Not suprising...

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You are a Waterbender!

The first waterbenders learned how to bend water by watching the moon control the tides. Waterbenders use Chi, the energy that flows through life, in combat. They redirect their opponent’s Chi rather than using direct strikes. Waterbending is stronger at night and strongest during the full moon. Waterbending is not possible during a lunar eclipse.

Which Element do you Bend?

Seriously, I am so far behind on Avatar - I love it, but I only seem to catch the reruns. I think I've seen half the second season (but sporadic episodes), none of the third, and I swear I've seen the first episode at least a dozen times. I should just break down and buy the damn series... Ah well, this way I can stretch out the limited time I have left with Uncle Iroh...

So, have not seen Dark Knight (although I loved the graphic novel - it's based on the one of the same title, right?), and probably won't until it shows up at the $2 theater, on DVD, or maybe even HBO, where John will turn it on in the last third of the movie (or I'll come home from work and catch him in the middle of it), and then catch earlier bits of it on subsequent showings. It seems most of the recent movies that have come out lately, I see in chunks. It was thus we saw the most recent Die Hard movie. I've now seen the end three times in the last week, and still haven't seen the beginning.

One thing strikes me though. For the last month, the Joker movie posters have been all over the place, especially bus stops, and it kept niggling at me that they reminded me of something. I finally figured out what it was.

This is the bus stop poster:



( And this is what it's reminding me of... )

So I've recently been using Google Reader since I can get it on my phone (and since LJ insists my inability to log in must be the phone's browser's fault, nevermind that I can log into bunches of other sites). It's something else to read on the bus when I'm between books - yeah, I know, like I need more?.

What I have now:
Dooce - doesn't everyone read this? Well I hadn't been, but now I'm getting caught up.
LAist - I can't keep up with this one, and LA is really not that close to home, but what affects LA often dribbles down to Orange County, and I do get up there occasionally
Beach Blog - Orange County beachehttp://beach.freedomblogging.com/s and stuff. Lots of surfing contests, but other things that affect local communities as well.
Junk - the plastic bottle raft makes its way across the Pacific
Bug Girl's Blog - Entomology and other interesting thinks things
Neurodiversity Weblog - this has been a bunch of legalese to get through lately because of legal proceedings against the blogger, but very interesting...
Aquarium of the Pacific - Aquarium volunteers and others

and various others, mostly friends or fannish things...

My Google Reader Shared Page - I only just discovered this, I may have to put a link over there on the left...

While I have a bunch, not all of them update everyday, so what do you guys read outside of LJ? I'd love a few more suggestions - preferably not too photo heavy; I can read those at home, but my phone is iffy on downloading pictures, so I often just turn them off. People as well as topics are welcome...

Squeeee!

Lampwork Nudibranchs.

I think they're even pendants...

Payday tomorrow...I'm sure the bus driver will be happy; today and Friday I've had to pay my entire fare in nickels and dimes, and not even the option of driving, because the Kia has just about enough for John to pick up Gareth at summer school. $10 yesterday was enough to get 2 gallons and barely move the needle off E.

We have a trip planned in August to drive to Carlsbad Caverns and take a cave tour or two, and camp. We were going also visit the Grand Canyon, but with the price of gas that's out. We're planning on using our economic stimulus check for it, and John thinks even if gas gets up to $5.25, we can still afford it.

I am dubious. I am all for staying closer to home. Driving across the desert in August, with three kids who have never been on a long car trip before (two of whom seem to have problems sitting still for any length of time), does not sound like a wonderful time to me.

Well, we'll see. My family made cross country trips in the summer, without DVD player or AC even. We did have a camper and more room to spread out, though. And a couple of those trips were made when we kids were old enough to share in the driving.

I was kind of hoping to use part of our check to get a new camera, but I don't suppose there's going to be any extra for that...

For some reason, most of the magazines that wind up in the bathroom are my spouse's, and while I'm not into sports and I don't do woodworking, occasionally I find really interesting articles. Popular Woodworking this month (a gift subscription from my father) has an article on Greene & Greene, brothers who developed their own particular style of the Art & Crafts movement in California. They designed homes and also the furniture that went with them. One of their homes, Gamble House in Pasadena, is open to the public. I've been on one of the tours many years ago, and it really is amazing. It all looks like it could be a giant-sized puzzle and every piece fits together perfectly. As it says in the article, the wood just begs to be stroked.

Article: Greene & Greene: Awakening of a Style

Online Slide show: Greene & Greene Masterworks (actually a pdf file)

The Gamble House website

There are a few of these Arts & Crafts style bungalows a few blocks away from me in downtown Huntinton Beach, but smaller and I don't think the interiors are as period, since people still live in them.

PhEEr two posts with my daughter in a row.

Well, on last Monday, two days after getting stung by the bee, Avalon started throwing up, and felt absolutely awful, plus her foot was still swollen and incredibly painful. runsamuck had me make a doctor appt. for her, and took her in. The doctor's verdict was she was having a delayed reaction to the venom - this was her second sting, and the next one might put her in the hospital. So in addition to other medications, no more running around in the park barefoot, and she now has to carry an EpiPen around with her, in case she gets stung again. We do, rather. It came with a needle-less trainer to practice with. We don't forsee her having to use it herself for the time being - she's six, so she pretty much always has an adult nearby, but we had her practice with it anyway - and practiced with ourselves too, so she could see us doing it and not be too scared herself (but damn, you have to hit yourself pretty hard - I had bruises). Step 1 - pull the cap off.

Patio
Huntington Beach CA
Sharp VE-CG30
26 June 2008

( Step 2... )

From Divebums Photos of the Week - this is a fascinating little video of an octopus taken down in La Jolla. While it may not be "walking" bipedally quite as definitely at the octies in the videos that made the internet rounds a couple of years ago, it's pretty interesting to watch. Very shortly in, it comes to rest and forms white "eye-spots" below its own eyes and a dark horizontal bar that makes it look very much like the head of a sculpin or a sarcastic fringehead (an agressive little fish that lives in burrows, shelss or sometimes bottles with its head sticking out). It does the fish imitation several times in the video. Although I can't quite figure out what (or if) it's imitating by holding two arms aloft while moving around...

http://week.divebums.com/2008/May27-2008/

(Video all the way down at the bottom, last on the list)

I feel a little sorry for this guy, who's having a hard time escaping the persistant diver-with-video-camera!

Grrr. My cell phone has gone missing. I only noticed Monday afternoon when it wasn't in its case on my backpack and thought then I'd left it on my desk. However, it wasn't there the next morning and searching through my backpack and lunch bag (ostensibly for lunch but winds up holding whatever I throw in it when I'm too lazy to stop and unzip zippers) produced a distinct lack of phone. Tried calling it in hopes of hearing it in a forgotten corner, but now it's rolling right into voicemail, so either the battery has run out or whoever picked it up turned it off. I hope I didn't leave on the bus. That means a trip to the transit authority office to check the lost and found, whether I did or not, I suppose. I'm not too upset about the phone itself; although it was fairly new, there's only $10 worth of time on it, so it's not like I'm getting ripped off there. I'm miffed I've lost the little glow-in-dark Naruto charm I got at Anime Expo last year and my little year-of-the-tiger charm. And I'll have to enter all those numbers over. Again, grrr.

The Monitor has been running an interesting series on fisheries management:

Empty Oceans

Which I think is a bit of a misnomer because fisheries managers are trying to do their best to keep the ocean from being completely emptied. The most recent article, Alaska fishing: the merits and costs of a tamed frontier, could be echoed off almost every coast in this country, and in most of the meetings I attend for my job.

Hey, someone just sent us two of these! Was it you Dave? I know you frequent http://www.woot.com/ and http://shirt.woot.com/...

Hee! Kyoot! Thanks!

I joined LJ because I was first a member of the long-defunct ChickClick.com, a bulletin board. It was owned by the same company as IGN.com, but apparently was one of their least active boards (although it always seemed plenty active to me!), so they decided to close it. I was pregnant with Avalon at the time, and was a participant in the pregnancy thread; I started to consider all the other women in that conversation my friends. I noticed that many of them had LiveJournal accounts in their signatures, so when ChickClick went away, I followed them here, and have been here ever since. I created my account in 2001, but I didn't actually start using it until the following January. I can't quite believe its been more than six years! I think all of you I added then are still on my list; angelsmum, jedi_bunny, newbadthing, vampgyrl, and vwsrmylife, thanks for enriching my friend's page all this time, and putting up with me on yours. And all of you who've added me or let me add you in the meantime, I'm truly grateful that you let me share your experiences as well.

I started actually using this journal, when I realized I was forgetting things - funny stories, things my kids did, people at work, my pets, issues - and wanted to be able to remember them. Just the other day, I was reading through some old entries and thinking "I don't remember writing this at all." Photos help, but they don't tell the entire story. Someone at work invited me to a scrapbooking party shortly before I started this; I never really took it up, but this is my way of doing it. It's also a good place to vent, but I hope I haven't been doing that too often. Another reason I started it was, since I am not always that good at keeping in touch with people, and I do better with letters than phone calls, that this would a sort of open letter to friends and family, so they could check to see what I'm up to. So far, that hasn't worked so well, but I do have people who tell me they look at it from time to time.

I've started things other places (blogger, deviantart, gather) but here is where I seem to spend the most time. LJ has done a few things over the years that piss me off, but I seem to have invested too much here; mostly the people and communities. Not that I'm a huge participator, but I haven't found anything quite like it anywhere else. Sure Gather pays me (after a fashion), but it's just not as nice a place to hang around; since stuff there seems to be more geared toward public consumption, it's just not quite as comfortable and I haven't gotten to know people as well.

"Mom, what do you look like if you're tow-headed?"

"Well, it means you have really light-blond hair. If your friend Connor's hair got a little longer and he got it really bleached out in the sun this summer, he's probably look tow-headed."

(Silence - thinking a bit)

"Oh."

"What?"

"I thought it meant your head looked like a toe."

On How It's Made tonight, runsamuck notes...

"...toothpicks, acrylic bathtubs, helicopters and beer..."

Shakes head and says, "Those things just don't seem to go together..."

Well, maybe not all at once...

In the shower this morning, I think mine was actually fighting back.

I would say it snarled at me, but it was worse than that. Mutual growling occurred on both sides. When I finally got it under contol, I (up)braided it for discipline.

Seriously, I haven't been so close to being tempted to cut it all off in a long time.

Driving home from Carlsbad again; the home stretch about a mile away from home this time.

Main Street
Huntington Beach CA
Kyocera Switchback phone camera
04 June 2008

( Blimp! )

Attending another meeting in Carlsbad; had one glass of wine and some appetizers while trying to get fishermen's opinions of some issues (and damn is it difficult to get a word in edgewise with those guys, especially when you're an introvert), then drove back home. The clouds were starting to come in from the ocean, but a break in then over the mountains in Camp Pendleton showed more tall sunset-colored thunderheads that would have made a fitting background to a Maxfield Parrish painting. Massive fail on capturing it.

Camp Pendleton CA
Kyocera Switchback phone camera
03 June 2008

I stumbled across this webcomic ( in fortysomething) because I will pretty much click any link presented to me (I'm kind of a sucker that way).  And discovered a lovely and poignant webcomic, that will probably resonate with anyone whose parents may be getting older.  Or knowing someone in a number of other situations.

The Walk

This could be any one us, sometime in the future. 

My father is 82.  We live with him, so we've sort of become the default caretakers - not that he needs much, he's in good shape.  Truth to tell, it's mutually beneficial, as we get to live in the house I grew up in, in a neighborhood we could not afford these days.  My kids are going to the school I went to as a kid.  But I always wonder how this is going to wind up. 

I've discussed with my brother, how sometimes I dread knocking on the door of his bedroom, the room where my mother also passed away, and one day, getting no response.  And my brother looked at me and said, "You know, Leeanne, that's really the best case scenario."

I dread it.  But I know it's going to happen.  It may not be for awhile yet.  His mother only passed away six years ago, having lived to be a hundred.  But I'm trying to be prepared.

Hmm, I'm not really a fanfic writer; and frankly, I'd sort of forgotten about this. I wrote it several years ago and though I meant to, never posted it anywhere; however I recently stumbled across it again in a little used folder on my harddrive, and was nudged to put it up somewhere. bakayaro_onna, I know you beta'ed this, and I think I incorporated most of your suggestions; unfortunately, there were a few I couldn't quite figure out how to do at the time, and in changing computers between then and now, I lost the document you sent me, so you'll have to forgive me. And megthelegend, thanks for inspiring this and letting me run it by you, too, even though you're not a Bebop fan (and hope you don't mind if I quote you).

This is perfectly tame general, although it could be a precursor for something JetxFaye (although I like JetxSpike, I'm afraid my own imagination left to itself is pretty vanilla...)

Distractions - Just a little vignette from a day in the life; Faye is a bit confused....
http://community.livejournal.com/creativebebop/63383.html

or at Fanfic.net:
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4285714/1/

(Thanks in advance for reading...)

VoicePost 313K 1:37

“I've spent the last 2 days in La Hoya and learning a lot of very interesting things about biology of swordfish and leatherback sea turtles and fishery interaction or something. So all very interesting and so heading up the 405 into the westering sun and just happening I stopped at this Starbucks in Carlsbad because driving back and forth to San Diego for 2 days in a row requires lots of caffeine and I happen to glance at the albums in the store and this has struck me before but I don't think I ever recorded getting anything there but I glanced at the albums and I had this thought well when did David Duchovny make an album? I didn't know a thing and then I looked at it closer and it was Katie Lange's new album and it literally struck me before but at least on this album cover she looks just like him. Anyway I haven't made a voice post in quite a while. Want to see if LiveJournal can actually translate it over the pickup truck engine noise. Anyway talk to you soon. Bye.” Auto-Transcribed Voice Post

Um, that was La Jolla and K.D. Lang...and I didn't realize I spoke in such run-on sentences.