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| getting ready to go |
| 12.23.04 (4:40 am) [edit] |
Tomorrow I drive to my Dad's house for Christmas. My stomach is in knots. I'm staying in a hotel this time to protect myself from some of the heartbreak associated with the house and the negative interactions of the people who now reside in it. It'll be easier dealing with physical pain and fatigue in private.
Christmas used to be a treasure, a shiney spot on the calendar. I delighted in choosing gifts for people I loved, wrapping them with care, giving them with open-mounthed joy. Now, It's nothing but a chore, so odious that even whining about it online seems better than doing it.
I've told my father that next year I won't be coming there at Christmas, nor will I be receiving or giving any gifts. The price to my health and sanity is too high. I don't think he believed me.
When my mother was alive, she was the lynchpin of the family. Now she's gone and none of us seems capable of filling her place. Rusty habits held us closefor a while, but with their disintegration we are being flung apart.
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| just when you thought it was safe to go in the water |
| 12.11.04 (3:24 am) [edit] |
The National Geographic reports that herring break wind to communicate.
This intriguing idea comes from scientists who discovered that herring create a mysterious underwater noise by farting. Researchers suspect herring hear the bubbles as they're expelled, helping the fish form protective shoals at night. Robert Batty, senior research scientist at the Scottish Association for Marine Science in Oban, goes on to eplain, "It sounds very much like someone blowing a high-pitched raspberry." And they very kindly provide sound samples for your edification.
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| paradise fish! |
| 12.10.04 (2:07 pm) [edit] |
I'm so excited! I'm getting a pair of paradise fish!
Fishie Mama at Aquamaniacs (got fish?) is sending me a sibling pair of her very beautiful Macropodus opercularis. I'll be setting up a new 30-inch 20-gallon planted tank just for these little guys who, though only about 1.5" now, will grow up to around 3". Here's another cute picure.
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| I'm back, recovering |
| 11.30.04 (8:24 am) [edit] |
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Every year I dread going to my Dad's house and spending the holidays with him, my stepmother and her family. Then I chastise myself for being too judgemental and making mountains out of molehills. Then I actually go and do the holiday thing there and it turns even worse than I imagined in the first place.
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| Are you missing posts? |
| 11.19.04 (4:11 am) [edit] |
If you've been posting since before April, 2004 you should check your archives!
Some tBloggers are missing all blogs entries posted before April 1, 2004, and tBlog has remained silent on the issue, supplying neither technical support nor any explanation.
If you want your posts back, you should:
--blog about it, spread the word
--answer the poll in the Chit-Chat Community Forum, share your loss
--post in the help forum, ask for support
--PM Rocky, ask for help
--post comments on Rocky's blog
Maybe by working together, we can get the support we need!
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| some days |
| 11.15.04 (11:32 am) [edit] |
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Some days, I only get one 15-minutes. I'm getting a series of these days in a row. Possibly tomorrow will be better. You'll see me when it is.
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| I can never do as much as I want |
| 11.05.04 (12:43 pm) [edit] |
I did a little work today and now everything hurts like a bad fever. I wish I could have accomplished more. It's very discouraging.
[/whine]
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| a bit more optimistic |
| 11.04.04 (2:08 pm) [edit] |
Let America Be America Again
Langston Hughes
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!
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| problem with tBlog |
| 11.04.04 (12:10 pm) [edit] |
I've actually been blogging here since last fall, but you wouldn't know it because all the posts I made from then through the end of March of this year have disappeared. (I stopped blogging in April and only began again in October) The posts were there October 25, because on that day Google made a cache of my site; I first noticed they were missing on November 1. I left a post in the Help Forum and, after two days without a response, I left another post. This morning I sent a PM to Rocky pointing to my Help Forum post and asking that it be looked into. I haven't gotten ANY sort of response, not even a "we're looking into it", and on second look, neither has anyone who has asked for help in the past few weeks.
Why should I renew my ProUser status, or even continue blogging here, when they allow my posts to go missing and won't answer my requests for help?
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| SEPTEMBER 1939 by W. H. Auden |
| 11.03.04 (12:37 pm) [edit] |
SEPTEMBER 1939
W. H. Auden
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-Second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz ,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating the morning vow;
'I will be true to my wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To unfold the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another and die .
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
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| woe and lamentations |
| 11.03.04 (7:03 am) [edit] |
Kerry has conceded.
So much for "Count every vote; make every vote count."
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| I'm speechless with disappointment, but |
| 11.03.04 (2:45 am) [edit] |
Fafnir over at Fafblog said this in an entry yesterday:
Now that the foreplay of the polls draws to an end and the heady, thumping climax of CNN's election night coverage approaches, it is time for America to prepare itself for the morning after - to greet another President. It is vital that all of us accept his legitimacy, regardless of our party and political affiliation. Indeed, after a long and bloody campaign - one that has riven these once United States into vicious, squabbling factions - the time has come to put aside partisan differences and unite in a spirit of universal brotherhood, and passionately voicing our differences in the spirit and rhetoric of a better, higher discourse, one that respects everyone's right to exist within the American polity.
Ha ha! I jest, of course. Half of you have been absolutely 100% right about who should lead our country, while half of you have been absolutely 100% wrong*. Indeed, the man you voted against today was not merely wrong or wrongheaded or dangerously deluded - he was a purely execrable lump of venomous filth, a monster of Satanic proportions who whiled away his free time dining on aborted Iraqi fetuses while engaging in gay, married sex with the Saudi royal family, and any who supported him were objectively the enemies of America. Can you possibly allow your opponents to have a voice in the American polity? Gods, no! They must be torn up from the root, thrown bleeding onto the dried and cracked earth, stomped into dusty oblivion before they do the same to you. To do any less would be to desert your country. The complete post is here, along with lots of other cool stuff.
OK, I guess I'm a little angry, too.
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| doctors and fingernails |
| 11.01.04 (11:42 am) [edit] |
You know, I go and loose all faith in an entire group of people, an entire profession, and then I meet someone like the doctor I met this morning. Oh, look, there is one who gives a damn. This guy actually read my chart before we talked. He asked careful, detailed questions and took notes on my answers. He answered my questions. Amazing. So, I'm very pleased with this guy, and I now have an appointment for an upper endoscopy (camera thing) on January 3rd.
A couple of weeks ago, I suddenly got very annoyed about the way my fingernails always broke and tore off. They always did this and I always just ignored it because, I figured, that just went with all the stuff I do. But, suddenly, I wanted more, I wanted better. I went to a nail salon and told the woman there that I wanted longer, prettier nails that were-- critical detail-- all the same length. The woman spoke soothingly and glued some nail tips on and then coated the new longer, prettier nail with many layers of stuff that got cured under a blue light. But here's the catch about longer prettier nails: you have to tend to them. Your nails grow-- not break-- and you have to have them 'filled'. Oh, okay. Today I had my nails filled and now I have a new bright shiny french manicure. Ooooh, pretty.
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| day 2 |
| 10.31.04 (11:13 am) [edit] |
Another beautiful day. I got the first coat of stain on the table and the chair seats. Tomorrow I should be able to get the second/last coat, but I won't be able to get started until around noon. I have to drive up to Harrisonburg to see a doctor who wants to stick a camera down my throat.
For those of you who haven't been taking notes, I've been fighting chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia for a number of years now. I've had some trouble finding doctors who really want to help me. Finally, I've gotten someone to listen to me about GI stuff. He thinks I might have an bleeding ulcer and blames it on the pain meds I've taken over the years, which were prescribed to me by another doctor. Anyway, tomorrow I'll have a consult with this new guy and see about scheduling a look-see. I'll try not to blame him prematurely for the failings of his colleagues.
The 29 gallon tank is a little bit of a mess. The water is okay but the algae is thriving and the higher orders of plants are not. I've got a dwarf lotus so desperate for light it's only sending runners to the surface, which, of course, does nothing but shade the other plants. Right now it's a low-tech tank with 55 watts of fluorescent lighting and no CO2. I'm going to upgrade the lighting to 110 watts of compact fluorescent and add a DIY CO2 generator and diffuser. The lights come in a DIY kit from ahsupply.com which greatly reduces the cost. I've never ordered from those guys, but I've heard nothing but good things, so I'm really looking forward to getting the kit and putting everything together.
I read Paul M Ford's blog today, which had this bit at the end of his Wednesday entry:
What bothers me most is something trivial, something that shouldn't worry me, but there you have it—it's the pollsters under the sink. There was another infestation last week, and I had to call the landlord. He was testy. "What are you doing?" he asked. "Are you undecided now? Is that why they're there?" I told him that, no, I was exactly the same as I ever was. He came over, shaking his head and swearing, and sprayed in the cabinets, ignoring their scuffling and shrieks, their requests for just a moment of our time. He also put poison in the walls, and I believe that will kill them, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3%. Pollsters are worse than telemarketers ever were.
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| opening my mouth |
| 10.30.04 (11:19 am) [edit] |
I haven't posted in a very long time, but someone I respect a great deal said one of the nicest things I've just about ever heard; and so I'm going to try to get going on this again.
My cat Sophie loves the fall because, no matter how careful I am, I always track leaves into the house. She crouches over them, looks around suspiciously, and picks them up carefully in her mouth. I find them later where she has secreted them: under the bed, behind the commode, next to the pillowcases in the linen closet.
Today has been a beautiful day, sunny, breezy, warm. A welcome change after early cold and rain this year. I've tried to take good advantage of it. For years I've had an old table that was in my Mom's kitchen for about as long as I can remember. It's beautiful pine, but stained with a dark walnut (as was only appropriate in the 1970's) and was coated with thicknesses of yellowed polyurethane (also 1970's). For a long time I've wanted to take the tabletop off the trestle legs it was on, refinish it to a lighter color, and place it on some understated, real table legs with chairs instead of benches.
So, a number of weeks ago I found an inexpensive table with the legs I wanted and five matching chairs. The wood was not so great, but I decided to get it anyway and *paint* the chairs, table apron and legs a dark, warm grey and refinish the tabletop and then stain the chair seats to match the tabletop. You know, that doesn't sound like so much when written down, but it's been a lot of work. I've sanded all the chairs, painted two coats of primer and two coats of "one-coat" paint. Except for attaching the seats, the chairs are finished. I stripped the factory-sprayed poly off the chair seats and sanded them down to 220 grit. The table legs and apron are sanded, primed and painted with two coats. They need a couple of touch-ups, but are otherwise finished. The table top has been stripped of a good eighth-inch of old poly (that took two applications of stripper), washed with lacquer thinner and denatured alcohol, and washed with TSP. All *that* failed to remove all the old stain, so I sanded lightly and applied bleach three times.
If this table were less sentimental, I'd just sand out the old stain (well, not it were actually valuable in some monetary way, but I don't have any actually valuable furniture), but this table as wonderful marks on it from my family eating at least two meals a day on it. There's even a place where I wrote my name on some homework or something and it transfered through to the wood. There's a place where my brother decided to stab a fork repeatedly into the wood (I actually remember that happening.) So I've tried to take as much of the old color out without sanding. It's not going to be perfectly clear, of course, especially since it's pine, but it's looking pretty good.
Today's good weather let me get the use of the major icky chemicals out of the way. Tomorrow's supposed to be nice too, so I hope to get it stained and maybe one or two coats of tung oil in place.
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| a delicate operation |
| 03.28.04 (2:18 pm) [edit] |
I haven't been around much lately because my sense of humor took a vacation while I've been withdrawing from some prescription meds. I hate to inflict humorless-flaring on anyone. But now I'm feeling better, my medicine cabinet is emptier, and who should waltz in this morning? Flaring's Humor! Armed with a big suitcase of laughter to replace all the whining and self pity that's been going on around here. What a relief! Even the fish were getting sick of it.
And, an added bonus: with the laughter was packed a little golden box containing...my intellect! It's been so long, I hardly recognized it! What a handy thing to have around! So many useful parts... logic, vocabulary, organization, even decisiveness. Full re-installation might be time consuming, but even operating in safe-mode is a vast improvement over the recent blue-screen-of-death days.
It's so nice to feel well. I hope to god it lasts.
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| concerted attack |
| 03.18.04 (4:19 pm) [edit] |
I have ten betta girls in a 29 gallon, and I'm trying to get the tank planted. I've got hygrophila polysperma in there which is growing like gangbusters, the anubias nana gave me a little flower (awwww...) but everything else is having some problems. The corkscrew Vals I bought has just failed miserably; I don't even know if the roots are still alive, which is a shame because I pictured a really pretty stand of waving spirally grassy forest. I count the anubias as a success but not the hygro, as hygro would grow in a ziplock baggie in a dark closet.
When I was changing the water today and messing around in the tank trying to see if the Vals was even salvageable, I felt the unmistakable poke of a betta bite.
If you take a ball point pen and thump yourself with the business end hard enough so that it leaves a dot on your skin but not so hard that it actually hurts, that's what it feels like when a betta fish bites you. Fortunately, the fish don't leave a mark.
So this litle grrl betta sees this huge thing (my hand) in the tank that is clearly the territory of her and her sisters, messing around with her plants (stunted though they may be) and, to add insult to injury, not offering any food, and she decides to Take It On. This is the delight of bettas. Poke poke poke poke..a little grrl not 1.5 inches long weighing less than 2 ounces furiously attacking the Giant Pink Hand. I ignored her. UNTIL... she got five or six or her sisters involved.
They basically launched a no-holds-barred carpet bomb attack on the Giant Hand, poking and poking. One latched onto the nail of my little finger and started pulling and shaking. I felt fully gulliverized, and decided to leave the plants alone. For now.
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| back up and running here |
| 03.16.04 (9:55 am) [edit] |
I tripped and fell off the edge of the world for a while, but I'm better now.
I'm slowly moving toward breeding Splash and his spawn sister Maggie. The spawn tank is up and running and the water is aging nicely. I've got an HOB filter with peat in it to try to soften and acidify the water. So far, it's softened it a bit, but the pH is still stuck at 7.5. GH is 9 and the KH is down to 5.
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| Giant Communist Crabs on the Loose! |
| 03.03.04 (3:30 pm) [edit] |
Millions of giant Pacific crabs, whose ancestors were brought to Europe by Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, are marching south along Norway's coast, devouring everything in their path.
The monster crabs, which can weigh up to 25lb and have a claw-span of more than three feet, are proving so resilient that scientists fear they could end up as far south as Gibraltar. [More]
Or, as Neil Gaiman says:
It is, to put it bluntly, THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT.
And furthermore, and most importantly, THIS ISN'T FROM THE WEEKLY WORLD NEWS! Which means it's TRUE!
PANIC! HEAD FOR THE HILLS! DESPAIR!
Personally, I think some melted butter and lemon juice are in order.
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| Poodle's new friend |
| 03.01.04 (8:35 am) [edit] |
This is an otocinclus catfish:
His name is Otto. He's a sucker-mouth catfish who's very well-behaved around plants and other fish (he won't eat either), and, also good, his adult size is only around an inch long, so he can live in a five-gallon tank.
Poodle has been very respectful of his new tank-mate. Not, of course, to the extent of sharing food with the little guy (after all, Poodle is a self-respecting betta), but insofar as not chasing Otto (too much) or trying to eat him, Poodle is well-behaved.
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| threatening flora |
| 02.25.04 (2:47 pm) [edit] |
I'd never been to the desert before I went to Tucson, Arizona, recently. When I was riding from the airport to the hotel, being slightly delirious from the travel and being up since 3:00 am, I was amazed by two things: one, the sheer numbers of people who were running red lights (including my driver) and, two, the palpable threat emanating from the various plants I could see from the car, all of which appeared to be transplanted from some hostile alien world unsupportive of human life.
At one point the driver stopped (he had to, there was another car stopped in front of him) and just outside my window was an enormous saguaro surrounded by a prickly pear, dominating the sidewalk where people were trying to walk. We passed a school (at 50 miles and hour) situated in the middle of fields of cacti, planted in a neat grid, that looked able to shoot foot-long spikes into truant students.
My hotel was nicely landscaped with coldly belligerent flora which I nearly fell into in my haste to exit the vehicle, and even my hotel room was decorated with fabrics and fake paintings depicting the evil things.
By the end of the trip, I had to admit that the various unfriendlies could could be beautiful in a stark, severe, and bleak kind of way. From a distance.
This photo has taken outside Tubac, AZ.
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| National ID cards |
| 02.24.04 (3:30 pm) [edit] |
Five reasons why they should be rejected from the ACLU.
...the creation of a national I.D. card remains a misplaced, superficial "quick fix." It offers only a false sense of security and will not enhance our security -- but will pose serious threats to our civil liberties and civil rights. A National ID will not keep us safe or free.... Read more...
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I'm reading:
Aquamaniacs
Picture of the Moment
Betta Links
Betty Splendens
BC Betta
Bettas R Us
Biloxi Bettas
Classic Bettas
Jeff Hiller
Phil Lafferty
Majestic Bettas
Sailor Johnny
Jim Sonnier
Aquarticles
Dr. Tim's Library
Hypertextbook: Mendelian Genetics Chapter Directory
DIY CO2 Systems for Freshwater-Planted Aquaria
Member of
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