Tag Archives: Personal Blather

Ok, first impressions of Tai Chi class… Egad my knees are killing me! I’ve got a lot of the standard confusion of a dojo newbie, and I’m sure I’ll get over that in time, but I never expected to ache like this. Seriously, there’s no good way to describe how my knees feel after standing in ready stance for a long time… Hopefully I’ll get over that too.
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One of my favorite on-line toys has had an update. Multibabel now includes Japanese, Korean, and Chinese in the mix when mis-translating things. With this added functionalaity, the common phrase, “Do you have any fruit to declare?” changes from this:

You make the examinación that is explains to her fruit?

to this…

Takes frutte, that one that eats the communication?

An obvious improvement…

So, the big bathroom project weekend has been and gone and didn’t go exactly as planned. Shockingly little actual bathroom work was done, mostly due to the near-continual rain, but a lot of other projects got finished. Normally, rain isn’t that much of a deterrent to an indoor remodeling project, but I’ve got the drywall and everything stored out in the garage. It was so absolutely disgusting on Friday that the drywall would have turned into extremely soggy wall in the few seconds it took to make the trip from the garage to the house.
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A friend of mine is thinking semi-seriously about moving to New Zealand. In some ways this would be very cool. My folks visited New Zealand a while ago and had a great time, and it sounds like a place that I’d enjoy a lot. But if he moves there, it could put a crimp in one of my Nefarious Schemes.
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There’s a nifty web article at “newscientist.com” about how human brain evolution may be due to a mutation that weakened our jaw muscles and let our skulls grow. Of course, my friend David sent it to a mailing list I’m on with this as the subject line:

The answer, my friends, is growing from your chin…

Remember what I said, long ago, about there being no such thing as a free lunch? The same goes for folks who use my stuff on their web sites without crediting me. I mean, seriously, if someone wants to use one of my images, I don’t mind, but is it so hard to put it inside of a link back to here?
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I had a strange idea recently based on two links that popped up in the past few days. One, from DECAFBAD’s latest batch of quick links, is about a robotic system that’s basically a gigantic plotter. The trick is, it uses concrete instead of ink to basically print a house from computerized plans. The other nifty thing (from an e-mail list I’m on) is a combination of concrete and optic fibers called “LiTraCon“, which is basically transparent concrete.
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I’m just amazingly impressed with Morningstar Farms’ stuff. They make some really tasty spicy black bean burgers, astonishingly meat-like veggie corndogs, and last night I made a very nice batch of dirty rice tortillas using their “Crumbles” ground-beef substitute. It’s not exactly like ground beef, for one thing it’s a lot less greasy, but it tastes superb…
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I’ve heard of people who wake up with a song in their hearts, bright and rested and ready to face the world, but I have no personal experience of this phenomenon. I’m part of the grumpy morning contingent of humanity. I have never, to my knowledge, sprung out of bed with a song in my heart. I have, however, woken up with a song stuck in my head.
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I nearly crushed the Vandycat yesterday.

Not on purpose! Though she has been a vexing kitty lately, what with her new jealousy issues. We’ve recently let the cats come upstairs when we’re up there and she’s been attacking Isaak whenever she runs into him up there. And whenever we’re skritching Isaak behind the ears or anything, she runs up and demands attention too. The “I” is beginning to act kind of wigged out by her sometimes.
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