, this isn't unexpected. It's not usually this bad...but not unexpected. Despite being at the computer, then, for much of this time and mostly waiting for the next shoe to fall (which it does, at intermittent rates...I have no idea how many shoes have dropped, but someone should open a store with the inventory thus accumulating), I've not managed to motivate enough to, say, open up The Gimp and crop an image of my ID and SCA membership card so I can email it - not even mail it! - to become a warranted herald.

That being said, I'm forcing that one to happen, now...it's a simple task and one I should knock off ASAP. I'll feel better or at least not so bad about not doing it.

It's Second Saturday in Media, so there's very likely a lot of things happening up and down State St. I'll be staying in. Maybe next month.

Here's hoping the rest of the weekend gets out of my way, though that's not saying I'm looking forward to Monday...more likely I'm looking ever more forward to next weekend, though it's practically a week away...

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You might be crazy if:
a) you get to mid-November and think, "Yeah, I can still finish Nanowrimo."
b) you get to mid-November and think, "Yeah, I can still finish Nanowrimo." and then you change your novel concept and start over.
c) you plan to start and finish Nanowrimo in 2 weeks while working on several other projects plus a somewhat unpredictable work schedule.
d) you think the easiest thing you have to do in the next 2 weeks will be writing 3500 words a day and to prove that you write 5000 words to get started.

So yes, I am indeed doing Nanowrimo this year, I'm just off to a late start. I'm at 5054/50,000. A week on a boat and then a somewhat crazy week of other stuff left me a wee bit behind, but I don't think it'll be a problem. Right?

[insert maniacal laughter here]

1. Spending the afternoon catching up on e-mail and correspondence. I have gotten behind. One more try, by the way, e-mail me if you want a copy of my "Teaching In The SCA" lesson plan. I made French Toast this morning, cleaned a bit, then took a nap. Made Alethea a late lunch, then came into the computer room. It's 51 chilly, wet and miserable degrees here in the North Country.

2. I got to cover an Americal Hockey League game last night (one step below the NHL, like Class AAA baseball). I covered the out-of-town team, Binghamton, against the Adirondack Phantoms. Binghamton won, 5-0. I had the story done in plenty of time and sent the summary almost exactly on my deadline (maybe one minute late) even though I had to come home, because I could not get a wireless signal at the civic center.

3. After the end of the football season resulted in a couple of free weekends, I am now looking at three straight busy weeks -- the Polar Plunge next weekend, travel to New Jersey and Pennsylvania for the holidays and Alethea's company Christmas party the first weekend of December. Then I get a weekend to myself. Yay!

4. I love headlines like "Outgoing autistic student EHS homecoming king."

From the Killeen Daily Herald.

5. To me, "challenging political correctness" can simply mean "going back to profiling."

PC doesn't kill people. people with guns kill people.

Just my opinion.

6. Oh, and to rant at a random LJ poster in a teaching community, "No, finding a kid having covered his notebook in swastikas is *not* the time to take it as a "teachable moment" and explain how it was once a sacred symbol.

His response, by the way: "Perhaps. My transactional style is heavily filtered through critical pedagogy. As a result, I'm unwilling to grant such power to German Socialists. It does too much violence to others who still use the swastica with great reverence."

7. Sometimes I am in awe of clothiers in the SCA:



Note: This is King Lars and Queen Mary from Northshield at Pennsic 37.

Trivia question for everyone but evilnicola: What Eastern award does Mary hold that few others on my friends list have?

Should've known that Wikipedia would have this, although I wish they also had the same list adjusted for "percent of the population that saw the film." That's the real figure to indicate popularity, but I don't think anyone has tracked that.

Film list (adjusted for inflation) [Top grossing in North America]

1. Gone with the Wind (1939) 202,044,600
2. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) 178,119,600
3. The Sound of Music (1965) 142,415,400
4. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) 141,854,300
5. The Ten Commandments (1956) 131,000,000
6. Titanic (1997) 128,210,000
7. Jaws (1975) 128,078,800
8. Doctor Zhivago (1965) 124,135,500
9. The Exorcist (1973) 110,568,700
10. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) 109,000,000
11. One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) 99,917,300
12. Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) 98,180,600
13. Ben-Hur (1959) 98,000,000
14. Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983) 94,059,400
15. The Sting (1973) 89,142,900
16. Raiders of the Lost Ark (Indiana Jones) (1981) 88,141,900
17. Jurassic Park (1993) 86,361,800
18. The Graduate (1967) 85,571,400
19. Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) 84,738,800
20. Fantasia (1941) 83,043,500

The complete list is 100 long. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films_in_the_United_States_and_Canada

I finally got around to reading (and finishing) the final Harry Potter book this week. Not a bad story, but could have been a much better one if its volume had been reduced by half.

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http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=207986

Just getting ready to go downstairs. I've had a bad headache all morning, and I just had a burger, which helps. But not as much as the ibuprofen.

The set last night was incredible. If today's 3:00 is anywhere as good, I'll blow out the walls. Eric and Jason of Toyboat did join me on stage for "PQR", and Amy McNally and I got a standing O for "Dervish", and Eric played drums again for "Rocket Ride". Gooooooood noise.

How's your weekend progressing?

Too many of my friends or family have H1N1 now, and a couple of them are seriously ill, scary ill. When your bride works in the health care industry and has a compromised immune system it is a bit scarier than normal. All of you out there, take care of yourselves. Wash your hands regularly and use Purell or some other comparable product often. Carry a small bottle with you. Don't shake hands as often as you used to and, if you do have to shake hands, again, use that Purell. I don't have so many damned friends that I can afford to lose any more of you!

I got fitted for new, custom orthotics (foot correction shoe inserts) by the man who is more highly recommended than anyone else I have heard about. He swears that they will fix my foot pains and he went on to explain why all the others have failed so far. So I'm gonna give him a shot. I mean, what the hell? I've got nothing to lose here other than a few more bucks and I've been throwing money at my feet for years and years and years with nothing much to show for it. Keep your fingers crossed . Who knows, maybe they'll even help my back problems some.

Went to see 2012 at the matinee yesterday. I enjoyed the hell out of it. More end-of-the-world special effects and a neat twist to the dénouement of the whole shebang. Don't expect anything special in this other than the special effects but it was very entertaining. It's a good popcorn movie but I don't think they'll ever top Independence Day (ID4) in movies of this genre. Danny Glover was great and Woody Harrelson was a surprise. Special effects are best seen on the big screen.

As for the idea of the world ending on 2112 because the Mayan Calendar ended there, it's kinda like saying the world is gonna end because your Quote-A-Day desk calender ran out. The science is thin, very thin.

Tonight's "movie" is the 2003 version of Goodbye, Mr. Chips (Masterpiece Theater). I love that story in all its incarnations.

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http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=208413

The last couple of days/weeks I have lost alot of request on FB, if you have sent me something and not received it then you know that FB has messed up again.