First, I am proud to have scored pretty high here:

	I received 78 credits on The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz How much of a Sci-Fi geek are you?
Quiz by SheGoddess: quick weight loss

(And, yes, I do speak a bit of Klingon-- just a few words, though.) I would've scored higher but I clicked the wrong answer on one just by being careless! Wah!

Now for some hopefully non-spoilery TV opinionations.

So far this season, all my old standbys seem to be coming strong out of the gate. Criminal Minds, Chuck, NCIS, House, Tim Gunn's Guide to Style (I like that they've dropped the lingerie drawer raid, while still keeping the 'good foundations' rule) are all good so far. Also, Sarah Connor Chronicles is still really excellent. I'm very impressed by how well they're doing with that show. Also, it's recursive as all get-out, which is interesting. Time travel makes for some brain-bending paradoxes (paradox-i?). ;D Supernatural is definitely interesting this year, too. Lots of win all around.

Heroes has much better pacing so far this year than last, and interesting character and plot twists, too. It'll be fun to see how things plays out. ( slight spoilers behind cut )

I'm not watching all that much new-- ardent_muses has got me watching Life this season, and so far I am enjoying it. Since it's new to me, I'm counting that. I've also watched a couple of eps of The Mentalist, which I'm not all that thrilled by-- the lead character seems to be styled after Charlie Crews on Life, but his 'quirky charm' seems much more contrived. And he's got a kind of creepy fixed smile that bugs me. Fringe is keeping my interest so far, though. I like the characters. And I'm planning to check out The Eleventh Hour when it premieres this week. I saw one ep of the British version with Patrick Stewart and liked what I saw, I just wish I'd been able to see more of it. 11th Hour has the added bonus of starring Rufus Sewell, who is eye-candy. :) Also, The premiere of Sanctuary didn't suck, so I'll keep watching that for a while, I think.

(image by st_crispins)


Also, RIP, Paul Newman. You were a good man, and that's a better epitaph than anything I can think of.

gakked from crimsonquills

How evil are you?

I am kind of disappointed! Not even a little evil?

I just finished reading an article about the probability that over a thousand American POWs were left behind in POW camps at the end of the Vietnam war and never rescued. In addition the article reveals the fact that this has been covered up by every administration since that time, with the help of politicians on both sides of the aisle, such as John Kerry and John McCain. This is no National Enquirer article either, the author is a Pulitzer prize-winner. If this is true I just... I don't know what to say, or how to express my outrage. I could easily see the original event happening like this, with the Nixon Administration involved, but the idea that the facade was maintained by successive administrations is just unbearable.

(original link seen in celli's LJ)

Happy Autumnal Equinox everyone! I'm ecstatic to greet my favorite season of the year (and start using my favorite default icon).

I've waxed loquacious about this before, so I won't go into detail, I'll just say that I love it when the nights start to get noticeably longer, and things cool down, and the leaves turn and all the pollenating plants either die or hibernate. ;D Halloween is just around the corner, and Thanksgiving. It's just a wonderful time of year.

I had to rescue a little female finch yesterday. It had gotten trapped by an anti-squirrel feature on my bird feeder. I was sitting in the living room reading, with the sliding doors open and just the screen closed, and I kept hearing this 'whirring' sound like a bird's wings. I glanced out and didn't really see anything but the sound persisted so I got up and went over and realized there was a finch on the lowest port of my feeder who couldn't seem to get away from it! I opened the door and went over to the feeder to see what I could do. The little bird was clearly terrified but it calmed down after a moment or two, I guess it figured if I hadn't eaten it yet I wasn't going to. I could see that one of the 'points' on the cloverleaf-shaped guard that keeps squirrels from reaching into the feeder had gotten stuck in the soft tissue just above the bird's beak. I know that's hard to visualize if you haven't seen this variety of caged-port tube feeder so here's a pic:

(You can see the 'cloverleaf' shape of the inner cage if you look closely.)

I tried a couple of times to get my fingers through or under the cage to ease the bird's beak down off the point but they were too big and I was afraid of crushing it's delicate little bones, so I took the feeder down and laid it on the picnic table so the bird didn't have to support its own weight, and then ran inside and got a crystal nail file I keep in the living room (for those urgent living-room related nail emergencies, doncha know!). It has a blunt tip so I thought it would be safe enough. I managed to slip that through the bars of the outer cage and press down on the bird's beak just enough to free it from the point, and in less than a second the bird was free and had flown away to perch on the fence and yell at me. I think that was a good sign that it was okay, just shaken up.

I didn't realize it was possible for that kind of thing to happen with this feeder, and now I have to think about getting a different kind to prevent this from happening again, even if it does work pretty well at keeping the squirrels off. I don't want to injure any birds.

I promised aukestrel pix of Kham (kidunit) in costume as Howl at Nan Desu Kan last weekend, and here they are. ;) Photography by idolatrystudios (Click on the images for larger views-- you might have to click more than once.)

Hah! I totally called that one! As soon as the psychic said its name I hollered out to my housemate ( majorly spoilery thing behind the cut )

bluster, I blame you for getting me into this show. Thanks. ;D

Picture meme, taken from everyone

* Take a picture of yourself right now.
* Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair...just take a picture.
* Post that picture with NO editing.
* Post these instructions with your picture.

Okay, I cheated a bit, I had someone else take the picture because when I take it myself it ends up looking like I took it through a fisheye lens. And I resized the photo smaller so it's not so obnoxious. But I didn't zap any zits or wrinkles or anything. :D ( It's behind the cut. )

shayheyred recently noted a strong similarity between Sarah Palin and a well-known TV character. I just realized there's another, possibly more sinister one. You Heroes fen will know of whom I speak...

Earlier today I posted about the pesto I made... my first attempt. It turned out very well and someone asked for a pic and someone else asked for the recipe so here they are. :)

Citrus & purple basil pesto over tortellini and grilled chicken with roasted red peppers
( recipe behind the cut )

Any of you wonderful people familiar with Perl and possibly the archive software that most fanfiction archives are using these days who could give a hand to an archive mod who's having trouble with comment spam on an archive? The person who normally helps is not responding and we're getting desperate.

I think I had a much better weekend than a lot of folks did. If my friends weren't getting flooded they seem to have been getting blown away. Gah. :::copingvibes::: to all those affected by the bad weather.

I took half a day off on Friday to help Kham finish his Howl costume for a con last weekend. (Howl from Howl's Moving Castle. No pix yet but hopefully soon. He did the triangle coat.) It went well, other than the shoe-repair guy losing Kham's shoes (we were having new insoles put in) so we had to go buy new ones. I got the place to promise to reimburse us for the new pair, though.

Then on Saturday, it was an absolutely gorgeous day so ardent_muses came up and we went to the Boulder Farmer's Market. I haven't been in ages and I quickly spent all the money I'd brought! It was apparently my day for purple produce-- I got some gorgeous purple carrots, three Japanese eggplant, and a huge bunch of the most incredibly fragrant purple basil from Abbondanza Organic. (Since I didn't have time to use it Saturday, I put the basil in water like flowers and by Sunday morning the entire house smelled of basil. It was amazing!) I also got gorgeous yellow tomatoes from Red Wagon Farms, a smoked goat gouda from Haystack Mountain Dairy, and a lovely piece of Spring Colona (very similar to a young parmesan) from Windsor Dairy, a quart of freshly roasted poblano peppers (can't remember the vendor's name but they were roasting on-site and the scent was mouthwatering), and some almond pine-nut macaroons from Rustica Bakery. Before we left we picked up some fresh tamales with green chili and took them home for lunch.

ardent_muses had brought the first season of Californication with her so we sat and watched the entire thing. It was a lot better than I expected it to be. Though most of the characters repeatedly made me want to smack them silly, I still enjoyed it. After we watched that, I made her watch the first episode of Eureka with me because I was just sure that Zoe on Eureka was played by the same actress who played Dani in Californication. As it turns out, I was wrong but I still think they were Separated At Birth (and by a few years). Sadly, Ardent had to go home to Mookie after that so I hit the kitchen to peel and seed my poblanos before putting them in the fridge.

Sunday I got up and made my first-ever batch of pesto, with the purple basil and the Spring Colona. I made a citrus pesto (I'd tasted one at the Market and loved it) using orange and lemon juice as well as the basil, pinons, garlic, and olive oil. I think I should have gone easier on the lemon and harder on the orange to have it perfect but it's still pretty tasty, and a gorgeous rich color. I'm going to use it tonight over chicken and tortellini. The tomatoes and eggplant will go into a Turkish eggplant & tomato salad (I'm trying to reproduce the stuff Falafel King sells), then I also have some eggroll wrappers and cheddar to go with my poblanos for making chili rellenos later this week (yeah, I make cheater's rellenos... put a piece of poblano and a piece of cheddar in the eggroll wrapper, seal it up into a square packet with a little egg wash for glue, and fry 'em up crispy.) I think I might try some of the goat gouda in a few of the rellenos, that might be tasty.

Seven years ago many innocent people lost their lives, and just thinking about them still makes me tear up. I still remember walking from where I'd parked to work around 7am, and seeing a group of construction workers gathered around a truck listening intently to the radio, and wondering idly what they were listening to. I remember getting to my office and turning on my radio just in time to hear the announcement about the impact of the second plane. I remember the days and weeks that followed so vividly I can't believe that it's been seven years since it happened. That is, until I think about how much this country has changed in those seven years. Then, I can believe it.

Because it seems like we're living in a completely different country than the one which existed on 9/11/01. Until I think about the freedoms we have lost, and the freedoms we have taken away from others, and all the innocent people who have died because of our response to that original loss of life. And I pray to every deity out there that the changes that have occurred in our society since then are not irrevocable, and that the United States of America's legacy does not permanently become one of fear and hatred and paranoia.

I want my country back. And I'm going to vote. I hope you're going to vote, too.

(That is, if TPTB let us! I just saw this news story linked on matociquala's LJ and am as appalled as she is! Not particularly surprised, but appalled.)

Okay, well. How shall I put this... ( Read more... )

In other RL news, I've seen this several places now so I chose this site's edition kind of at random: a view of Sarah Palin from someone who's known her a while. (Warning: if you're pro-Palin you probably wanna skip it.)