Things to Avoid Doing: geese in bathtub without shower curtain (childhood story)

When I was rather young (9, 10, somewhere around thereabouts) FatherSir finally installed the bathtub. This was before the surround tiles were put up, and I think even before the backing; this was just the bathtub completely open to the rest of the bathroom with a framework of 2x4s where the sheetrock and tiling would eventually go.

And since there was a bathtub, in the house, and it was usable, FatherSir decided that something should be done.

I get quite a bit of my attitude about celebrations from my father. I like to do nice things for people just because -- I see something that would make someone happy, and if it's feasible, I make it so that they will be happy.

It was the middle of winter, and FatherSir saw the working bathtub, and thought of the geese.

It must have been early, because the geese were a young couple, and Toulouse was still tractable. FatherSir filled up the bathtub, and brought the geese in, and put them in the bathtub.

Such a splashing and commotion you never did see. Water went everywhere! The geese were so happy, though. We were giggling, and FatherSir decided, as the geese were drying off and happily preening in front of the woodstove, that perhaps he wouldn't have the geese invited in for a bath again until the shower curtain was put up. But the ducks could come!

Oooh, shiny: stencil fun

http://www.stencilrevolution.com/tutorials/

School

Zoomed out the door late this morning, and had to zoom back for my umbrella, it was that grey and delightful. The first drops started sprinkling down on my around by the Jiffy Lube (or whatever the hell that is) place. I was delighted, despite the backed-up cars waiting for fuel.

Played around on the computers in the network lab. Sandstrom had us do packet-sniffing from the linux box. I fired Carmen up and was unable to find Ethereal. Dammit. So instead, I wound up using tethereal from the command line. (Clever me! I still don't know what I ran to find that, but somehow my hands knew. Or Naomi knew, which I think far more likely.

We continued with the lab, and I was explaining all the packets to Sam₂. (I found one of the first packets, "Who has 192.168.1.2? Tell 192.168.1.2." hilarious. "Who am I? Tell me!" )

Eventually, Sandstrom came along, and remarked that we were doing it wrong. We were doing it on the command line, not in the GUI. We didn't have the GUI. (He seemed reasonably amused/happy that we were doing it like this -- hacker heritage.) He helped us find, and then install, the GUI. Then we did it again. Sam₂ is starting to get it. (I can read packets fairly easily so far -- it's fun.)

Class was also fun. We talked about firewalls and what to do with them and how to do them. I guess I've ceased to consider that class 'work' -- because all it really is is playing around and learning fun stuff and then a few quizzes and homework.

Wound up playing, not napping. Bad Fayoumis. For the last half hour before Lit, wandered around with Mr. President, who was nervous about his upcoming interview for the upstairs lab guy position. The hyper was boiling off him. I mentioned how much he physically reminded me of Darkside, initially. (They're nothing alike otherwise, which is just as well for my sanity.) I got lunch (from school, sigh) and then went to Lit. Mr. President was introduced to mi_wounded_soul, who does definitely ping my gaydar. (Yakky?) Much amusing conversation was had wherein three different people were thinking of a different guy when Mr. Prez. referred to "him" in a sentence.

In Lit, we discussed some Steinbeck. Tracy and I have taken to forming our own little discussion group. Much fun. I'm glad I read fast... and I'm glad I already have read Heart of Darkness, which is to be discussed in two weeks.

Now, I go and pick up the Little Fayoumis, and then we get to listen to Burns go on at some length regarding databases. AYDBABTM!

Science, Great Wall of China

Picked up LF from school. He'd forgotten his yellow folder today, unfortunately. He'd gotten either one or three time-outs; I can't recall which. It was still a good day, though.

I was bright-awake, and looked with some of the boys at what looked like a mass of worms spread out on the sidewalk. The kids were disagreeing: pinecones or worms? I picked one up, and pronounced it as a thing from a tree -- it spread pollen from these things, and then it blew off, landed on the roof up there, and came down the drainpipe when it rained.

I think I'm one of those science-minded kind of "mom"s. The kids were interested.

On the way back to DeVry, I asked Little Fayoumis what they'd done in school today. His teacher had evidently told the story of the Three Little Pigs, and had talked about piglets. We talked about other baby critters with different names, like baby cats were kittens, baby chickens were chicks, and baby eagles were chicks too -- baby birds were chicks!

And then we looked at the clouds in the sky and talked about those. Little Fayoumis wants to fly. (He also knows that airplane tickets cost money, and we don't have enough, but he has enough invisible money for anything, he has a million thousand bucks.)

Then he told me that he'd had dream about clouds, and snow, and bees in the snow. This led to a discussion of hotblooded vs. coldblooded, and the next time he has that nightmare, he can tell it that bees can't fly when it's cold enough to have snow.

Then we had class. Burns discussed the gasoline shortage, and then went on to databases. Little Fayoumis drew a picture of him and Sim (his robot friend/alter ego-thing), and practiced writing a little. I wrote out "Spiderman" for him to copy; he copied that, and then wrote "Spiderman Mountain Dew" (we were sharing a bottle of Livewire dew, and we digressed a bit about caffiene and how it would make his body hyper, and he said, "But not in your class!" which was a good plan...) He snickered about the Spiderman Mountain Dew concept. He asked me where I'd gotten the Mountain Dew; I whispered back. He couldn't hear me. I wrote my answer as a note to him. He couldn't read it at first, but I helped him with the harder words. Then I wrote, "[Name] is a smart kid." (Because that's what his teacher had told me today.)

Class ended; we went home. (Well, we stopped in the computer lab to dump his scribble-paper in the recycle bin.) He was first being a racecar driver with his wheeled backpack, and then after he put it on for crossing the parking lot, began talking more about flying, and then about visiting the Great Wall of China. So we began planning what we would do if we were taking a real trip to the Great Wall of China, and not just a pretend one. We would need money for the tickets, and a passport, and then we would need to talk to China's government to see if they would let us come and visit, and then find a translator or learn Chinese ourselves or both...

We got home, and I sent him off to wash hands, dump shoes, etc. Now he's watching some Sailor Moon. (We were getting sick sick sick of everything being either Pokemon or rabbits, so other stuff it is. At least Spiderman is a good role model.)

Later, I'll point out China on the map.

From a comment: Naomi's lack of independent functionality

Yep. Naomi is not now capable of performing everyday tasks. (Sheesh, I think I just figured out that the swapout order is fucked -- it should be Dagger and Marah who take over when I can't function, not Naomi--) If you ask her to make a sandwich, she looks at you like you're nuts. If you ask her to install an operating system and hook up to a network, she asks you which OS, and what kind of network, and what's my network identification or is it DHCP.

She does computer things on instinct that I can't duplicate thinking about. She's fiercely loyal to Darkside and loves him with all her heart. She's Christian. If all the rest of me were wiped out in a weird mental event, she would probably be on mental disability for the rest of our life unless she were somehow to grow able to deal with life in general. Someone talking and not getting the answer that she knows and not giving her a chance to explain will give her a panic attack, and possibly drive her to tears and screaming.

A rune reading on the me vs. Darkside situation

( Read more... )

My interpretations:

Past: he dragged me the hell out of the Shawn/BJ thing, and made me the winner in my own struggles, mostly by kicking my ass and my passionate desire to be the person that he inspired me to be.

Present: Growth, yeah. Turning points. We're drifting somewhat apart, which is only natural, and I'm making an effort to keep him as close as is practical.

Future: We may get together, or I may well drift onwards, but whatever it'll be, it'll be a natural, inevitable, and most likely calm and caring event or nonevent. It'll just happen. Naturally, and as painlessly as a parting can be, or as undramatic as a get-together can be. (It may well be parting. It doesn't break my heart to think of me being without him, just lonely -- but I could see how if I stopped loving him naturally, how being without him would be OK.)

votania, I didn't have to look far.

http://www.livejournal.com/community/callahanians/209390.html#cutid1

LJ Sitcom (finally)

My LiveJournal Sitcom
Being azurelunatic (WB, 9:00): azurelunatic (Loaf Mea) accidentally throws away rainstorm13 (Clark Gable)'s printer. That night, swallowtayle (Marilyn Monroe)'s new shirt bleeds in the wash and stains all of lj_maintenance (Jerry Seinfeld)'s underwear pink. At the same time, welovegeeks (Spike Jonze) unknowingly gets high before a meeting with tsjafo (Geoffrey Rush). In the next town over, shandra (Marisa Tomei) gets mad at votania (Jon Voight) and decides to join the Peace Corps. The next day, technopaganism (Kevin Smith) dances with greyowl (Gene Wilder). Hilarious results follow.
What's Your LiveJournal Sitcom? (by rfreebern)

Interview from wibbble

1. Do you prefer the hot of Arizona or the cold of Alaska?


2. What's the best, and worst, things about being a system?


3. Why are you doing the degree you're doing? What do you see yourself doing with it once you graduate?


4. What's your favourite font?


5. If anything were possible, what would you most like to do/be/happen? What price would you be willing to pay for this?

( And now, with answers... )