Thinned blood
My Mom’s back in the hospital. The blood thinner she had been prescribed caused some internal bleeding; it seems to have stopped, and she’ll probably be out again by the weekend. But… oy.
We found a Jamaican cafe / grocery less than two blocks from us last night, and I tried curry chicken for the first time ever. Extremely yummy, though I’m not used to eating anything that shade of yellow; nor am I used to picking that many tiny sharp chicken bones from my teeth. Oh, and an hour later, my stomach was not pleased with these new spices at all. Still, yum.
The apartment building I live in is very nice, but it’s still an apartment building. One of the tenants on my floor has had multiple summonses taped to their door in recent months; this last weekend, they moved out in a flurry of activity (mysteriously bringing a mattress into the place in the process). Well, police showed up a couple of days later to pound on their door, and there’s an eviction notice taped there now (which doesn’t exactly change much at this point). I’m actually sad. They seemed nice enough, and it’s a shame when people’s mistakes land on them so hard.
At this moment, I am rather physically and emotionally weary. I’ll be fine, it’s hardly life-threatening. But the assertiveness I have been trying to encourage in myself in recent months is eluding me a bit just now. Of course, now is when I really need it.
Oh, and the smoke’s back in Portsmouth this morning. Koff.
Travellers
LiveJournal seems a little slow today. Wonder what their servers are dealing with.
Got a nice evening walk in last night, 1.66 miles according to the GMaps Pedometer, though I swear it felt like 2. Turned out that the exercise was a good thing; right after we got back, Dwight called, and invited us out for sushi and hibachi. Starr wore her new Questionable Content kitty shirt I got her. I told the story of the time that a bunch of us went to a hibachi place in Roanoke, and as we were served, we all eagerly grasped our chopsticks… except for the Japanese exchange student with us, who matter-of-factly picked up her fork.
You’d think that with all the exercise, I’d have slept great last night. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. While Starr said something this morning that cheered me, the weariness is still nibbling away at me. I think I may be naughty and pick up a Coke or two today.
This weekend we will be leaving Portsmouth around 7 or 8 p.m. and driving to Blacksburg. Saturday morning, we’ll be catching up with some of Starr’s family that will be in the general area, Saturday evening we’ll visit my Mom, and then Sunday we’ll be heading to my old house to survey what needs to be done to move Mom back in when she’s ready. Then we’ll drive back to Portsmouth. I may be pretty liberal with the caffeine this weekend as well.
Ex Libris
I think the book meme is evolving – I could swear that this is a different list than I saw earlier this week.
Bold those books you have read.
Italicize those books you intend to read.
Underline those books you love.
Post the list in your own LJ. Behind a cut for good manners.
And The Heavens Shall Tremble
Today in Paris, at their WorldWide Invitational event, Blizzard Entertainment announced their upcoming game Diablo III.
That is all. (That’s plenty!)
We’ve got work to do
Meme from lemonlye:
When you read this, quote Doctor Who in your LiveJournal.
The Doctor: I don’t suppose you’ve completely ignored my instructions and secretly prepared any Nitro-9, have you?
Ace: What if I had?
The Doctor: And naturally, you wouldn’t do anything so insanely dangerous as to carry it around with you, would you?
Ace: Of course not. I’m a good girl and do what I’m told.
The Doctor: Excellent. Blow up that vehicle.
– “Silver Nemesis”
(I resisted the urge to quote my own fanfic. Aren’t I well-behaved?)
Azerothian Geographic Society
It takes a certain kind of person to play World of Warcraft, yes. It takes another kind to try and figure out the geographical details of the place.
Azeroth’s “Google Map” has been assembled at mapwow.com. For most of the game, players have explored two continents on that fantasy world (though at least one more is known to exist), but the actual map scale has never been revealed. Some time ago, I figured that one could record the time it takes to walk between two points on the map, and multiply that by the average walking speed of a hero laden with equipment, and come up with a fair estimate of the scale.
I’m far too lazy to do that, of course, but someone else wasn’t, and neither was another person. Turns out that the “continent” of Kalimdor is about 4 miles wide… or around 41 square miles in size. For my Virginian friends, this is vaguely the size of the combined cities of Blacksburg and Christiansburg.
In a related note, this destroys a hypothesis I had made before about the shape of the world of Azeroth. The “world map” seen in the Burning Crusade game expansion must be considered an artistic rather than a faithful representation; and I argued that Azeroth was clearly flat, because there is no difference in the position of shadows between the northernmost and southernmost points of the continent at the same time of day and season. (The Greek Eratosthenes used the shadow trick to figure out the Earth’s size in the 3rd century B.C.)
Unfortunately, if Kalimdor is around 10 miles long, then that’s not enough distance for the shadow trick, and the question remains unresolved. Oh, well. Perhaps the Gnomes can develop a space vehicle and get some photographic evidence (there is indeed photography in WoW).
Radio KPAST
As I listened to The Thomas Jefferson Hour yesterday, the following thought crossed my mind:
Imagine that suddenly, you’re motivated to thoroughly research a famous historical figure, and present a weekly podcast in character as that person. You have to play it straight – no parodies or sitcoms. Who do you choose?
Seven Words Ain’t Enough
Lots of people have posted about George Carlin’s passing. I’ll miss the man; he and Steve Martin were the first two comedians whose albums my parents took away from me 🙂
Much has been made of his dark, often nihilistic humor lately, but many seem to miss that it was the humor of a disappointed idealist who knows that people are better than this, dammit, and hopes like hell that they’ll remember it in time.
“I’ve found interesting correspondences in your DNA.”
The other day, I finally broke out my subtitled, un-cut copy of My Youth In Arcadia. I’ve owned the cut, dubbed release for a long time, to the point that I know the script pretty well, and I looked forward to seeing what had been removed from the original.
I only made it to the end of the World War II sequence, but I was still pretty surprised. While this version is clearly a slightly better translation, so far the only new material I’ve seen is the World War I-era prologue. Plot points that I’d assumed would be better explained in an uncut version remain murky.
Of course, this is a common condition with anime films, which have a habit of stringing together cool sequences with a minimum of narrative linkage, and letting the viewers fill in the gaps from their own imaginations. I’m not saying that it’s an invalid technique – there are some American SF / Fantasy movies that would have been better had they explained less – but I was hoping for more.
