Already Read It

Not sad to see you leave. Not a good run for me nor indeed the planet. Here's to hoping that a 1 in the third digit helps out.

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2009 has come and finally is gone. Quite a year in review.... Broke up with Meg for the final time. Dated Kasi for a brief time, she moved in and we did the faire thing for a bit, but eventually that did not work out either. Had a few dates from Match.com and those seemed to fizzle pretty quick after a date or two.

Work has been a banner time, lay-off hitting the departments pretty hard. more to come in 2010, but hoping to avoid them when they come back around.

Fell in love with Colorado when out visiting Jess and "T"... Still miss it very much.

Still dealing with the stroke issues. Awaiting surgery date for the heart plug. Seemed that was all I did in 2009, wait and go see doctors, then wait some more... Realized other than going to Colorado in 2009, the rest of my vacation time was used solely for trips to Doctors in Boston and Doctor appointments around here. Hoping that changes in 2010 as well.

Sammie stopped visiting on the weekends. Busy with school and boyfriend, life in general. It is hard to let go of a child... See them grow farther away and hope that when they settle themselves down at some point, you will fit into their life again. If even for a cup of coffee and some conversation.

Emily is getting big... well not so much is size, she is still a small twig of a girl... young lady... She has been sick of late, colds and such, so she has not been coming over for her weekends either. Missing having her around. I still have her x-mas gifts here waiting for her.

Seeing Dad much more these days, he is doing well, the knee replacements seem to suit him well, although sometimes, because of how he was walking before the replacements, he still does things that now aggravate the new knees... he needs to change those habits and I think the knees will be fine. His Pneumonia earlier in 2009 left him with a bit of a breathing issue. It took forever and a day for him to finally shake that cough, and I still hear it sometimes... although he denies it.
Mom is still the same, more or less... Dementia is a strange beast of a sickness. Tracy and Joanne though are good nurses who live in the house (Tracy F/T, Joanne on Tracies off days) and they take care of Mom really well. Dad needed someone to come in Full Time and help with Mom. Having us kids come in only part time was not cutting it. These two gals do a good job, and keep Dad in line as well.

Started to re-do the house slowly. Changes to the furniture, how it is decorated are just starts. Got rid of the love seat and moved the couch. Added a reading nook and reading lamp. Moved the movie shelves around to other areas of the living room. Small things perhaps, but to me, in some ways, they are huge things, but much needed things. Took all the dimmer switches out of the house finally. Put in normal switches and florescent lighting. Takes a little getting use to, and I will miss the bathroom light at night having to ability to go on softly, but at least people will stop leaving the dimmer light on and not turning it off all the way. I will have to pick up a night light for the bathroom now. Even with new windows in the house, the upstairs is still a bit chilly, but it is better than it was. Perhaps 2010 will be the year of insulation installation in the attic.

2009 sold my first hammers at the NYRF, and had one hammer used in the Joust for the last weekend. IT also was the first custom order request for a hammer, that I finished New Years Eve just hours earlier than writing this. (Hammer of WarCrack)

2009 started Wood & Steel fight classes. Our first show was Oxford Ren Faire this past summer. Hopefully we will pick up a few more shows in 2010.

2009 was also saying goodbye to some loved ones.
Shawn passed away not even a year ago. I still swear sometimes, at faires or the mall I can almost turn and see him with that damn grin on his face and those sunglasses on.
Angus Fang was put to sleep at 16 years old. I cannot recall if Willow passed away in late 2008 or 2009. I swear times moves faster the older you get.

2009 started a lot of changes, some I started in motion, others started in motion and worked towards me, ready or not, here they came. Then looking out towards the horizon of tomorrow and where I hope to be, I think things might be starting to look up again.

Although it started in late 2009, I am hoping that 2010 becomes a great year for Michelle and I in the start of a new relationship. Still glaring at the storm outside in hopes it will stop snowing and Michelle will be able to drive up for a visit. Two dates so far, a lot of time on chat talking and some time on the phone. Third date will be this weekend (tomorrow if the damn snow goes away) and I am looking forward to seeing her very much.

So goodbye to 2009 but not in a bad way or a good riddance way kind of way. For even the worst of things from 2009 should be viewed as lessons to be learned from in hopes of making 2010 a better year.
And hello to 2010, may you shine like the smile that started the year on the face of an man who celebrated the New Year on the phone with a special lady.

Happy New Years my friends... May 2010 be a year of positive change in us all.

um.... hi...

i haven't been here in  really long time.

i feel like a bad catholic...


 ... father, it's been years since my  last confession....
i live in bushwick, the bushwick castle.

I live with John, Christopher & Christian.

We have cat named named eli.

I have a new & shiny job that's making me very optimistic about the year to come.

and the screen is doing weird flickers so I'm not feeling writing anymore.

love to everyone, hope you find your bliss tonight xoxo

Here's a copy of my monthly newsletter. Let me know if you have any questions. Enjoy!

MIDORI'S MUSINGS NEWSLETTER December 31, 2009

1. Adventures in Japan – Don’t miss the photos!

2. Bang 4 The Buck women’s party returns to Seattle!

3. January classes/events (LA, Oakland, San Rafael, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Seattle)

4. Preview February (SF, London, Providence, Boston, Halifax, New York, Dallas)

5. Next Forte Femme. March 19 – 21, 2010 San Francisco

6. On-line Haunts: Twitter, FetLife, Yahoo, FaceBook, etc.

= = = ( Read more... )

Stolen from Kerry!

Give me a fandom and I'll tell you...

01. The first character I fell in love with:
02. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now:
03. The character I would shag anytime:
04. The character I'd slap:
05. Who are my 3 favorite characters.
06. What are my 3 favorite pairings.
07. Which character you're most like.
08. The coolest thing about the canon:
09. The lamest thing about the canon:
10. My guiltiest pleasure in this fandom:
11. What story I wish I could read:
12. What story I wish I had written/still want to write

Last day of 2009, I'm really hoping that next year will be better for me. 2009 started out good, but it ended pretty badly. I would like to get a full time job again. That would be nice.

I need to lie down. Man this headache will not quit.

Anyway I'm doing okay. Tired after two weeks at home with crazy family, and very glad to be home. I usually love New Years but I think I'm going the quite route this year.

...that's pretty much it. No real updates. I've been RPing still on those boards and having a good time as before. Really just liking the people and the stories a lot, so that's a really nice outlet.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

Johannes Grenzfurthner of Monochrom really liked my conlanging talk. (Replete with a kiss on both cheeks, etc. o.o)

So now I'm in Monochrom's new book, which goes to print in a couple weeks.

And they're going to be hacking its format somehow; evidently all their books are a combination of articles and art, with the articles not being immune from being remixed.

Whee and such.

26C3 has been pretty fucking awesome.

See also the CCC wiki page for the language we made during the talk.

( Read more... )

It does amuse me that the ad in the bus stop I usually take home from downtown has a picture of two attractive men in business suits - one of whom has wings - making out on a conference table. I never saw ads like that in Boston.

Also, painting rooms is oddly calming sometimes.

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I was going to write up a bunch of these so I could just reference them later, and then I got distracted by a shiny object and just did the one. And then I was reminded last night, and this is the one that came out last night, so I am storing it.

( Because second-rate pedants are cheesed off by third-rate pedants. )

It was in 9th grade, reading the second-to-last (I think; years of substance abuse have served their intended purpose and muddled these memories a bit, thank fuck) Space Tyrant novel, wherein the main character finally gets to have space-sex with his brain-damaged 14-year-old adopted daughter (yes, folks, really), when I finally began to think to myself, “self, this is actually pretty fucked up.”

[Originally posted somewhere in the comments of avclub.com; I was pleased with the paragraph and it’s a little too long for twitter, so it goes here.  I’m inaugurating a new tag “commentaria”, for the occasional exercise of this sort of self-promotion.]

Crossposted from: blahg.blank.org

A fine thing this is, and I recommend it.

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The Grand Central Parkway, which connects the borough of Queens to Nassau County, was among the first of Robert Moses' superhighways in the New York metropolitan area.  The Grand Central's very success upon opening in 1933 rendered its title obsolete when the ribbon parks along its sides were destroyed to accommodate additional traffic in the 1960s.  Perhaps one of the few remaining memories of that peculiar time in which highway construction seemed more imperial compared to the future in which automobiles actually held dominion are the pair of monumental pylons straddling the Grand Central Parkway at 71st Street near its terminus in Astoria.  Towering above the roadway in fluted limestone, they are incised with "Grand Central Parkway" in tall Roman capitals for the benefit of drivers coming off of the Triborough Bridge who aren't quite sure where they are.

I always wondered why they looked so familiar to me, even though I'm not a native of Queens.  One day, I figured it out; the pylons astride the Grand Central have something of a resemblance to the famous Cenotaph in London and its various copies around the world memorializing soldiers of the British Empire slain in the First World War.

Considering that in the decades since Moses helped consummate the final victory of the highways in America, automobile-related fatalities have come in at a steady 40,000 people a year, I rather think that the Grand Central pylons would be more appropriately decorated with the inscription so memorably incised on its British counterpart: THE GLORIOUS DEAD.

Upon closer examination, I realized that the pylons are directly adjacent to St. Michael's Cemetery, cozy in its triangle between the Grand Central Parkway and the eastern and western forks of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.  Why Robert Moses didn't choose that other inscription instead is completely beyond me.   

Spent much of the day helping Eri pack for her move. Having been the one with an onrushing deadline I know that people actually helping pack and throw stuff out is invaluable to keeping morale up. Lord knows I could have used it.

After running out of boxes and deciding it was time for some wind-down, we put in Repo: The Genetic Opera since she had never seen it. I think she made it about 20 minutes before asking for it to be turned off please so she could put on Fraggle Rock instead.

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Very Important Information Which Can be Gleaned from the Watching of Doctor Who and/or Torchwood

1. Cell phones may at any point be required tools for saving the world, so make sure yours is charged at all times.

2. If you're male and plan on traveling through time on a frequent basis, you're going to need a really, truly awesome coat.

3. Kissing someone is an effective way to bring him/her back from the dead.

4. Kissing someone is actually an effective way to accomplish almost everything. Basically, when in doubt, grab the nearest person (regardless of gender) and go for the tonsils.

5. Upon entering Britain, all alien life forms immediately begin speaking perfect English with British accents.

6. Almost everything an alien does to you will result in you A. glowing, B. being blown into tiny little pieces, C. glowing, and then being blown into tiny little pieces.

7. Many, many aliens are blue.

8. And speaking of aliens, feel free to kiss them, too, if you feel like it.

9. It is possible to run to and from absolutely EVERYTHING, at top speed, without ever once displaying any sign of fatigue.

And, most importantly,

10. Contrary to what American television would have you believe, you DON'T in fact have to be pathetically thin and impractically huge-chested to be a dynamic sci-fi heroine whom all manner of people and things want to bang and/or marry! Oh glory!

See my CCC-wiki profile for links to all my stuff.

Or ping me here.

If you see or post something about any of my talks/workshops, I'd appreciate an email or comment just letting me know, since I don't necessarily know where to look for everything.

Or just tag everything #26c3 @saizai & #conlang, #meditation, or #fsfs and I'll be able to find it easily.

Thanks!