I decided to make this it's own entry as I caught myself updating that other entry for status. I am going to set this as a "sticky" at the top of my journal so I won't forget it! Please tell me if this ends up spamming your friends pages every time I update it, that is not my intent! D:

It is not in any particular order.
( Stuff! )

I have a horrible memory, so this is to remind myself of things I need to do in order to have that fantastic garden I want this year.

( Snip snip! )

There really wasn't much more to say about Thailand. We went on a trip to Pattaya, which I had thought would include some fantastic white sandy beaches but which only yielded a carnival of animal torment and overpriced jewelry and other crap. I still need to post a bunch of photos on that DA account, but suffice it to say, I was happy to be home. I did experience an odd moment when I'd been home about a week, smelled raw sewage and thought "Thailand?" though.

The Nong Nooch Tropical Gardens was one of the places we visited, and was pretty horrible. I'm sure it's really progressive by Thai standards, but chaining tigers to rocks and beating them with sticks is not kosher. Nor is hooking elephants with pointy pick-shaped devices jammed in their mouths. It was pretty amazing to see what the elephants could do (they played a mean game of basketball) but damn. I would have traded that to interact with them in a peaceful setting where they don't just see me as a food dispensing machine, eyes dead and responses automatic as they shuffle from person to person looking for food. If I'd known we were going to such a place I wouldn't have gone on the trip down there. :/

I got some trinkets to send to people that asked me for trinkets, and they seem to like them so far. The layover in Japan was far more awesome than half of the time I spent in Thailand. I managed to get out of the airport, through customs, to the train station, buy a train ticket, get on a train, go to the proper stop, and decipher a tourist map of the area enough to go find this awesome temple I'd wanted to visit, all without speaking or understanding much japanese. It was a drizzly sort of day and I was overloaded with stuff (I didn't want to leave my laptop in left luggage because I thought it would probably walk off). I got some nice photos. I also got to sit in on a ceremony at the shrine in Narita, which was pretty awesome, even if I couldn't understand it. Between that ceremony and the helpful monks at the temple in Thailand, Buddhism is starting to grow on me. There is an excellent podcast on emptiness my friend was listening to in our hotel room, and you should all give it a listen. I found it very relaxing and inspiring.

I feel much more laid back since I've gotten home. I can't really explain the mental shift that occurs between getting caught up in this domesticated nonsense and returning to the state of relative detachment from one's surroundings that happens when you travel, but suffice it to say I find the detachment a lot healthier. I am not my place of residence. I've also been enjoying simple meals, salads, potatoes, that sort of thing, because in Thailand all of the food was really rich, usually fried or greasy, and heavily spiced.

I met an awesome guy online while I was in Thailand, a Dutch man living in France by the name of Zuca. Even though we'd only known each other a few weeks, we spent entire days doing nothing but talking to each other (14+ hours on several occasions) and figured out that we are terrifyingly similar. I've never had this experience before, I'd considered myself bizzare and unique, but we're the same on just about every major issue and most of the minor ones, except that he's not a vegetarian (though he seems open to the idea). He wants to travel and adventure with me, likes all the same things I do, and is prettymuch all I could ever ask for in a partner. He's more or less some freaky cosmic twin - for the first time in my life I don't have to consider what somebody else would want, if I just think of what I would like, it applies perfectly.

It's startling to think of all of the different variables that went into making me who I am, and the incredibly low odds of such a thing happening twice, halfway around the world, with only minor variations. I don't usually do online relationships, but this is so unusual, so unique, that I've gone and done it anyways. I consulted my higher self, that sort of small quiet voice that will always give me an honest answer, and it said that this will either be one of the most fantastic things to ever happen to me, or a great lesson on why having the same interests is not a guarantee of a working relationship, so win-win either way in its opinion. I'm incredibly optimistic. For the first time in a long long long time, I found somebody that really fits, in all aspects, that I can see myself with long term.

I feel a little bit awkward talking about this though, because it seems like if I do I'm gloating. I don't want to be that one asshole who won't shut up about her darling woogiekins, but it's such a shock. For my entire life I'd been led to believe that relationships were all about finding somebody that you get along with decently well, that you don't fight too much with, which you have a few things in common, but that trying to find somebody exactly like you was a fool's errand and narcissism at its finest. But here I am, and I feel like a kid in a candy store - like the entire world is open to me, to us, because of this weird connection we have. I can go anywhere and he'll be beside me. It's incredibly empowering, and freeing, to not have to worry about constant small battles originating from two people working at cross-purposes.

It's also been empowering in a different way, as I've been inspired to better myself. In this past month or so I've lost over 15 lbs, 20+ or so if you count my time in Thailand, in which I lost 5 lbs for no apparent reason. I weigh less than I have in years. I've been getting my life in order, starting with cleaning and getting rid of things I no longer need, and have been making great strides in just about anything I set out to accomplish, with little or no hesitation or procrastination. I feel great.

I may be going to France to visit him for 1-3 months depending on what my workplace says. It's only moderately more expensive for me to go there for several months than it is for him to come here for the one week of paid vacation he has left, even with all of my bills. If I pick a few months where work is slow (and boy is it ever slow in November!), I don't think my workplace will even notice or care, and I sure won't be losing out on much money. I only work 8 days this month, which is barely enough, with the check from last month's work, to pay my bills for August. :/ On the up side, when I do visit him, he lives within walking distance of the Black Forest in Germany so we can spend that week of paid vacation camping in the woods! :D And maybe eat some cake. Mmmmmmm black forest cake. *drools*

Our current plan is for me to visit him in France, and then once his term with this company is up in January-February, he'll come here to stay. We'll see how things go - if they go superbly well, as they seem like they will, I might be willing to marry him after a while so he can get his green card and stay with me here indefinitely. If several years down the line our relationship goes to shit, Oregon is a no contest state according to Coug, so we'd only have to pay a filing fee and not even have to see a judge about it. Seems pretty harmless to me. And if things don't go to shit - hey, I could go live in the Netherlands for as long as I like, we'd be getting all kinds of crazy tax breaks and I could get in on some free insurance while I'm at it, along with having an awesome partner. Not being religious, I don't have assumptions about the meaning of marriage, and the red tape surrounding immigration in this country is downright horrifying. I don't want to lose what I have because some pencil pushing dickwad decided that there were too many immigrants here and that he should make it as labyrinthine as possible to get in the door. And it is labyrinthine unless you marry a person. Even then they don't make it easy. :|

So anyways: big news, good times, productivity woo! At this rate I should be able to barrel through my art queue by the end of this month which would be nice. Then I can have a fresh clean EMPTY slate and choose what to put on it without hemming and hawing over old art projects staring at me accusingly from my shelves.

Now if only I could figure out what to do with 3 months off in France.... hmmm.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31265662

I love you, San Francisco. <3

I am home, still recovering a week later, need to get myself less scattered and get down to brass tacks updating here, getting photos sorted, organized, and uploaded, getting commissions taken care of and tending my garden.

In other news look over here, I think I see something shiny. This is where my travel photos will go. :)

Taken from here without permission.

Dogs have souls, but you already knew that

(Originally By Electa Draper, The Denver Post)

DENVER — For centuries, humans have imagined they are the only animals with morals. But humans are not alone in the moral arena, a new breed of behavior experts says.

Natural historian Jake Page said some scientists are acknowledging what pet owners have told their canines all along: "Good dog."

Dogs are full of natural goodness and have rich emotional lives, said animal behaviorist Marc Bekoff, professor emeritus at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

A dog's code of ethics is on display daily in parks, backyards and family rooms.

"We're not trying to elevate animals," Bekoff said. "We're not trying to reduce humans. We're not saying we're better or worse or the same. We're saying we're not alone in having a nuanced moral system.
( Rest of this article and my opinionated thoughts behind the cut. )

Yesterday I tried a durian for the first time. The smell was pretty bad - gym socks mixed with raw onions/body odor, but the taste was pretty good, very creamy and sweet, constantly changing as I was eating it too, rendering it indescribable. My friend couldn't get past the smell, unfortunately. I felt like a pariah as I snuck the fruit in, I had to eat it on the veranda so the stink (which can permeate half a mile) wouldn't alert the entire building to its presence. I chucked the seeds out in the bushes (I felt a bit bad, but I am sure the local scavengers will make quick work of them), and quickly brought the packaging in to wash so the trash wouldn't stink either. I felt like a smoker! It was worth it though, if only for the surprised stares of the local Thai people when I bought the thing. :) Somehow I guess it isn't so popular with westerners...

Tonight I went to talat nat again, the night market. One of the local women wanted me to go with her, so I did, I rode on the back of her friend's father's motorcycle and she took a motorcycle taxi. I found some delicious fried quail eggs and pineapple, and she found a hot dog on a stick, and her friend apparently ate earlier. After a bunch of deliberation involving lots of broken Thai and English they managed to get across that they wanted to go shopping at a place north of here and invited me to go with them. I kind of waffled back and forth because I needed to be back with my friend but decided that I would go provided we were able to get back within another hour. So! All three of us climbed onto the motorbike. We headed north for a while, and then ended up turning around and heading south for some unknown reason. They asked me if I wanted to go to some kind of club I think (?) where there was live music but it was getting pretty late and so we headed back. Were I not here with a friend I would have gone and seen where the night took me - I think I need to push my inhibitions more, and refuse invitations less as general practice in my life.

(Photos are unfortunately scarce, although I do have a goal of taking a video while on a motorcycle taxi ride at some point before I go. Telling them to go slow is pretty useful, and while I can handle the higher speeds we were at tonight (people were still passing us, often uncomfortably close by), slower would be better as I could relax more and be more comfortable taking video. You only have the one hand-hold, why not put the other hand to some greater use?)

Riding three to a bike (Thai style!) was interesting, and terrifying at first, especially given that my butt kept trying to slide off the back (where my hand was holding on for dear life onto the handle). Also my right foot was on the exhaust and my left foot's big toe was the only part on the peg, which was not terribly comfortable. The bike's suspension was scraping a bit every time we hit a pothole, because bikes are NOT meant to have 3 people piled on them, especially not when one of them is overweight. Regardless, it was fun, particularly the slackjawed stares of the people who happened to notice us. I gave them a big dopey grin in return.

It was kind of nice to relax my inhibitions, even if it was something arguably dangerous that if I hadn't been in Thailand I would have been reluctant to try. Something about being in a foreign country where you are already completely out of your comfort zone as a matter of course encourages one to explore things they otherwise wouldn't, and although I didn't come back with the mangosteens or dragonfruit I had originally set out to get, I consider the experience gained worth far more than delicious, delicious fruit.

All this to say - perhaps do something unexpected the next chance you get, avoid your usual routine, say yes more often, and see where life takes you. You might be pleasantly surprised. :)

Damnit now I want a mangosteen. I am so going to miss those when I go home.


...So never refuse an invitation. Never resist the unfamiliar. Never fail to be polite, and never outstay your welcome. Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience, and if it hurts, you know what? It's probably worth it. - The Beach

Managed to sneak out and have an adventure this evening for a couple of hours. :)

So! I was talking with this woman and getting directions to the local night market (talat nat san) and she managed to convince me that motorcycle taxis aren't nearly as terrifying as I have been led to believe. She said that most Thai people take them for short journeys and they are very cheap. She also told me that if I want to get down to Bang Saen beach I should take these pickup truck taxis (songtaew) because they are pretty cheap as well - I plan on doing this maybe in a week or so, depending on how things go.

So we went down to where there were some motorcycle taxis waiting and I told them that I wanted to go to talat nat san and to not drive very fast. So off we went - me on the back of this bike, no helmet, no protective gear... at least he actually went slow! Through the crazy crazy Thailand traffic. It -was- very cheap.. about 15 baht (50 cents) but I gave him a 20 and told him to keep the change... also took a picture of him that I will post later.

The market itself was bewildering, it wasn't the largest market I've seen by any means, but it was a riot of noise, color, extreme heat and fried foods. There were some foods that looked absolutely delicious that I am going to have to check out the next time I am there.. some of the foods I recognized, like fried egg, balut on a stick, a variety of noodles, a ton of dead animals, including octopus (I think), fish, fish balls, etc. Some things had english translations, like "squid egg". Above all there were Thai people, talking and selling things - everything from tshirts and wallets and cds to fresh fruit and puppies.

I bought some rambutan, which was a whopping 15 baht ($.50) for half a kilo (about a pound). I've eaten them recently and they are fabulous, way better than lychees, which they are related to. :) The woman threw in some free mangosteen and langsat because, as she said, "Thai fruit is delicious". I have to agree. Rambutan is very sweet, you have this weird spiky thing that you peel open and reveal this transparent white flesh, which conceals an almond-looking seed in the middle, which you don't eat. Mangosteen is called the "queen of fruits" and you slice the skin a little bit and then pull it apart, revealing these lobes of white flesh that are fantastic, and would make a delicious ice cream (or hell, drink). Definitely something I will buy again. The langsat are weird, they smell and taste a bit like pine, I have read a description of their flavor as sweet-sour, and they are kind of growing on me. Perhaps I need to eat more.

I also bought a bag of fresh pineapple chunks for my friend who couldn't go with me. I had some and oh my god, it was like candy. This must be what pineapple tastes like fresh and ripe - they can it underripe and the ones you get in the store are obviously picked weeks before their prime, but they grow the stuff here. It's not acidic hardly at all, I could probably eat an entire one without burning my lips off. :D

I also bought a little wreath of fresh flowers that smell awesome. I think they are supposed to be prayer offerings but I thought they were nice anyways. Thais apparently make whole chandeliers out of fresh flowers, so when the breeze goes through the building it makes it smell sweet and delightful.

I took my purchases and got another motorcycle taxi back from whence I came, I managed to make myself understood and other than the one fruit vendor who spoke really good english, I didn't use english at all the entire trip out. My Thai is improving by leaps and bounds, it's kind of weird to think I've only been here a bit less than a week and already I am doing this well. I now know numbers up to 100 give or take (I am still slow remembering which ones correspond to which words, but counting is fairly easy). I am writing menu orders in Thai (copying off of the menu because I don't actually know what sounds correspond with what characters yet), which seems to get me better food as a result. XD My Myst skills have been coming in handy there - I never thought I'd need to know how to accurately transcribe some obscure foreign language, but yet, here I am! The Thai people I come into contact with tell me that I write and speak good Thai, which is good... I need to learn many more nouns but I think I have gotten the basic survival words down, at least in spoken form.

I didn't get any pictures of the market except for the one of my driver there.. my hands were too full of stuff and the market too crowded to get many good shots. But I'll try again the next time I go to hopefully capture some of the general ambiance of it. Maybe take another video. I think it'd be worth it for you all to see the cacaphony that is Thailand. :)

Hope you all are having as much fun as I am. :)

P.S. World of Goo is an awesome game and you all should really play it! It's an addictive puzzle type game where you stick these various goo things together in a hopefully somewhat stable shape and try to get them to the exit point (a pipe) while saving as many as possible.

Well! We successfully ordered Pad Thai that night after I posted, in a restaurant full of people who don't speak hardly any english, and then successfully ate there again the next day. :) It was pretty funny - it was a vegetarian restaurant (said vegetarian on the sign, even) but the vegetarian parts of the menu were all in written Thai, not translated into English like the rest of the menu was. The whole restaurant got a kick out of it. They seemed to understand though, and the next day we got fancier service for tipping them previously. The extravagant dinner for two at a nice sit-down thai restaurant came to a whopping $5 both nights.

Pad thai is nothing like I've ever had it. It has a mix of wonderful flavors, celery, cilantro, the nuts (which are not in a sauce), and these fat soft noodles at the base of it. It's spicy, and one has condiments at the table to adjust the flavors as necessary - sugar, soy sauce (or fish sauce if you're not vegetarian) for salt, some kind of chili in vinegar for sour, and chili powder for spice. Ours was also served with a bunch of vegetables mixed in, many of which I couldn't recognize, including this rubbery pink fruit thing. There was also a kaffir lime half so we could add lime if we wanted it, and it was delicious. I'll take a picture the next time we go there.

My friend has been infecting me with her slang. I now have been saying things like "chips" and "bugger" which can only go downhill from here. She keeps trying to sell me on "arvo" but I am not impressed, the word afternoon does not work that way.

I also took a bunch of photos. And a video, even!

( Walk this way... )

Adventurous!

So I didn't really look too hard for a 220 volt converter, as most of the things I have are okay with 220 volts, weirdly enough. I also have a more permanent internet connection, proxying through my friends machine, she got it working which is great. n.n

Anyways I have photos of my sojourn today, in which we walked around for a while, managed to get a pineapple smoothie, and also some sticky rice in a bamboo tube called khao lam. n.n It was.. difficult, to say the least. Since I don't really understand Thai so much as have been force-feeding my brain mnemonics relating to it, my recall is much slower than things I actually get. Most of our difficulty has been in finding things which don't contain dead animals... but the Thai people seem friendly enough, and both of our interactions included liberal doses of help from Thais speaking English. XD I need practice badly.

Photos!

( snip snip, these are big and I don't feel like making thumbnails )

Woo, culture shock!

Okay so even my pitiable Thai was not enough to prepare me for the gigantic slap in the face that was arriving in Thailand. I managed to find a taxi, managed some rudimentary haggling (by which I mean I only had $30 and they accepted that - my hotel is fairly far away from Bangkok proper and while I'm sure I got overcharged, I didn't get nearly as overcharged as I would have elsewhere), and managed to get to the hotel without incident, even having a conversation with the taxi driver in broken english with the help of my pocket translator as necessary for certain words.

Even something as simple as finding dinner that doesn't have dead animals in it is difficult. They eat all sorts of weird things - from pigeon and sea cucumber to who knows what else, and that's just in the hotel chinese restaurant, which is pretty classy. Most of the eats seem to come from food vendors, with various dead creatures, some recognizable (fowl, fish) and some not. While that guidebook I bought for $5 used is pretty useful on general etiquitte, it does nothing to help me actually recognize what I am looking at when I go outside. It actually gives me a lot of respect for illiterate people, we don't realize how much we swim in the written word until we can no longer read it. Everything from road signs to restaurants looks the same to me. D: Squiggly little lines with tacos on top.

It's hot as satan's asshole in this country. It's like 87 our but even weather.com agrees it feels like 97, with 66% humidity. This is at almost 11 pm. I haven't encountered temperatures like this except when I lived in Phoenix, and even then it wasn't this humid.

Traffic is pretty terrifying. People seem to just take the lines as a suggestion, as well as helmet laws, police, etc. When crossing the street, the best plan seems to be to run and to hope you checked everywhere, including the oncoming wrong direction, especially mopeds/motorcycles seem to enjoy going the wrong way, driving on sidewalks, etc.

Exciting! I like a good challenge. n.n

Tomorrow's adventure: Finding a 220 -> 110 v converter so I can cook in the room, also some staples so we don't have to rely on spotty Thai to get food. Also learning more of this language because soon I will know more Thai than most Thais we have encountered know english...

Hope you all are doing well! I will reply to your comments soon, right now I am just exhausted from the flights. Jetlag fail. We are also only able to get one laptop online at a time... it would be nice if I could figure out how to tunnel into her machine and use her connection so we can both be on at the same time or some such, I just don't know how to do such a thing. ;.;

So I'm in Japan! Woo! Not so woo: the fact that I had to sit on the plane in Portland for 2 1/2 hours while they tried to unclog the toilet pipes. So my flight was delayed, I missed my connection, but on the up side I am getting to stay for free at the Radisson in Narita with free dinner and breakfast. n.n Downside: all my clothes and toiletries are in my checked luggage, somewhere in the airport.

I sent my friend off an email, hopefully she gets it and doesn't freak out too badly about the fact that I am not there in Thailand when I am supposed to be. D:

It's a pity I don't have more time... at least now I have a familiarity with the airport (perhaps a bit too much familiarity with the airport) so I can make the best of my layover on the way home. n.n I also need to brush up on my damn Japanese, I've been too nervous to open my mouth to say 'gomen nasai' because I feel I will sound retarded. And I probably will.

Meals on the flight over were sparse and vegetarian, they were vegan or so it appeared, decent for airplane food, mostly overcooked vegetables in various bland oily sauces. Also a lot of fruit, which was nice of them. Apparently my meals were attractive enough that the woman sitting next to me wanted one, and was disappointed when she learned that mine were specially prepared in advance. :) Seat was crowded and cramped, I am surprised I could walk after spending 13 hours crammed into it. Seated near a baby which thankfully didn't wail too much, although I wore earplugs for most of the time so I probably wouldn't have noticed anyways. Seats did not recline more than 3 inches, which is barely enough to not slump forward while nodding off, let alone actually sleep with any sort of comfort. Unless, of course, you're the woman sitting next to me, who decided that she was entitled to stretch out luxuriantly over three seats and slept like there was no tomorrow.

Swine flu paranoia has reached pandemic proportions, they had some scrubs-wearing men in face masks and white rubber boots board our plane, stare at us with a thermal imaging device, and have us answer a questionnaire about whether or not we have the plague. I have been deemed plague free, as has the rest of my flight (so far as I know) but the rigmarole made us at least an hour later than we would have otherwise been... I heard that Singapore (I think) was not allowing anybody with any flu like symptoms at all. :) Fun times. They issued us free face masks as we departed the plane.

Ok, gotta run, for some reason my laptop won't charge off of their wall power here D: I hope my ac adapter didn't get busted somehow!

Sayonara!
- Fey

So, today at 09:30 I will be leaving for Portland airport and will be hopping on a long, 10 and a half hour flight to Narita, Japan. From there I will transfer my baggage and will hop on another plane ride for almost 7 hours to Bangkok, Thailand. I'll be getting there around 11 pm local time. I doubt I'll be able to sleep before my flight because I am so hopped up on the ever-pointless adrenaline.

I have been learning some Thai.. I think I have at least most of the critical basics down by rote mnemonics, I'll slow down and learn the grammar and more proper ways to say things once I am there and have more time on my hands. :) Should be fun. It's pretty amazing the number of things one can retain by mnemonics alone!

I bought a laptop the other day, as I ended up with a fair bit of surplus, and it was pretty cheap ($220 for a 1.7 ghz machine with 1 gig of ram - this machine, specifically. I also bought a new wardrobe, because most of my clothes (especially shirts) were things I've had since I was in high school. I kind of looked like a grey colored bum for the most part, which I'm okay with, but I'd rather look a bit more respectable for my first trip to Asia, so I bought some things from various thrift stores. :) Some things actually have color! Gasp! I think I look pretty nice in most of my stuff. I might even be willing to allow a photograph of myself to appear on the internet (horrors!) depending on how things work out.

So yeah! I'll update once I get to the hotel and manage to acquire a 220v adapter. Apparently they have them for pretty cheap over there, so I didn't bother to buy one here, where they appear to go for like.. $80.

Here's to hoping my obscenely long flight is uneventful, and that they remembered to pack me a vegetarian meal!

:D

http://www.grist.org/article/2009-04-25-swine-flu-smithfield/

Hah.

When will people learn that producing food unnaturally will lead to unnatural problems? Animals don't shit where they drink or sleep. There's a reason for this.

So, I started up a new LJ community for furry/therian type people who enjoy the outdoors - http://community.livejournal.com/wildfurs

Maybe I can use it to lure out some of the other wilderness-loving folks out of their hidey holes. :D

Yesterday morning on the way to work I heard an interview on NPR with this guy. He turns people into oil, which he then uses in art projects.

He says that the average person creates 1.5-2.5 liters of oil. Interestingly, this means that if you were to boil down the entire population of the US, you'd only get about 150 million gallons. Our yearly demand for oil? Some 6.6 billion barrels of oil, each of which contain 42 gallons. So 277,200,000,000 gallons per year, or 770,000,000 gallons per day. 32,083,333 per hour. So this means, if my dodgy early-morning math is correct, that we could run America's demand for a whole 4.7 hours on the entirety of its population.

Fun times.

Instead of whining any more about the decrepit greenhouse that I have and the lack of money for rebar/pipe to make a new, awesome one, I decided to do what I can to get by with the one I have until after I get home from Thailand. So! The day before yesterday I went in and had a good long look at it, and one of the main reasons that it's so decrepit is that the glue holding the ribs to the spine has failed. I stood on a bucket and wiggled the ribs back in as best as I could. Today I went out again and cleaned up some of the pots that'd been scattered about, and decided that since the plants I'd put out back were beginning to look a bit scorched, they needed somewhere a bit shadier to hang out. I took out the shade cloth I'd used last year and threw the pvc anchors over the greenhouse, hoisting it into place. An interesting side effect of this is that the shade cloth appears to be helping the plastic flap around less, increasing the structural integrity. After adding the plants, the table and bench flap around a lot less too due to the extra weight, hopefully assisting the general integrity of the space. :) We shall see.

The plants look a lot happier as a result of being in there, hopefully they'll perk back up and no permanent damage has been done. I have a seeming tendency to over-compensate - my laundry room is too shady, so I thought some time in the sun would do them well. As a result they got too scorched, haha.

I also repotted my blueberry bush and pulled its flower buds - it had more of them than leaves, which is never a good sign. I also planted a bunch of surprise asparagus which I had thought was long dead (but which reappeared about a week ago) in with some of my strawberries. Hopefully the cats will leave that bed alone while it establishes itself. :(

I should seed that bed with carrots and salsify sometime soon, it's the only one I've got that has deep, well-worked soil suitable for them, unfortunately. The salsify is supposed to be a bit hardier than I'd been led to believe, and daikon is suggested in Gaia's Garden as something to help break up clay, so maybe the pea bed can become home to these creatures too. I don't really care if they fork, they'll still taste just as good. n.n

I need to find a way to incorporate the beds I have now into a mandala shape, as it is a nice, beautiful design that is also an excellent use of space, with little room for beds. Gaia's Garden has been very inspiring and I'd love to incorporate a lot of the ideas, but I don't have enough established trees to really make much of an ecosystem. :( I can try though! Maybe I should get a nut tree to join my apples, and maybe this winter, a quince or pear. Mmmm, quince. I wish I had property. I don't mind doing the labor for free but I worry that my plant babies won't enjoy being transplanted too well, haha. It's educational at least. Some more property would enable me to do fun things like actually work on creating a greywater wetland and recycling even more of the things we use, as well as providing habitat and niches for water-loving plants (blueberries, marshmallow etc) which I will have to struggle to keep sufficiently moist without a significant regular source of water. I also can't have poultry - some ducks to eat the slugs plaguing my peas would be nice, as well as the eggs and fertilizer they'd give me in return. Oh well. Maybe in time.

Anyways, off to start some more seedlings and repot some of the larger tomatoes. n.n

For years I've had difficulty trying to explain that if the rest of the world were to consume even half as much as we did, the planet would be in seriously deep shit. This has all sorts of implications - such as that we can't really "modernize" most of the third world without increasing their consumption and driving us closer to that end point, and that countries like India and China deciding they are tired of us having all the fun toys is seriously dangerous, given their populations of 1,147,995,904 and 1,330,044,544 respectively, compared with our paltry 301,000,000. It also has implications as far as that we as Americans need to consume far less, and need to buy quality items that won't break and need to be disposed of, as well as the necessity of recycling. But most people seem to either not get the point I'm trying to get across, or not think that it's a serious issue. Or if it is a serious issue, it doesn't apply to them and their consumption habits.

Well here, have a graph.

This isn't even counting emissions, loss of wildlife, ecological armageddon and all the other fun stuff that would happen if we decided that strip mining the planet en masse would be an awesome thing to do (and is happening now, but at a smaller scale). It isn't counting all of the polluted rivers from caustic chemicals used to extract some ores. It isn't even counting oil or potable water, both of which are in terrifyingly short supply relative to their demand - we are draining fossil aquifers at an astonishing rate. No, this is just ores. Something we take for granted as being plentiful and never-ending.

I wish more people would wake up.

For now, I'm going outside to enjoy this beautiful day and plant some green creeping things in the warm earth.

So! I got a camera about a week ago. Fun times. It seems to be fairly decent, even, which is surprising. Not nearly as awesome as the camera I want to end up with, but perfectly servicable for a trip to Thailand and a 7 hour layover in Japan. :)

I took a bunch of pictures of my yard, mostly as "before" references. Click all photos to view the full versions - I don't want to waste people's bandwidth:

( Walk this way )

( lolpolitics rant on the right wing protests on tax day )

Went and saw two movies recently, Knowing and Slumdog Millionare. The former is dollar-theater quality at best, the trailer is more or less a cliffnotes version of the whole movie, but the latter is a pretty good story, very Indian, and gave me a great sense of India's culture. The soundtrack was awesome too. Slumdog is in the dollar theaters now so I would suggest if you haven't seen it, to give it a watch, it's worth it. :)

And now I'm off to go work my ass off and try to save moneys for Thailand! Yay!

It's a good movie. I recommend it. I left the theater a bit dazed and unsure over whether or not I actually enjoyed what I'd seen, but over the next few days I kept thinking about and digesting the film properly, and I've decided that I like it quite a bit. I've since read the comic, and I think they did a great job of transitioning it to film - there were a few things in which the movie took itself too seriously (given that the comic is more or less a parody of the superhero genre), and it had some of the absolutely most awkward sex scenes I have ever seen in a film, but overall it was made of win in my book. I liked the effects, the costuming (Rorschach's mask was fantastic, and I've been delighted to find out that people have been using thermochromatic paint to replicate the motion effect), the crunchy nuggets of existentialism as voiced by Dr. Manhattan, and the fact that one of the major male characters was stark nude for a good half of the movie, and it wasn't a big deal. I don't think I've ever seen that in a film before.

I find myself identifying with the character of Dr. Manhattan quite a bit, far more so than the others, who even in the novel were psychotic, amoral, impotent, or just helpless. I'm not entirely sure why I identify with him, and I've spent the last couple of days trying to figure it out, which has led me on an interesting journey of self, chasing my own tail as always. I wish I could see the forest through all these damn trees. I also wish I could voice my particular state without using metaphors, as I always do when I have difficulty putting things into words. I feel like I am on the edge of something huge, but I don't know what it is or how to get there, or even if I want to. So much effort is expended in the name of maintaining what I have here, these idle machinations while I wait for an unknown something. I hear the old whisper of pattering feet in leaves and wind shrieking through a forest in my mind, calling to me. I wish whatever it is would just arrive already. Part of me is lonely, I have too many expectations and idiosyncrasies to expect much from the world in that regard, but I have been making an effort to find more new people and be social, much as it repulses me at times to do so. Most of my interests recently have been dead ends at best, and exercises in frustration at worst - I seem to always like people more than they like me or vice versa. So many interesting thoughts lately about fear and purpose, but nothing congeals. It's like grasping sand. Perhaps soon I'll need to re-examine my fundamental assumptions as I still have quite a bit of cruft built up from when I was a teenager, things that I've polished as part of my ego, defense mechanisms, or things I've built up cos I think it makes me look or sound better. Some of these have been falling away lately, leaving the others naked and exposed to the baking sun of observation.

... Anyways. Have a few days off in a row, will be working on art and doing taxes. Not sure if I'll be able to get all of the required bill-paying funds for Thailand together in time, no idea what I'll do if I don't.

Peas have come up and are about 6" high now, they are so cute. Lilac bush was planted outside my back door. Planted out a bunch of herbs, only to have the neighborhood cats continually try to shit in that garden bed, burying the poor plants with soil. I kind of want to go out there with my slingshot and teach them what-for when they least expect it. Not very kind of me, but after the hundredth time of accidentally finding your hands covered in cat shit after gardening, it starts to get a bit old. Dug a huge bed using the hugelkultur method on the site of the old compost heap. Sticks and brambles, all the grass I could hoe out from around the beds, lime, bone meal and chicken compost as well as a layer of sod on top. Planted it with white clover, thickly broadcast, hopefully the stuff will take over and crowd out the other weeds, helping to break down the clayey soil and fix nitrogen before I want to use the bed in a month or so.

Planning a huge herb labyrinth in the front yard - design here. To scale, the thing will be about 50' in diameter. :) Downloaded some architect software and have been obsessively measuring the yard and house to get things correct, and planning the garden as well.

Been considering buying a motorcycle and gear when I get back from Thailand and have some free money. After that, a truck, and selling my car. My car is awesome, it gets great gas mileage, but it isn't as good as a motorcycle for getting good gas mileage in town (nor is it as fun) and it absolutely fails at hauling garden supplies and equipment. I have to take these blue Rubbermaid tubs every time I want soil and pay $4 each to fill them - a huge truck bed full of soil is not proportionally more expensive. Have you ever tried to haul lumber in an economy car? I have. It only somewhat works if you put the stuff diagonally sticking out the rear driver's side window. Motorcycle for commuting and tooling around the twisties, truck for inclement weather and hauling large volumes of stuff. If things hit the fan I can always put the motorcycle in the truck and drive anywhere, or put a shell on the back and live in the truck (with motorcycle on a trailer) for a while too. The only thing I'd be missing out on is the ability to haul people (assuming no shell), and frankly that's something I won't miss, as they hardly ever pay me enough to cover gas anyways. I could even put a lumber rack on top, like Coug's, and get even more use out of it, retaining the ability to carry some stuff even if I put a shell on. Both truck and motorcycle would be easier for me to maintain, which is not an insignificant bonus - I have been learning a lot about fixing things in my own car but it seems like things are beginning to go awry more frequently as time wears on. The weird transmission issues are getting worse.

Read three books by Pratchett (Color of Magic, Mort and Good Omens) and have decided that he's one of my favorite authors. Got through the first chapter and a half of Omnivore's Dilemma before I had to give it back to the library, it's good stuff, I'll definitely be checking it out again to finish it off. :) Halfway through Gaia's Garden, and it's enlightening as well, I can tell that I'll want to purchase it and the Veganomicon when I have money. Didn't get a chance to read Endgame, it came in and I was unable to read it before I had to give it back. I'll try again when I'm less busy.

For now: sleep, meditation, and an attempt at figuring myself out. Later, art, taxes and music. Life seems full of contradictions. Music is here if you've never heard it.

Stolen from cypherwulf

DIRECTIONS:
- Go to Google image search.
- Type in your answer to each question.
- Choose a picture from the first page
- Use this website (http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php) to make your collage. (Three columns, four rows)
- Save the image for use in this note
- Post

QUESTIONS:
1. What is your name?
2. What is your favourite food?
3. What is your hometown?
4. What is your favourite colour?
5. What is your favourite movie?
6. What is your favourite drink?
7. What is your dream vacation?
8. What is your favourite dessert?
9. What is one word to describe yourself?
10. How are you feeling right now?
11. What do you love most in the world?
12. What do you want to be when you grow up?



I cheated a bit with the first one - the only results for "Fey" are of Tina Fey so I limited it to only drawn images.

Things are going well. Work has been busy - apparently I'm becoming more respected at my job which is nice, it means plenty of work (and money) but the hours can get a bit stressful. Gardening continues apace, the laundry room is crawling with green growing things which want to go outside, and I started a few flats of seeds last night, tomatoes, onions, ground cherries, spinach and peas to be put outside. I fear the worst for the peas I already sowed out there, as I haven't seen anything come up. The mystery pointy leaves out front have turned out to be daffodils or some other pretty thing, which is nice, I feel a lot better about raking up all of those leaves that'd been accumulating for years if it means I get pretty flowers out of it. :) That area needs the shady garden mix once it warms up a bit here.

I didn't make it to the seed and scion exchange, I decided to go on this furry campout with 17 other people instead. It was a blast. I made some taco tempeh which went over quite well, I got all kinds of drunk and there was much cuddling and the such like. I've agreed to run the next one of these, the person running it was stressed all to hell and freaking out by the end of the preparations, and that's no fun for anybody.

Friend of mine from IRC also went to the camp out and is staying here for a week, he's pretty awesome. I'm going to miss him when he goes back home. My work schedule is pretty harsh during this week too, I'm running on very little sleep and likely will continue to until life resumes as normal - I'm not willing to miss hanging out just because I've got 14 hour workdays for some of these days. I hope to find the time to take him out to the hot springs and out hiking before he leaves.

The only art I've done in a month has been conbadges, which were surprisingly fast to make. I might have to start offering commissions for those on the cheap, they only take me an hour or two, which is refreshing. With real media and paint I have less opportunity to nitpick as well, so I don't stress out about minute details that won't possibly be seen in the final version. I do however need to get off my ass and clear out the remaining art queue that I have before I consider opening up for anything else. Hopefully things will calm down a little bit later this month and I'll have some spare time for artings.

Xeeny has her own room now which is nice, although I love having her nearby, sharing a room got a bit crowded. Tal also moved out, and I'll be kind and say only that it is much more harmonious and relaxed around here now. Hopefully his situation is likewise more pleasant.

Thailand is still on schedule, I need to start saving money for it hardcore. I have to save at least $1040 for my bills in May and June, I figure about $640 for rent and utilities, $300 for credit card payments, and $100 for car insurance should tide me over, and I'll be a bit ahead of the game for June. I don't know how they're going to schedule me after I get back so I don't want to run the chance that I won't have enough time to pay bills that month. My food stamps run out at the end of March so I need to start budgeting in food and planning my meals a lot more diligently.

So anyways, things are good, but tiring. Way too much stuff to cram into a given day. XD

Hope all is going well for you all!