Pet peeves

This is a completely gratuitous post on: Things that irritate me or How to piss me off.

• Fundamentalist religionuts and any pseudoscientific garbage, but those are just a given.


• Mispronunciations. Especially people who mispronounce nuclear as nuke-yoo-lar (our favorite former commander-in-chief, for instance), realtor REE-lit-or (I've know actual realtors who can't pronounce this word) and mispronunciation mis-pro-noun-see-ay-shun. Bill is completely unable to pronounce labyrinth and pronounces it lab-er-nith, but that's just cute.*


• People who say irregardless. The word is either regardless or irrespective, people! Pick one, but don't combine them. From my 1974 edition of Webster’s New World Dictionary, irregardless is defined as a substandard or humorous redundancy for REGARDLESS.


• Snowboarders, with the exception of Kia, with whom I've never skied, and my son. He irritates me for other reasons. Snowboarders don't seem to have the brain capacity to understand that most skiers go back and forth across the slope, not straight down, and seem to be constantly surprised when skiers turn and go the other way right into their path such that they scream by at 50 mph barely missing and frightening the skier (me, anyway) half to death. In addition, skis make a pleasant shush, shushing sound - snowboards literally roar as they go by. I'm constantly swearing at snowboarders and calling them fracking moron idiots under my breath. Redundant, I know, but it makes me feel better. Ok, I don't always say fracking. Frelling? Smegging? (30 points if you can name all three Sci Fi shows - without a search engine). One ran into me earlier this year on a completely wide open slope with just the two of us on it, and then was bent out of shape when I yelled, "moron" at him (more out of fear and surprise than malice. Ok, maybe there was a little malice).


• Led vs. Lead.
  
  Lead (lěd) - a heavy, comparatively soft, malleable, bluish-gray metal, sometimes found in its natural state but usually combined as a sulfide, esp. in galena. Symbol: Pb; atomic weight: 207.19; atomic number: 82; specific gravity: 11.34 at 20°C.
  
  Lead (lēd) - to go before or with to show the way; conduct or escort
  
  Led (lěd) - the past tense of lead.
  
  LED - light emitting diode


• Fracking big SUVs, perhaps just when they're driven by idiots. UPDATE: Andrew reminded me that it's a general rule that fracking big SUVs are always driven by idiots.


• People who say Safety Deposit Box. It is SAFE Deposit Box, people! We just watched an episode of Fringe where ALL the characters said safety deposit box over and over and over. I, of course, had to yell, "SAFE! The word is SAFE!" every time. Yeah, okay. I was probably more annoying than they were. Probably. Same thing happened recently with an episode of Alias.


• Bigotry of any sort against anybody for any reason. Except snowboarders. Bigotry against snowboarders is fine.


• Cruelty to animals. Humans included.


• Having the television on just as noise in the background. I'm constantly coming into the living room and turning it off because NO ONE IS WATCHING IT! Unless I'm watching something in particular, I don't like it on at all. I have happily gone without TV for years at a time (I did use it to watch movies occasionally).

When I asked Bill to list things that irritate me, he said, "People who make slight grammatical errors and misproNOUNciations" (I already had that on the list). "And people who don't change lanes soon enough for you." No, Bill. That's just YOU.

*NOTE: Bill says he's not cute, he's ruggedly handsome.

(Note to self - figure out why there are no bullet points. Barry, help???)
UPDATE: Ok, now I have the funky flowers, but I guess they're better than nothing

I wish I were still that naive

I'm thinking about learning to scuba dive, and for some reason this has triggered some memories from when I was a lifeguard at a swim club for four summers in high school. Well, I was only actually a lifeguard for three summers, because after they hired me, we all found out that, even though I was completely certified, since I was only 15 I was too young the first summer.  So they put me to work as the Gatekeeper (no Keymaster jokes!) keeping out the hoi polloi (of which, if I remember correctly, my family was part, because we didn't live in the right part of Benicia and couldn't join). One of my jobs was to answer the phone, which happened to be a pay phone in the clubhouse. Most of the time it was questions such as, "When do you open?" and "How do we join?," but one day:

Me: Southampton Swim Club, may I help you?

Him: I'd like to [redacted] and [redacted]

Me: (thinking) I must not have heard that correctly
I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you. Could you repeat that?

Him: (louder) I'd like to [redacted] and [redacted]

Me: I can't have heard that right. It doesn't make sense.
I'm sorry, but it's really loud in here. I still couldn't hear you.

Him: I'D LIKE TO [REDACTED] AND [REDACTED]

Me: Ok, that's what I thought he said.
(long pause)......Um...we don't have a pool table here.

Him: OH, FORGET IT! (click)

As I turned away from the phone and started walking back through the clubhouse,  I bumped into the chairwoman of the board who had recently hired me. I must have looked confused, because she asked me what happened.  I relayed the conversation to her, and was startled when she burst out laughing so hard that she actually couldn't speak for a minute or two.  By this time I was REALLY confused.  When she finally was able to get control of herself, she wiped away tears, put her arm around my shoulders, and said, "Honey, you just had an obscene phone call!"  Then she told me to stay innocent for as long as possible.

Lolcats, birds, horses, elephants, goats...

I know. Lazy post. Hey, I did all the hard work of weeding through icanhascheezburger.com for you!

Yah, I would have been right up there with them. Srsly.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures


see more Lolcats and funny pictures


He might actually be able to catch that starling...







If I know horses, he's actually just about to rip out the spark plug wires.



If my mother reads this (highly unlikely), she's just going to worry in case he hurts himself. She's probably worried about the upside-down starling, too.

Zombies are more of a problem in our front yard.

My brother actually sent this one to me.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Earthquakes

The first earthquake I ever felt was a small one that barely shook the stage while I was in band rehearsal a couple of months after we moved to California. The Drum Major screamed, "Earthquake!" but the rest of the band just sat calmly as the room swayed back and forth a little.
______________________________________________________
I was also in class at UC Davis when the 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake (otherwise known as the earthquake that interrupted the World Series that almost nobody cared about anyway) hit the San Francisco Bay Area on October 17, 1989. Davis was about 100 miles from the epicenter, and we actually felt it quite strongly. I was in Human Physiology in the largest lecture hall on campus, and everyone in the room thought that the person behind them had kicked the back of their chair. Hard. The professor was standing, and couldn't feel it, but slowly realized that he had suddenly completely lost everyone's attention. Finally the class managed to point out to him that 1) his bike was rolling back and forth behind him, and 2) the trees outside were whipping back and forth without wind.

I got out to my car after class, and KGO, the Bay Area talk radio station to which my radio was always tuned was off the air. That's when I started worrying about my parents, who were living in the Bay Area at the time. By the time I was able to get home and call them, the phone lines were completely overwhelmed and useless.

Cut to my parents:
My parents were sitting on the couch watching everything swing and sway around them, and after a while, my mother said to my father, "Do you think we should get in a doorway or something?" by which time, it was over. They sat and watched as a large vase on the wall unit spun around and around on it's base, but eventually righted itself rather than falling over. My collie, Robin, was staying with them for a few months, and had had a couple of dizzy spells. They said he stood in the entryway with his legs splayed, obviously thinking this was another one.

KGO was off the air because their radio transmission tower...broke and fell into the bay.
_______________________________________________________
I happened to be in Redlands, CA when the Landers and Big Bear twin earthquakes hit, June 28, 1992. I was doing field work for the consulting firm for which I worked and I had dragged one of our field technicians, Burt, down to Southern California to help. We had fyke nets in the Santa Ana River and Big Bear Creek up in the San Bernardino Mountains that we were checking a couple of times a day.

Unusually for me, just as I was falling asleep on the 27th, I thought to myself, "What would I do if there's an earthquake tonight? I'll get under that table." No, I had never thought anything like that before. No, I'm not psychic. I either felt one of the pre-shocks, or it was just a coincidence. I was literally thrown out of bed when the 7.6 magnitude Lander's quake hit at 4:58 AM (Redlands was ~40 miles from the epicenter), and woke up under that table thinking, "Damn! I should really wear more clothes to bed. I can't run outside wearing this!" Yes, if the building had collapsed, I would have been killed due to modesty.

I wasn't really frightened - more excited than anything. When I finally got dressed and outside, it was mostly over, the water was sloshing around in the pool a little, and the completely freaked out Burt was at my door with his bags packed, ready to leave. I convinced him that we should at least eat breakfast first. I also called my parents to tell them I was OK even though it was 5:00 AM, because I knew from previous experience that the phone lines would soon be overwhelmed.

A fairly strong aftershock hit while Burt and I were eating, but I convinced him that we should just stay and finish our job. We couldn't just leave the nets there, and "What are the chances that there will be another earthquake," I said, rolling my eyes. I remember saying this several times.

We left to go up into the San Bernardino mountains and a really strong aftershock hit while we were gassing up the truck. This helped him convince me that we should go back to our hotel and at least call in to see what our supervisor said. While we were on the phone, the 6.7 Big Bear earthquake hit. Although it was a much smaller earthquake, it was also much closer (~25 miles away) and a MUCH sharper jolt.

It was probably one of the most exciting things that has ever happened to me. Burt and I were taking turns yanking the phone out of each other's hands and relaying the earthquake to our poor supervisor blow-by-blow. We were on the second floor, and had a pretty good view.

Large amounts of water in the pool started sloshing out, which was just amazing to see.

The television in my room kept tilting forward until it was caught by the cord, and then thrown back onto the table.

The hotel we were in was right next to a freeway overpass, which was swaying violently back and forth. The teflon-lined joints in the road bed were doing their job, and sliding against each other - one half of the overpass was going one way, and the other the other way. The friction was so great, the joint started smoking. Although it was only offset by a few inches, it was incredible to watch!

It was an unusually clear day, and as I looked out at the mountains, it suddenly looked as thought they had spontaneously burst into flames. What looked like smoke started billowing up all over them. I realized this must be from numerous simultaneous land slides and relayed this to my poor supervisor.

Everything calmed down fairly quickly, and Burt was finally able to convince me to leave. Before we left, we drove out to explain to our client's office to let them know we were going and ask them to pull the nets when they got a chance. They told us that they had several work crews stuck up on the roads unable to move because landslides had blocked them on either side. Yes, the very same roads we would have been on if I had had my way. Later, we also found out that the nets had actually been buried under boulders. THAT would have been exciting had we been there... The nets were only a few miles from the epicenter of the Big Bear quake.

Amazingly enough, there were only three casualties from these two quakes, although sadly one of them was a three year old boy.

Tomatoes

Warning: Boring tomato post. If you couldn't already tell that from the title.

Bill and I usually have three tomato plants in tubs in our backyard, at least two of which are heirloom. This year we have Bull's Heart (my favourite - we grow it every year), Belgium Giant (Bill picked it out), and Jetsetter (which, contrary to the name, was the last to ripen yet again this year). This usually means we have so many tomatoes we can't eat them all before they rot, so I can many of them. Last year started out promising, but ended up being a dud. I canned 4 jars of Bull's Heart, and we easily kept ahead of them and ate the rest as they ripened.

This year:
First harvestA few days later it had grown into a big scary pile. Time to can:After the massacre:Done deed:This year they are very juicy. I usually use a slotted spoon to spoon them into the jars, and that only leaves a little liquid at the bottom. Usually. I actually canned 3 more jars after this photo was taken.

When you grow tomatoes, tomato hornworms often show up eventually and can do some major damage. I call them an attractive nuisance. They're really quite pretty.(click to embiggen) Bill called me outside to see a small black wasp "stinging" this one. I ran out and there was a pitched battle going on. The wasp was landing on the hornworm's back, and the hornworm was flinging it's head and upper body violently around at it. I said, "Um, no. It isn't stinging. It's laying eggs."

Then I wouldn't let Bill kill the hornworm (what he normally does when he finds them) because I thought we should allow the parasitic wasps to survive to adulthood. The hornworm hung around in the top of the Belgium Giant plant for about a week, and then disappeared yesterday. I didn't see any signs of wasp infestation (it is apparently fairly obvious when they pupate). Now I don't know if it died due to the infestation, or has gone further down into the plant to pupate and metamorphose into a moth.

Concerts - not mine for once

I haven't seen many live concerts. Well, I've seen lots of live concerts—heck, I've been in lots of live concerts—but not many involving world famous people. The first one I remember (although, granted, my memory is notoriously bad — just ask my family) was:

Miles Davis
When I was in high school, we had a Japanese exchange student, Yoshiyuki, stay with us for a couple of weeks. Miles Davis was apparently really big in Japan at the time and just happened to be playing in Berkeley while Yoshi was here, and Yoshi was a HUGE fan. All he could talk about was Mile Daybees this, and Mile Daybees that. I wouldn't be surprised if he had coordinated his trip to coincide with the Miles Davis concert. I had never heard of Miles Davis. So my father bought tickets, and we found ourselves in an auditorium on the UC Berkeley campus.

Yoshi was ecstatic, but my father and I weren't that impressed. All Miles did was walk around blatting notes at the ground while his band played. I was more transfixed by the wall changing colors behind him. It was far out! Lest you think I'm kidding about the blatting at the floor, note the third photo down on the Wikipedia article. Blatting. At. The. Floor. He obviously did it a lot.

Yoshi ended his visit by insisting on making dinner for us which consisted mostly of tofu from a can. It was still shaped like the can, and looked like canned, white, opaque, cranberry sauce. This English family of the '70s thought it was extremely odd. We ate it politely, but I don't think any of us had the courage to try tofu again for years.

SIDE NOTE: I was up late last night writing this because I couldn't sleep. Today, one of my Friends M (I have three Friends M) sent me an e-mail which included the sentence, "It was kind of like you seeing Miles Davis." I got the e-mail on my BlackBerry and FREAKED! I was saying to myself, "CRAP! I must have accidentally posted it, but it was only HALF DONE!" Turns out I hadn't posted and it was only a coincidence. I'm just really, really boring, and apparently tell the same stories over and over again.

Maynard Ferguson
I didn't always play just the bassoon. I started out on alto saxophone, and played it in my high school jazz band. The jazz band rehearsed before school and I got up really early (Hey, an hour early is a major sacrifice when you're a teenager) for four years.

In about 1980, we got to go to Reno, Nevada and compete in the Reno Jazz Festival. That particular year, we had a lot of musicians who played more than one instrument, and our band director arranged one of our pieces so that at a certain time, we all put down one instrument and picked up another. Instead of a row of five saxes, we had a flute, clarinet, oboe, bass clarinet and bassoon. In the brass section which normally only had trumpets and trombones, we had at least one French horn and a Sousaphone. We won third place in our division against some stiff competition.

The headliner that they had come and play for the school bands was Maynard Ferguson. Since I recently just had a not-so-great experience seeing another trumpeter, I wasn't looking forward to the concert. Certainly not as much as our trumpet section was. I don't remember much, except that I thoroughly enjoyed it, loved the music, and Maynard Ferguson could play really really high notes. And he didn't point his trumpet at the ground once.

Billy Joel
In high school, my brother's friend won two tickets on a radio show giveaway, wasn't a big Billy fan, gave them to my brother, who knew I was a HUGE Billy Joel fan, so he gave them to me. Yes, I DO have the nicest brother in the world. Who doesn't read this blog, so I don't know why I'm being so nice to him. If I was really mean, I'd stick in the photo of him with orange-peel teeth that he texted me, but I put that as my wallpaper at work, instead. Where was I? Oh, right. Billy Joel. I took my future ex-husband, David.

Fantastic concert, and since it was in 1982, he hadn't had that many hits, and I knew almost everything he sang by heart. AND people all over the building lit up as soon as the concert started and I got slightly high from all the secondhand weed. At least I imagined I did. I asked David what it was, and he said the same thing he said when I asked him what the F-word meant. "What do you think?"

Basia
Fairly soon after David and I broke up, I lived in an apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area with William, my Dalmatian Charlie, and my cat Pepper. Charlie weighed 75 lbs and I lived in one of only three apartment complexes in town that allowed dogs over 15 lbs. Because of this, virtually EVERYONE in the complex had a huge dog, and there were several large areas to allow them to run around.

The guy downstairs had a golden retriever that played with Charlie occasionally. He won tickets (the guy, not the golden retriever) to a Basia concert at the Concord Pavilion from a radio station (Gee. Sounds familiar. Probably the same station), and asked me if I wanted to go. I had never heard of Basia and I was in the process of getting a divorce and certainly didn't want to start dating anyone, especially not someone I saw as frequently as the guy downstairs just in case it didn't work out, but for some reason I said yes.

He drove, and I was acutely embarrassed for him because...the poor guy had the worst flatulence I've ever...er...smelled. While in the car. With me. The silent-but-deadly kind. I was too polite to say or do anything and just pretended I didn't notice. Nowadays, I would just exclaim, "DUDE!" and roll down the window while making rude gagging noises. That's what I do with Bill, anyway.

The main thing I remember about Basia was that she hurt my ears. I think I knew Time and Tide and Promises, but that was about it.

Fortunately Basia's opening act was:

Spiro Gyra
Again. Me. Never heard of Spiro Gyra. I was completely blown away. They were AWESOME!! (although I would have said something like, "Bitchen!," or "Outragous!," except that I was a complete unhip dweeb who only started using, "Cool!" relatively recently. Yes, I was a real Joanie). Basia was even impressed that they opened for her.

And any band that's named after filamentous green algae is fine by me, anyway. I would probably have liked them if they had been called Cyano Phyta.

Billy Joel redux
Or maybe it was Billy Joel's dad. Well, I certainly don't look the same 26 years later, either. I blogged about it here, so I won't say too much other than it was FANTASTIC and he's still got it. Whatever it is.

Leon Redbone
Very recently, my Friend M and I saw him in Sacramento. He was really good, and really funny, but I had some personal things going on so I had a hard time listening. It could also have been due to the two Long Island Iced Teas. We were slightly disappointed to find out (before we went) that he did NOT sing I'm Just a Bill OR Conjunction Junction.

Brilliant post. Did I say brilliant? I meant boring.

I haven't posted recently, and I think that, along with Mr Farty, this may be my crappiest post ever. Not that Mr Farty's post was crappy. It was totally awesome! It said so in the title.

Right now, I could either be sewing my pirate costume full pirate regalia for an upcoming Flying Spaghetti Monster party, or writing this post, or sleeping. I've had a couple of gin and tonics, and if I can do this:sober, imagine what I can do completely drunk slightly tipsy. (Sorry for anyone who already saw this on Twitter (Hi Lesley!!). Strike while the iron is hot, unless you're ironing suedecloth. That works better on medium. (Speaking of Twitter, as soon as I twittered about male and female strippers, The Bloggess started following me. I'm just sayin')

[WARNING: Completely arbitrary change of topic]
Remember the post about Twister the one-eyed wonder horse? You know. The post before last? Someone (named David) pointed out to me that perhaps Twister is NOT soaking his hay to soften it up, but is, in fact brewing his own alcoholic beverage. A sort of hay beer. He does occasionally bump into things, which I attributed to his blindness, but maybe he's just tipsy.

Ski report

Fog
When I went skiing the week before last, the top of the mountain was completely fogged in. The main high-speed 4 person lift to the top was closed, but they had the very old two-seater-no-safety-bar one running. I took this to the top, and almost regretted it. Visibility was less than 10 feet. Here is an actual picture I took with my phone:See the tree? Luckily, I knew the mountain well enough - I wouldn't go off any cliffs because the top portion is a bowl (with very few trees), so all I had to do was keep going down - and stay on the groomed bits. The problem is estimating speed when you can't see anything. I couldn't tell if I was skiing uphill, across, or down, and kept realizing I was skiing much faster than I thought. It was the weirdest feeling. If I looked down at my skis, I would start to get vertigo, so I kept my head up and my eye out for the very few other idiots skiers who had ventured up. I actually found it fun, in a strange way, so I did it two more times before moving on to more visible parts of the resort. It snowed on and off, and Lake Tahoe was almost indistinguishable from the menacing sky.
A lot of kids that age would be screaming
While I was riding a lift up last Friday, I watched a mother slowly working her way down some moguls with her 6 or 7 year old son, telling him exactly where to go and how to do it. I skied down, and just before I got to them, the little boy made it to the edge of the groomed area, at which point his skis flew out from under him, and he went sliding off down the fairly steep slope sprawled out on his back, slowly rotating clockwise. He slid about 20 or 30 feet and did one complete rotation before coming to a stop. His mother worriedly skied down, and as I skied by, he looked up at her and exclaimed,"That was FUUUUN!!! Can I learn how to do THAT?"

Can someone please explain?

In my ~two years of reading "atheist" blogs, I've noticed something interesting. I seem to be one of the few atheists (blogging atheists, anyway) who has never been a theist. Most of the atheist bloggers seem to be originally Christians, although a very few, like Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta, and KafirGirl were other religions (Jain and Sunni Muslim, respectively). Keep in mind, I only read blogs written in English. These are people who had to go through often extremely emotionally painful realizations that god really is imaginary. Many of them have deconversion stories. UPDATE: Andrew from Artificial Habitat pointed out the de-conversion blog. It is amazing that people are able to escape this type of brainwashing. Critical thinking can really hurt sometimes and I am very grateful to my parents that I never had to go through that.

The religious nutcases in this country are desperately trying to take us back into the dark ages. When school officials suspend a kid for witchcraft, and suspend a teacher because he's suspected of being a liberal and an atheist, and we have creationists constantly attacking real science, and trying to get (un)Intelligent Design taught in science classrooms along with evolution, it indicates a huge problem. So far this hasn't always worked, and common sense has prevailed. UPDATE #2: Florida is currently trying to legislate the teaching of (un)Intelligent Design. My mother even asked my why we shouldn't teach the controversy, as it's only fair. People don't seem to understand two things:

1) There is no controversy in the scientific world about whether life evolved. It did. The only scientific controversy is regarding the mechanisms of evolution. The "controversy" about whether or not evolution happened is entirely made up by the creationists.

2) Science isn't fair. Science is about the truth. Science has specific rules that are followed to find the truth. The supernatural has never been shown to exist in anything other than people's minds.

Belief in this nonsense is harmful, even if you say, "Well, I'm not one of those theists! I don't believe that." Enough of you do. Parents already poison the brains of too many of our young people. We cannot allow this bullshit to creep into our classrooms, too. It will be an uphill battle since it is estimated that 47% of Americans believe that the world is between 6000 and 10,000 years old. FORTY-SEVEN PERCENT! I can tell you from personal experience that people in other countries (Ok, England anyway) think that Americans are completely NUTS! (Demographic wikifactoid:United States - 5% atheists, England - 35% atheists.)

I've always been mildly surprised when a scientist turns out to be a theist, but this has happened numerous times. At least one of my college professors went to church every Sunday.* I find it even more surprising when it is a biologist, because they know that there is a much better explanation for life on earth than that some sort of supernatural being created it. As far as I can tell, most of them were indoctrinated early in their lives. I just want to ask them why? Why do you still believe against all the evidence. Or maybe I should say why do you believe in the supernatural when there is no evidence?

I had a scientist say to me once, "Well what about the extra energy? Where does that go when we die?" My reaction at the time, "Uh,.........." I couldn't understand the question, and it wasn't just because I was drunk. Huh? What extra energy? The same thing happens to us as happens to any other living thing on the planet. Do worms have extra energy, too? What about trees? Bacteria? Whales? Dogs? I really have ab-so-lutely no idea what this person was talking about.

Saying "you just feel that there's a god" doesn't answer anything, either. The human mind can imagine all kinds of things. I know someone who "felt the battle" when she went to Culloden and various American Civil War battlefields. This does not mean this person is actually feeling anything, it just means she has a well developed imagination. In fact, she has often exclaimed to me in frustration, "Well, you just don't have any imagination!" Because that's ALL it is. And no I don't. When I feel that there's someone watching me while I go to the bathroom, and feel that there are people who are in a different dimension who can see me, but I can't see them, I realize it is just my imagination and that I've obviously read far too many science fiction books. Ok, maybe I do have an imagination. Or it could be the guys who just installed the new ducting in our house left a camera in the vent. But that's just being paranoid, although it's far more likely than being watched from an alternate dimension or by some supernatural sky daddy who can read my thoughts.

Many people claim that the human body/world/universe is too complex to be explained naturally. Complexity does not need a god. The complexity of the universe can be, and is being, explained non-supernaturally. Just because we don't know all the answers now, doesn't mean we won't eventually, and filling the "gaps" with some sort of god is just silly. I touched on this in a previous post.

There will be no hope for this country to stay a superpower if we don't start doing a better job teaching the general public about reality rather than being respectful of ancient superstitious bullshit. Anyone, especially biologists, believing in iron and bronze-age myths is just not logical. I just want to ask why?

And when you realize why you don't believe in any other gods that man has ever invented, you'll understand why I don't believe in yours.**

/rant

*When this was pointed out to him, one of my atheist professors said, "Well, nobody's perfect."
**Paraphrase of a quote by author Stephen F. Roberts.

First harvest

My excuse for not posting for a couple of weeks? I've just started a new job.

Warning: Boring garden post. These were taken a couple of weeks ago, and I just got up the energy to download them. Bill and I grow three tomato plants in pots each year. This year we are growing Jetsetter and two heirlooms - Bull's Heart, and Tangerine. The Jetsetters are the smaller round red ones. They didn't jetset very well this year and were beaten by the Bull's Heart by several days. The Tangerine ones are a big orange (surprise!) beefsteak tomato, and hadn't ripened yet. Called Bull's Heart for obvious reasons:

Even when you get my hand in the photo it doesn't really show how big this Bull's Heart really was. I could barely hold it with one hand - big tomato, small hand.These were all either eaten or canned.

Our basil plant bolted and tried to take over the garden this year, too. Luckily it's planted in a pot That's a tomato plant behind it.The flowers do attract a lot of bees to the patio, which makes me nervous whenever I barbecue. For the bees' sakes, not mine....

My bwain

I found the link to this BBC What sex is your brain survey on Andrea The Nerd's page over at Atheist Nexus. If you're not a member of Atheist Nexus, you can find her blog here. Here is my score:

Apparently I have an androgynous brain. I did so well at mentally rotating 3-D shapes it actually asked me if I am an engineer. The nerve!

Atheist Nexus

I just told Brother Richard at the Atheist Nexus that I would help out the site however I could, so here's a start, anyway. He is asking for atheist bloggers to promote and represent the site. I added the badge at the left - obviously I need to figure out how to either make my sidebar wider, or shrink the badge...

I picked that particular badge because at the time I copied it it had a picture of Andrew of the blog Artificial Habitat- the first person who ever commented on this blog!* The badge apparently updates with the most popular members, so I can't guarantee he's still on there. I actually "talked" with him today in the Nexus chat room, which was fun, if a little odd. Odd, mainly because I'm not used to chat rooms, not because he is. I don't think he's odd, anyway, although he does have the first three seasons of Battlestar Galactica on DVD. Oh, wait. So do we.

I have really enjoyed the website so far, and definitely recommend it to any atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers, and Pastafarians out there. It must rate highly with me. I put it above the Obama photo!

*Kia of A Blog About Everything was a close second, but even though she was my blogging inspiration, I didn't tell her for a few days because I knew she was a Christian, and I wasn't sure how she would feel about my blog. Of course I shouldn't have worried...

Doing what comes naturally

Some photos of my recent vacation with my aunt and cousin visiting from England.

Me

Yes way.

Balancing at Muir Woods (Bill watching nervously)

Balancing at Lake Tahoe (note the smoky haze)

Hanging on the outside of a Cable Car, San Francisco*

Sparkling wine tasting at Mumm in Napa Valley

My cousin Gwen

Bumpass Hell, Mount Lassen Volcanic National Park

I told her not to go past the sign...

Alcatraz

More photos soon.
*No, that's not '80s big hair. It's the wind. Really.

Cats o' four tails

Cats are wonderful, and great to have around on a cold winters night (note my ubiquitous fuzzy red blanket - aka, the cat magnet)

But sometimes they have to be disciplined. An Engineers Guide to Cats gives some really good examples of discipline, and in fact, Bill feels that Corporal Cuddling should be used daily - just to keep them in line.

Here, Isis and Smokey are having a minor tiff in which they are repeatedly whacking each other in the face. This often escalates until one leaps on the other and pins her to the ground.

When this happens, I have found that separating them and sending them to their box works well. Sort of like when I used to send my son to his room, except smaller.

Here are Isis and Alice being punished. They hate this, you can tell. Alice is taunting Isis in the first photo, but it wasn't long before it was her turn.

(Yes, those are Foyle's War, Battlestar Galactica, Fiddler on the Roof, Family Guy, Star Trek: Enterprise, Gilmore Girls, and Penn and Teller's Bullshit DVDs)

Here, Alice is trying to get away with what I call 'the half-box.' She's sitting on top of all Twister's bandages.


Occasionally, they do something so egregious they get sent to sit next to the DVD player.


And things like this very acrobatic leap by Alice to the top of the wall unit warrant a time out on top of the TV.

Here's Bill shoving Alice in behind the TV while Isis taunts from below.


The red fuzzy blanket and I are much sought after,

but sometimes you've just got to settle for Bill and the comics section of a newspaper.

This is Kitty. Apparently nobody cared enough about her to come up with a a real name. She is our only indoor-outdoor cat and is a gnarly, nasty, toothless 14-year-old whatsit who bites and scratches. She pretty much gets away with everything. Corporal Cuddling can only be done occasionally and very carefully if you don't want blood poisoning. As you can see, she usually just gets The Comfy Chair. She beat up and chased all the other cats for years, but they have figured out that she has lost her teeth, so for her own protection, she now lives in our bedroom and the backyard. She is definitely an example of what goes around comes around.


For really really bad infractions, they get sent to...THE FISHTANK! (gasp!)

Maybe they're worthwhile. At least during the winter. As long as I don't want to see the TV.