Suburb of Heaven

Guys, guys, my sister's photos came out really great! Well, I'm responsible for some of them (uh, many blurry ones, as far as I can tell. Sheesh. I'm apparently Cap'n Shaky Hands. Anyway, here are six photos of Ravenna mosaics.

( Read more... )

Rereading The Hobbit as well as Fellowship of the Ring (it's funny reading them side by side, so to speak. Had forgotten how much I want to go live with Beorn. And now I want to go see the Hobbit again, just because. Heh.

Reading City of Diamond, by Jane Emerson (aka the fabulous Doris Egan, whose Ivory books I so love). It's funny, I read a lot of fantasy and not as much science fiction, and it's been a while since I've been on a spaceship. I'm only about 75 pages in, but enjoying it a lot so far. Here's Jo Walton's take on the book.

I also have the Kindle holding Things Might Go Terribly, Horribly Wrong: A Guide to Life liberated from Anxiety which is something my therapist sent me when I told her I couldn't come back for a little while because I couldn't afford the co-payments, and did she have any recommendations for me to read while I was away? She sent me this book and a workbook called Get Out Of Your Mind & Into Your Life, which is good but which I haven't worked very deeply into yet. I'm also pausing my Susanna Kearsley reading, but have Winter Sea ready and waiting, and also I just picked up (for three bucks, I think) Jennifer Crusie's Crazy People: The Crazy For You Stories, which is her MFA set of stories featuring characters she used in Crazy For You. I am excite.

In other news I stayed home from work today because I felt punky and had some Incidents of Barf. I feel better now which I hope sticks because I have things I need to do this weekend, although they mostly involve sitting at a table and being nice to people - our dojo has a table at the local women's expo. Despite being home, I got a panel proposal turned in, by the skin of my teeth. Rarrr.

And in other, other news, one of the cats is farting vilely, and I can't figure out which one of them it is. It's bad enough that I'm surprised there isn't a visible green cloud.



Ratchet is indignant that I would ever accuse him of such a thing.

So in the student union, there's a set of stairs down to the lower level shops. It's a giant half-circle, and for whatever reason, it's always been awkward for me to walk down - the shape means that the stairs are not uniform, and generally I clutch the handrail and, you know, feel elderly. Well, given that today I totally bought it and fell down the stairs, I think that elderly feeling is the better option. I fell on my butt, and have a beautiful bruise that, according to my husband, looks like someone punched me in the ass, plus a sore ankle. Feh, bah, and oy. I'd almost be happy if I could blame the vertigo, but I wasn't actually experiencing any (it's come and gone, and hasn't been terribly bad) but as far as I can tell, I just had slightly wet shoes and apparently slipped. I've noticed a vague linkage between being klutzy about two weeks out from my period, so we'll see if that's the case this time.

In other news, my sister has been scanning slides, so here's a photo of me from many moons ago.

Thanks for all your kind words, guys.

In thanks, I bring you a pic of two of my goofy, goofy cats, who have cheerfully accepted that dishwasher cart=bunkbeds. I put the bedding down after they decided they needed to sleep on it, because I am a sucker. Since Ratchet just cost me a bunch of money in tuna-flavored antibiotics, he's got to make it up in cute. Or get a job.

In California for a work trip. The drive out here took me through the endless length of Nebraska (sadly, the fastest route through the state is also the most boring, plus it's an eternity), vast spaces of Wyoming, where I saw clouds stacked beautifully in a blue sky, Utah, of which I saw little (being asleep for most of it), Nevada, where I witnessed the weird neon of casinos at three in the morning, and finally California, with the scrubby mountains of pine trees turning into the industry of Sacramento and finally the skyline of San Francisco and the bay leading me around to the charm of Menlo Park and Palo Alto.

I've taken a ton of photos out of a truck window. Most of them are not very good, but they are good for my memory. And some of them tickle me.

She of the delicate manners and the lightning-quick paw to the head if you get between her and the food bowl.