ifics

You better watch out.

( And I'm sure we can add to this.... )

For many years, I was the epitome of the last minute Christmas shopper. I would shoot home to my parents' house from college, do a quick survey of the household, and drive to the local malls and big box stores to buy gifts for everyone. My mom actually started to rely on this, as she could hop into the car with me and I'd do all of the driving to get her to the stores so she could do her Christmas shopping. (I was told once that I was the only one of the kids that she really felt comfortable in the car with. I'm not sure if that was because I was a better driver or because I was the oldest and had had the most practice. :) )

My parents are gone now and my Christmas shopping is a much more sedate and spread out process. But I ran across this story over on Instapundit and felt the need to pass it along.

To those of you who celebrate Christmas, Merry Christmas. And Happy Holidays to the rest of my friends.

I hope you have a wonderful time!

Hmm. Today I'm thankful for:

• Colleen, of course.
• My two daughters and their Significant Others.
• Family of choice.
• Occasional reminders that I'm not as theird as I usually wink I am -- no matter how disturbing that may be to my self-image.
• Books like The Highly Sensitive Person that turn my self-image upside-down and give it a good shake.
• Occasional reminders that my image of my kids also needs substantial revising from time to time.
• Work, and flexible enough hours that I don't have to take next week off if I don't want to.
• Holidays.

( raw notes )

Not a terribly productive day, so it had overtones of failure, but pretty good on the whole. Some very good spots: hearing that JRP wanted to keep the YD on for another year of modeling, etc. classes. A happy phone call delivering that news to Callie, while walking around the top of the nearby hill. (Not really much of a walk in terms of exercise, but it was sunny and pleasant.) Some conversation in the evening, though not as much as I would have liked. A little noodling on the guitar.

I finished reading The Highly Sensitive Person -- I'm still not sure how much of it is applicable, though certainly a lot of it is. Maybe I've just been very effective at suppressing a lot of what sensitivity I have, and never developed the skills to use it. It's certainly put things in a different light; there will be a River post once I've digested it more fully.

Too many projects I need to get back to.

Plenty of links up there under the cut.

... and it's too late to post a Wishful Wednesday, but not too late to wish you all a happy holiday season, whatever it is you celebrate.

Once again, the phenomenal user community of the Garritan Personal Orchestra has come up with a whole album of Christmas music, complete with cover and label art, free for the download. Scroll to the bottom of the page for links to the previous five albums.

Any cool free music you've found on the 'net? Not videos, we'll do those later today.

We are almost done wrapping gifts. I spent the latter part of the evening wrapping presents for daisy_knotwise; she spent the same time wrapping presents for Katie, Julie, and me.

Overall, Gretchen thinks there are too many packages for the girls. I'm less convinced of this, which is why we're having this discussion. :)

On the other hand, Gretchen is the one who spends more time picking up excess Stuff^TM.

I really wish that we'd been able to swing the drive down to GAFilk and back this year.

On the other hand, not using three days of vacation for that trip makes it possible to use the four days of vacation next week.

Maybe I'll get some scratch tracks recorded. :)

This story (my thanks to antoniseb for the link) captured a C-Span clip wherein a fellow from Georgia called Senator Barraso to explain that he had been praying that God would put the shine on Senator Byrd, and when Senator Inhoffe failed to show this morning to vote against the health care bill, he was worried that God had gotten a bit confused and accidentally whacked Inhoffe.



All I can say is "pray louder, perhaps your god is eating, or out for a stroll, or relieving himself? Is he not a god?"

Hello, everyone. I posted about a month-and-a-half ago regarding one of the projects I (along with my team) was putting together for my US Music course at U of M Ann Arbor.  Well, it's finally been posted to Youtube.  The final product, while of questionable quality (we were on a tight timeline, and were also a little limited in video footage quantity and quality (blurry)), is fairly fun.  If you'd like to take a look at it, here are the links:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4NzZ5wy2WM
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsAlE_bKpjM

I performed a few interviews on filk for this course, as well.  Here are the links for those transcripts.  (Sorry about the long urls.) 

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/livingmusic/browse_interviews&mode=single&recordID=3124571&nextMode=list

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/livingmusic/search_interviews&groupSize=1&recordID=3107183&mode=single&sortDirection0=Ascending&column0=keywords&sortColumn0=informantlastname&comparisonType0=contains+%28text+only%29&value0=filk

I'd like to thank everyone involved.  I and my classmates really appreciate your help and your willingness to share.  Feel free to email me at jessgetman@gmail.com if you have any questions about these transcripts or the video. 

Cheers!

Jessica
(musicahumana)
jessgetman@gmail.com

PS - several people requested to remain anonymous.  If a name isn't on the final product, it's because they wanted it that way, not because we were trying to leave them out.  <grin> 

( raw notes )

Hmm. A pretty good day, I guess. OK, a very good day in terms of things accomplished: I started on the FSA receipts (didn't get very far, but hopefully I have some momentum now), got a diagnosis for my very recent urological problems (enlarged prostate), got some lab-work done (everything looks good except the triglycerides, as usual) got a start on The Next Sub-Project at work, and had a couple of good insights. But it didn't really feel all that productive.

And I know that a single dose of something that takes at least 3 weeks to work isn't going to fix the problem all at once, but...

Hopefully the momentum will keep me going.

OK, the insights:

• You can make a set of base-64 digits that sort properly and can be used in URLs and filenames in two different ways:
  "0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ_abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz~"
"0123456789-ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ_abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"
• I avoid a lot of things because of excess caution. If I don't do anything, I can't screw it up. (I think I mentioned this a couple of days ago.) It's closely related to avoiding things because I'm not sure of what I'm doing.
• I avoid a lot of things because of depression, not anxiety. I'm not actually afraid of them, they're just depressing to think about, and depression makes me apathetic.

I'm getting better, but it's rather slow.

Lots of good, fun links up there in the notes.

...is Dec 31. I will be going to the hotel with a list not long after that, so please remember to get your forms in, folks. There will be another reminder between Xmas and the New Year.

In the interests of not getting snarled up in the snow and postal issues around Christmas, we /will/ accept hotel bookings by email to vanderfilk@contabile.org.uk, as long as there's a paper copy in the post as well (or you send us a scanned copy of the form).

Let's go out with a bang, shall we...?

• Twisted Sister -- "O Come All Ye Faithful"
• TV Pigs -- "Merry Christmaquazika"
• Lou Monte -- "Dominick the Italian Christmas Donkey"
• Fred Figglehorn -- "Christmas Cash" and "Christmas Is Creepy"
• Rather Good Stuff -- "Communist Christmas" and Merry Squidmas" (kinda gross)
• Just 'cause I found it while cruising YouTube, the literal-video version of "Safety Dance"

Tomorrow and Friday we'll do some of the good ones. :)

Woke up and couldn't sleep, but I think I'll head back to bed now.

I've also decided to take the week between Christmas and New Year's Day off work. I need a vacation. :)

Since it's only a few weeks to Van Der Filk can we please start thinking again about what is to be done with all the tapes and books Gytha left. I would also like to know if anyone wants to give a home to a couple of old Atari ST systems. Working last time I fired them up and come with built in midi.

Apart from anything else I want to start thinking about my travel plans and this pile makes the difference between train (which I like to book in advance for cheap tickets) and car.

I reckon it has been forever since I posted here.  Months and months.  Let's see. . . .my year so far:  went to several very good cons, got settled in my wonderful new house, puppies became dogs - and really big!  Oh, and I've lost 50 pounds.  I look and feel, well, much better. 

Well, Santa Monica anyway. Whilst I was out shopping with niall_shapero and fabula_umbrae last Saturday in 3rd Street Prominade in Santa Monica, a group of swimsuit-clad college-student age folks with Santa Claus hats jogged past us singing "The 12 Days of Christmas". Now how many places do you encounter great moments of surrealism like that? :)

This was after we went to see Avatar which is nifty even if it is the old exploiters vs the Noble Savages plot. Well... actually not quite if you take careful note of fine details I suspect even Cameron hasn't considered the implications of. But I'll be holding that discussion over in my Inksome journal probably tomorrow (worry not, I'll link from here) with people who have already seen the movie. Visually it's impressive, and most of the scientific howlers take place on the website, not on screen. So avoid the website and enjoy the movie. (Fair warning if you're watching it in 3D which you should if you can - I am not generally subject to Doom sickness, but at one point I turned my head during a rapid paced scene and got mildly dizzy. If you are, you may want to settle for a really large flatscreen version.)

And today, the Wyndham O'Hare, which hosted Windycon until a few years ago, announced that it will close on January 1st.

They're dropping like flies!

A little humor from north of the border.

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