Year: 2011

Friday Unrelated Information

Karen

1. I found a Salinger quote (I think from “Hapworth 16, 1924”) in the blog archives that is encouraging:
“I find it magnificent how beautiful loose ends find each other in the world if one only waits with decent patience, resilience, and quite blind strength.”

2. This video from the Shelter Pet Project has been making the rounds, but it’s hilarious:

3. And in other old-but-new-to me news, I’ve discovered the Hobbit Name Generator. It’s hours of fun (and there’s an Elvish Name Generator, too!).

Advent Calendars In Spaaaaace!

Karen

Now that it’s December, it’s time once again for my favorite part of “the holidays”: The Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar. It’s at the Atlantic this year (I guess its creator went there from the Big Picture blog?) but it will give you an image from the Hubble telescope every day from now until Christmas. And we all know how I feel about space pictures.

Here is today’s image, the unpoetcially-named UGC 1810:
And here’s something to ponder while you look at it, from the Upanishads:
The little space within the heart is as great as the vast universe. The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun and the moon and the stars. Fire and lightning and winds are there, and all that now is and all that is not.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Getting Things Done During Long Weekends

Karen2 Comments

This weekend made me realize that maybe I haven’t lost my crafty mojo; maybe I just need four-day stretches of time to make things. (Hm, how can I work that?)

I finished a tunic dress that has been cut out for a couple of weeks:
It’s the same pattern as this one from June (adapted from the Built By Wendy Dresses book), with longer sleeves to make it more cold-weather appropriate.

And the owl sweater for Skyler is just waiting to dry so I can sew on all 32 little button eyes:
Hoot hoot!

Space Therapy

Karen

Let’s distract ourselves from the first workday after a long weekend by thinking about space. Did you hear the Mars Curiosity rover launched successfully on Saturday? We shot something into space, will guide it along the 350 million mile trip, and will be able to use it to study another planet remotely–incredible! A thousand years ago humanity didn’t even know about basic sanitation, and now we’re going to study Mars.

Here’s the New York Times coverage; the Bad Astronomy blog has a collection of launch videos and a NASA-produced overview of how exactly they plan to land the thing (parachutes and rockets, oh my!). Read up on it and get lots of perspective on your life here on this planet.

Giving Thanks While Seated

Karen3 Comments

I’m not hosting Thanksgiving this year, but I could:
I finally have chairs to go with that table–and for the first time in my adult life, I can entertain more than a total of two for dinner!

So I’m thankful for furniture, and that I have family and friends that I want to fill the chairs, and for what’s been a really good year, overall.

Meanwhile, Toby remains thankful for his space heater:

Enjoy the long weekend! I’ll be back Monday.

A Visit From Skyler

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Look who came over to his auntie’s house on Saturday! There was lots of kitty chasing–because someone can crawl now:

There was also a moment when I had to tell Toby that the little creature wanting to touch him was not for pouncing on. (Toby had a look in his eye; I wanted to head that off.)

There was also some delicious paper to be had:


Kitties and paper and Skyler, oh my!

Friday Unrelated Information

Karen

1. Happy birthday to Sir William Gilbert, half of Gilbert and Sullivan and the librettist responsible for “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General.“

2. Science may be inching ever closer to giving us lab-grown meat. It reminds me of all sorts of science fiction.

3. Here’s something to ponder from Ed Abbey, whom I always thought of as curmudgeonly. But maybe he wasn’t as hard as I thought:
Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.

All I Want Is Another Vacation

Karen2 Comments

The last two weeks being back from Moab have just run me over. Work isn’t particularly tough right now, but I’m feeling pretty worn out by it.

Let’s think back to a happier time a couple weekends ago, when my inner hippie was set free in the morning in Arches:

Doesn’t she look happy?