Moomin Light

Back to Blogging

I'm going to get back to blogging - some here and some on a new, design-critique blog that I haven't named yet.  It won't be the same blogging as before.  If you want to see current photos, my Instagram account is: https://www.instagram.com/songfinn/

Random reactions to the internet (and other things)

Another tiring day - another set of brief comments:

• Cell phone conversations on airplanes - The possibility of having to listen to other people's calls, which is bad enough in the grocery store, makes me glad that I can't afford to fly anyway.
• I wish I had dreams this interesting.
• A creepy Twitter photo by the same blogger.
• My favorite character in the X Men movies is Mystique.
• Fifty years ago today, I was just barely two years old.
• When Frederick Law Olmstead came to Boston

I love this jazz cover (with tap dancer) of Lady Gaga's, 2008 song, Just Dance:

Random things

I'm really tired so I'm not up to writing anything organized:

• The cast list for Les Misérables comes out tomorrow.
• We're not usually good at keeping up with TV shows.  We usually forget they're on.  This summer, we actually made it through half of So You Think You Can Dance.  However, we are enjoying The Agent Coulson Show Agents of Shield more and more.  We still don't watch every week.  Tonight, we watched two episodes so that we could catch up. 
• I spent about half an hour tonight looking at Detroiturbex.com.  It's full of fascinating, and sad, photos of the decline of Detroit.  I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit until 5th grade so, although most of the buildings are unfamiliar, the names and some of the styles are familiar from driving past similar places.
• Usually, I buy too many pansies and end up having a day at the end of the fall where I'm just trying to get the last remaining ones in the ground.  That didn't happen this year.  I enjoyed planting them all the way through.  I planted the last nine today.
• I've also started paperwhites, hyacinths, crocuses, and an amaryllis to bloom inside this winter.  Usually, I don't get around to that until late January.
• I haven't posted movie reviews in quite a while.  I really enjoyed Loki's Brother's movie Thor 2 - more than the first one.  OTOH, except for Benedict Cumberbatch, Star Trek Into Darkness ("You sure we don't need a colon here?") seemed like a standard action movie, and the character development was minimal.  I wish they'd written an original story instead of redoing Wrath of Khan.  There's a fun video about it here (I'm not embedding because of the Carol Marcus photo on the screen).  Many of my problems with the movie are in it.

Oversize trucks in the Sydney Harbor Tunnel

We were wandering the internet tonight and ran across this video.  Truck drivers ignore the warning signs saying that their trucks are too high until they get warned by a sign on a water curtain (hadn't heard of that before):

A link post (which includes Liza Minnelli)

I thought I'd get lots of blogging done this weekend.  You see, after all the busy-ness of the last few months (good busy, but some of the busiest I've ever been, just the same), I decided to take this weekend and schedule nothing. 

Nothing at all.

I decided that, besides laundry, dishes, and the every day stuff, I'd just do whatever I felt like.  What a bizarre concept.  I was sure that I'd get lots of blogging done, but I never really felt like blogging.  What did I feel like?

Sleeping.

I'd start reading a book, or downloading photos, and I'd get sleepy and go take another nap.  Along with sleeping well at night, I slept two to three hours during the day.  I haven't even finished any of the books I'm reading (Small Pools, Unseen Academicals, and Tales from Outer Suburbia). 

I almost didn't write this part of the post because it seems so... shameful to get so little done over a whole weekend.  However, catching up with the last two weeks' worth of Glee put me in a good mood this evening so I decided to confess anyway. 

Here are a few interesting things I ran across the last few weeks:

• The Masterworks Broadway blog has a post about the thirty-fifth anniversary of the opening of Chicago.  To go with the post, here's Liza Minnelli singing All That Jazz:

•  Notes of an Anesthesioboist has a beautifully thoughtful, though sad, post, A Spouse's Silent Sorrows:

...So often the beauty of compassion between partners is overlooked or forgotten, but when it exists the connection between the two can be felt by everyone in the room...

• At Wired - Meet the Last Generation of Typewriter Repairmen.

• A country landscape - A photo I'd like to hike in (among many of such) at Appalachian Treks.

• Mermaid at Daily Animation:  Beautiful, though sad.

• I love Wild Beasts and Dangerous Lunatics' review of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, a Michael Caine/Steve Martin comedy which is one of my favorite movies.  However, there are spoilers so don't read if you don't want parts of the story given away.

• Robert Downey Jr.:  Biggest movie star on the planet -- Who'da thunk it? at Flick Filosopher:

If anyone had asked you, a decade ago, to predict who would be the biggest star of 2010, you might have said Jim Carrey. Or Tom Hanks. Or Tom Cruise. They headlined the biggest movies of 2000, after all...

Cat

She showed up Wednesday night.  As the sun set, she was wandering around the yard while younger son played with his friends.  Younger son came in to get us so we could see her.  After being petted, she just relaxed on the bench in the garage.

She's very sociable.

She was still on the front porch (right) when dear husband got back from his trip at midnight. 

We finally fed her Thursday evening.  I didn't want to feed her because I wanted to encourage her to go home, but that didn't seem to be working.  She turned up her nose at the dry cat food that our cats eat, but she loved the organic wet food that a neighbor brought over (Thank you!). 

She likes to relax under my van or under the bushes in front of our house.  Yesterday afternoon, she followed younger son and his friend up the driveway until she got to the end of the flower beds.  Then she just sat there and watched as they headed over to his friend's house.

This afternoon, as we sat outside eating our sandwiches, she ate her lunch from a plate next to us. 

She ventured further this evening.  When dear husband and I got back from our walk, she was happily sitting on someone's lap as they sat in a hammock next door.  The kids all seem to love her.

Our cats, on the other hand, hate her.  If they smell her on our hands after we pet her, they get mad and beat each other up.  Lina attacked the sliding glass door when the cat was out on the deck.  Tamlin has been very cranky the last two days and actually scratched me for no reason today.

We can't keep her.

She's very sweet, loves to be petted, and loves to have company.  She followed me all over the yard yesterday afternoon while I was taking the photos for my bloom day post.  That's when I took the photo to the right - to put on the neighborhood blog to see if we can find her owners.

She has to have owners.  She's well-fed, has a collar and a bell, and she's been declawed.  She can't stay here because she can't live inside with our cats (she'd become a punching bag), and she can't live outside without claws. 

I refuse to name her.

She's been given three names already by others (daughter and neighbors).

I can't get attached to her.

Side hugs

This video has been floating around various blogs this week.  I have to admit that I didn't listen to the whole thing because they don't enunciate very well, and the totally irrelevant sirens and gunshots also get in the way of the words.  However, once I started searching for the lyrics, I did read various blogs about it.  Stuff Christians Like explains: 

In the side hug there’s no risk of two crotches touching. Instead of face to face, you go side to side, putting your arm around the person and your hip against their's.

 

After reading a number of blogs, I can't help but wonder who came up with this.  Obviously people who don't consider breasts to be sexual* since that doesn't seem to be a concern.  In frontal hugs (their term, not mine), chests touch far before crotches.  How far before, of course, depends on cup size.

With my family, I'm very huggy.  With friends, I'm huggy if they're huggy, but I won't be pushy if they're not.  With people I don't really know, it would be an expression of... what?  The hope that I'll like them?  That's why I'm uncomfortable with "Just hug the person next to you!" at a church.  If I know the person next to me, and I know they like me, that's fine.  If I don't really know them, or think they may not like me,** it's just awkward - or worse. 

Of course, this video is for teens, not for 48 yo women.  However, I could have written the previous paragraph exactly the same way 30 years ago. 

*  As someone who nursed for almost 5 years (3 kids), I applaud this - for everyone in the world except dear husband. 

** You don't think everybody at any particular church likes each other, right?  If you do, I've got this bridge in Brooklyn...

[How to categorize this?  Faith?  Doesn't involve mine.  Feminism?  Not really, though a number of feminist blogs have picked this up.  Personal?  Not a personal pet peeve, just something that struck me today.  I'll just leave it as General.]

Sooner or later, everything's unhealthy for you

From The Economist, "Unhealthy showers:  The joy of Bathing:

IT HAS long been known that the air and water encountered by people in their daily lives are filled with all sorts of micro-organisms. Thankfully, most of these are benign and even the unsavoury ones can usually be washed down the drain without causing any harm.

Strikingly, in some of the samples they found high concentrations of a microbe known as Mycobacterium avium (a relative of the one that causes tuberculosis) which can cause respiratory illnesses. This is found in tap water, but remains harmless unless turned into an aerosol and inhaled—precisely what happens when bug-laden water is forced at high pressure through a showerhead. As the tiny particles are inhaled, they get into the lungs and can start an infection.

Is this cause for alarm? Not for healthy people, insists Dr Pace, but those with a compromised immune system or who are at risk of pulmonary diseases—the elderly, say—may want to take precautions. Cleaning showerheads with bleach will not do since the microbes will simply return with a fresh flow of water...

Link Snack: August 22, 2009

Items of interest this summer:

• If you look at nothing else in this post, you should look at My Milk Toof.  It's an adorable, creative, photo story blog about two teeth - who have personalities and adventures. I've added it to my sidebar under "Fanciful."

• What happens when you give bears some watermelons - from the Museum of Life & Science Animal Department Blog.  I've added it to my sidebar under "Triangle, NC."

• From Planet Green:  75 Things You Can Compost, But Thought You Couldn't.  However, your neighbors might not be too thrilled with the creatures your stale bread, moldy cheese, pizza crusts, hamster droppings, and latex condoms might attract.  Don't worry, neighbors. This list is here just for interest; I'm not actually using it.

• San Diego Zoo's Panda Cam:  Their newest cub was born this month.  [Hat tip to russlings:  About zoos and wildlife, a blog by a member of the NC Zoo society (which is now on the sidebar in the North Carolina section)]

• From the Wall Street Journal:  If you have lots of money, a simple house by the sea - Villa Rockledge in Laguna Beach, California:

In 1973, Roger Jones convinced his landlord to sell him the guest house he lived in and the accompanying beachfront home for $420,000—a hefty sum for a 33-year-old electronic-parts salesman making $35,000 a year. “I was as scared as hell,” says Mr. Jones. The gamble paid off. Added to the National Registry of Historic Places in 1984, the 5,000-square-foot house named Villa Rockledge, perched on the edge of a rock hillside, appears to float above the private beach 50 feet below and offers ocean views from every room—even some bathrooms and closets.  The main room of the house is vast, with 22-foot-tall cathedral ceilings supported by logs as big as telephone poles that have been treated with an unusual mixture of cement and buttermilk to create a grey sheen. Many of the details have been restored: Solid redwood doors are dotted with brass extrusions cast in rough star-shapes that look like barnacles. The kitchen walls are covered with original canary-yellow tiling, while modern appliances are discreetly hidden behind wood panels. A 5-foot-wide ship’s wheel hangs from one of the beams like a chandelier.

In May, Mr. Jones, now 69, decided to sell this home, which he’s painstakingly researched and slowly renovated over the past three decades, for $34.5 million. He says the upkeep and maintenance are too costly for his kids and adds that he and his wife are getting too old to live in a large home...

Make sure you look at the slideshow.  It's lovely.

• Being an Oscar Wilde fan, I'm curious about the upcoming film, Dorian Gray, starring Ben Barnes, Colin Firth, and Rachel Hurd-Wood  [Hat tip:  The Egalitarian Bookworm (Chick?), also added to the Books sidebar]:

 

• Prize for best recent post title:  My Vagina is Not a Universal Translator from Life Under a Rock:

...my revolution starts with not being held responsible for anyone else’s behavior simply because we both happen to be female.

My revolution starts with the idea that what another woman does, does not reflect well or badly on me simply because we are both women...

[Photo from our garden:  Soldier beetle on a cosmos]

At Breakfast with Pandora: A counter riff to my riff

At BwP:  Heroization and micromythology:  a counter-riff on Moomin Light which, of course, references my post, A Second Riff on Breakfast with Pandora:  On blogs, Facebook, reality shows, and aerobics.

 

[Totally gratuitous lily photo.  You know me - any excuse to add flowers.][What do I mean by "know" here?  This will be important in the future.]