perpetual motion mama pauses, blogses

daily scatterstatus

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:30:29 GMT

17:18 Tying narrative/learning to search/info on WWW:
bit.ly/VoUmr

daily scatterstatus

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 04:30:32 GMT

13:14 www.echovermont.org/events/cafescitopics/topic10.html
Soon: we detect food pathogens & more ourselves. Consequences? Discuss @ECHO
17:30 Yesterday, we went to the student matinee of Momix (bit.ly/4DWlaS . Fabulous, fantastic, phenomenal!

daily scatterstatus

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:30:51 GMT

11:57 is "officially" on maternity leave with new baby girl, Abigail, 10 lbs 1oz. Yay!

daily scatterstatus

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:30:30 GMT

10:44 Ideas for Leaders 12(4): Meta Leadership Across Organizations - eepurl.com/esbh

daily scatterstatus

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:30:31 GMT

13:24 was not online for 3 days! Withdrawal? (Preschool inservice so no work :( , baby appts (all well); home with family). Some work today!
14:22 Especially for Kaile (via EllenMillion on LJ):
www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/nov/13/pop.art.copyright

daily scatterstatus: Elfwood Member of Day

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 03:30:31 GMT

11:04 I'm a "Member of the Day" at www.elfwood.com/ !! Woot!

daily scatterstatus: notes from a KidSwap day

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:30:34 GMT

10:38 Client newsletter: full version on site; mailable ver. ready to go after one last client check... Phew! Time to stretch...
10:52 blog.echovermont.org/
12:18 For the 3rd time this past week, a hairy woodpecker is tapping on our house. Not sure whether to worry about the house or the woodpecker.
18:56 Great afternoon with kids b/c of sisterK! Yay! She's so awesome.
23:10 Thanks to GM for ordering http://www.cafepress.com/whimsicaldreams.27285886 !! Much appreciated!

daily scatterstatus: conversations and weather distract from work somewhat

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 03:30:35 GMT

10:46 Involved in conversation about God, world as it is...I find I can discuss this without having same belief in God as my friend has. Cool.
12:04 Did I mention it's SUNNY??!! Glorious!!
(Must rest now; was stacking some wood in lovely sun + breeze. Slowly, I promise! Very slowly!)
17:05 Uncut version of client newsletter finalized, as are newest contacts. Phew. Now to make website version, cut version, & get it mailed.

Re that God bit: One thing I found interesting was how in the course of responding to some posts recently is that many of us responding felt it needful to clarify our own lack of similar belief. Some of us, not so much. So I was wondering: is it necessary to say you don't share the same ideas (full disclosure sort of thing)? If someone asks for "your thoughts and prayers be with us" or something like that, do you find it needful to explain that you can't quite do as they ask because your beliefs are different? What if the requester is a believer in Faeries, or Norse Gods, or Christian God, or Judaic God? Does how you respond change? What if the believer is sort of similar to you in belief, but not quite? What if you are vastly different? What if the requester is atheist or agnostic, and asking only for well-wishes, and you want to also pray for them?

I'm perfectly happy to talk about my beliefs, but I'm not always sure that mine are particularly relevant to a conversation. This leads me to wonder: can one discuss, debate, analyze, and tease out theological ideas without getting into one's own beliefs, and still do this honestly? I hope so, since that's what I've been doing...I feel like I can ask relevant questions, suspend (as it were) my own disbelief (if any) long enough to say "if so, then what about...?"

Anyway, this natter is mostly an outgrowth of thinking about stuff jaipur has been posting, but not just there (of course); my family has a fairly diverse range of beliefs from member to member, and I'm often interested in exploring the consequences and ramifications of a set of beliefs without wanting to get into who's got the truth of it and whether or not we should agree. I suppose this ties into my sense of a sort of independence of validity (someone's feelings about a circumstance can be valid and appropriate regardless of whether I would have the same feelings about or in those circumstance).

Clearly, I am beginning to ramble. Ooops. Better head off to bed. Or to watch some very silly TV streaming on Hulu. (jere7my, thanks for the recommendation for FlashForward. I like the characters less than in Fringe but think (so far) the story has more interesting layers. Fun combo.)

daily scatterstatus: Ewwwww! Cool.

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 03:30:39 GMT

14:48 For readers of my LJ "blog": I've added details & thoughts to the short status update entries (Oct 5-yesterday). (More for me than you? :) )
16:15 Ewww. Cool. (via Supergee) http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091008-giant-sea-mucus-blobs.html

Gotta Good Con? Let me know!

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 03:30:31 GMT

10:59 just updated some SF/Fantasy Convention Listings at emg-zine.com/calendar.php for Oct- Feb.
Always looking for additions/changes!

not crop circles

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:30:32 GMT

16:18 Lovely time at our first corn maze with MamaJenn, Preston, Grayson! Thanks!

The corn was SO tall! And the sky lovely blue above, with occasional glimpses of gorgeous foliage where the hillside rose enough behind them.

After meandering slowly (me) and racing up and back (kids and Jenn), we found the treat tokens and the 5 clues, but no painted ears. We did learn that the paths made (from above) the shapes of a barn, a silo, and a tractor. How is this done? Can a corn-planting machine be made to lay seed in patterns like a sewing machine can be programmed?

We lounged on the grass near rows of for-sale pumpkins for a picnic, and then bought some brownies from a local school fundraiser, a few tiny gourds, and petted a young Bernese Mountain Dog. I got (unsurpisingly) that much more sore* but it was pretty well worth it.

Mo and I came home, chilled out, my on the couch resting my pelvis joints and working on our Hallowe'en ears and him playing some PBS kids games online** until he talked me into getting up to feed him and make some paper airplane thing...

* The front bone in your pelvis is actually a joint, bound strongly with ligaments. When (if) your body is preparing to deliver a baby, this starts (ideally) to stretch, in part because the baby's head is pressing the hell down on it most of the goddamn time --ahem--at least near the end of the pregnancy. It can hurt. Mine hurts like hell for about half of my waking hours (the other half it's either rested from the night or I'm doing something else and not paying attention to it).

** I try to limit him: One hour of banal repetitive DVD I hide from v. one hour of online somewhat educational games that I can observe while working. Only sometimes it's both. I feel vaguely guilty the whole damn time (why are we not helping each other with chores, doing crafts, building castles, playing music, ...?) even though I know my own grandmother, who I respected deeply, allowed me a similar hour. Ah well! Parenting. Silly thing.

daily scatterstatus: medical procedure frequencies, and Mo's new skill

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 03:30:25 GMT

12:11 FASCINATING The Telltale Wombs Of Lewiston, Maine Data show getting paid per procedure is factor in health care.
16:47 Mo and I are making ears for our Hallowe'en costumes. I love making things. He's learning to sew too!

Kind of unrelated posts, there. The skewing of medical procedure frequencies amazes me without surprising me. I really love data-driven stories like this, when we take "Well what's actually happening? Let's find out!" approach. I want to know why the county I grew up in has the highest breast cancer rate in the state (Does it really? Were our docs more likely to diagnose it? What's the recovery rate? What's going on here?).

Any of us can be transformed these ways. Then what?

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 03:30:36 GMT

15:18 First: a photoshop demo: Video of what they do to an ordinary woman's face to use it in an ad....
There are other interesting videos linked from this page, too.
15:24 And if that weren't scary enough, Ralph Lauren went WAY beyond it: BoingBoing: The criticism that Ralph Lauren doesn't want you to see!

Are these women more beautiful afterward? Not to my eyes. Certainly the first one is more polished and cleaner-appearing afterward, which is pleasant, but still I think a uneceesarily exaggerated. Would I have seen it, just looking at the billboard?

How shall I help teach my children to see real people, to (if they choose to draw and paint) to include both the real and exaggerated (I certainly do the exaggerations, but not always these directions), to celebrate all of it, in themselves and beyond themselves? Given that so much of the art about faerie and such has for so long (centuries) also had some exaggeration in this way, what does that mean about us humans and what we seek to see? (I mention that more because that's the slant my own art takes, usually, not because I think that's the sum total of art worth seeing by any respect). It's how we internalize our image of ourselves as bodies, but more than that.

Bless Rubens and Paul Gauguin, and that's just the first two that come to my own mind, and they too exaggerate as I think all artists must somehow...

what not to do with a quarter and a small kid

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:30:36 GMT

09:19 Joyful thanks to awa55 for fixing our car stereo (and dome lights, clicker, etc.) yesterday!!

For a long time (months), my car stereo would start to whine after being on a while,but not every time. Over time, this became more frequent. It sort of seemed to be a consequence of rain... but not really, just maybe correlated slightly (no, I wasn't tracking the data). Generally, turning off the car for a half hour or more would make the whine cease, but after a while, that didn't work either. It was just on. I forget when the display started to dim, first on one half, then I think the whole thing.

And then... it wasn't. No whine... and no radio, no CD ... and no dome light, no clicker, no map lights, no door bings when they were open but the keys were in, no bings when the headlights were left on (I only ran the battery down once though).

We tried replacing the fuse in the fuse box, but the new one blew as soon as we slipped it in, so the short was somewhere still in effect and I left it alone after that.

It was going to cost $300 - $600 to fix, according to the independent shops ($300 range) or dealers ($600). This was not in reach, is not in reach. I'd rather put the money toward a nonleaking washer, if I can get ahead enough to do that (haven't been able to do that either). Not this year, anyway.

Months passed. We sang some in the car, listened to Mo's boom box (a funky MP3 player with a strange and amusing mix of songs), and I enjoyed the freedom from radio choices alien to my preferences when I drove with other people.

It finally occurred to me I have a skilled friend with decades of car-stereo install experience. (In fact, I've had this friend since 7th or 8th grade, and known him since 4th, so all we can say here is "Duuuuhhh, Kir") (which I've said several times). So I asked him if he could bypass the stereo, since lights are kind of useful in these dark-by-the-time-we-get-home evenings, he said sure, we found some mutually possible afternoon, and he took it out. Mo looked on, fascinated.

The stereo rattled when DAW lifted it up. "Huh," he said. "I've heard that before." And he opened the casing. Took out a quarter.

I had a memory flash of Mo about a year ago, age 3 1/2ish, looking like he was putting a coin in the CD player and me saying "Stop!" and him stopping. Guess I hadn't been quick enough.

DAW hooked things back up, we put in a new fuse, and lo! It did not blow immediately. Lo! I had a dome light! A working clicker! A working radio and CD player! Wow. Way more delight than I'd expected. WAY cheaper. For thanks, I bought DAW some coffee and doughnuts; he told us of the other things he's removed from car stereos: small plastic rabbits, coins, legos, keys... I felt (feel!) lucky.

Mo and I sang along to the radio all the way home.

daily scatterstatus

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 03:30:15 GMT

09:39 Sanders amendment to DoD appropriations: Pentagon must calculate the total $ going to companies that have engaged in fraud: bit.l ...

daily scatterstatus

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 05:56:04 GMT

05:54 Google Earth Plug-in: Climate change predictions bit.ly/9vo3v
08:02 Another newsletter draft & a logo added for client review. Got my news thing out.

All done now; stay-home-kid-who-had-fever is up.
17:42 Even though at-home-with-kid, got some work done (e.g., archiving). Also made soup, other useful chores. Now bellydweller has hiccups. Hee!

daily scatterstatus

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:30:31 GMT

10:25 Cooler + camera + balloon = pics! http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/the-150-space-camera-mit-students-beat-nasa-on-beer-money-budget/
15:11 Worked on client newsletter; must finish mine re schedule through fall... Now to some shopping/catalog page edits for another client.
15:13 For my cousin and for UrsulaV, artist: http://www.comicsalliance.com/2009/09/14/the-21-awesomest-superhero-mods-for-my-little-pony/

Defund Acorn ... and others?

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 03:30:53 GMT

08:18 Does the Defund Acorn bill allow for more than that? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/22/whoops-anti-acorn-bill-ro_n_294949.html
08:20 And here's one variation of bill text: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3571/text (don't have link to more at present...)

(subconscious) intentions shape gender, reporting

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 03:30:42 GMT

18:58 MamaJenn rocks my world! She's got great kids, makes my kid happy, and makes a yummy banana bread. Thank you SO much!
20:40 "... people treat baby boys and girls differently (even if they think they are not doing so nor intend to)"
http://www.blogher.com/gender-differences-socially-conditioned-and-reinforced-through-media
21:07 Even with an agenda (which I in part share), the basic questions about what the research (or the reporting on research, which may be different than the research results!) says are useful reminders: http://www.bitchmagazine.org/article/mad-science

Forget Baby Einstein

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 03:30:26 GMT

12:08 Lots of links accruing! let's start w/ cool baby brain stuff: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/opinion/16gopnik.html

Many think that babies, like adults, should learn in a focused, planned way. So parents put their young children in academic-enrichment classes or use flashcards to get them to recognize the alphabet. Government programs like No Child Left Behind urge preschools to be more like schools, with instruction in specific skills.

But babies’ intelligence, the research shows, is very different from that of adults and from the kind of intelligence we usually cultivate in school. ... But babies and very young children are terrible at planning and aiming for precise goals. When we say that preschoolers can’t pay attention, we really mean that they can’t not pay attention: they have trouble focusing on just one event and shutting out all the rest. This has led us to underestimate babies in the past. But the new research tells us that babies can be rational without being goal-oriented.

Babies are captivated by the most unexpected events.

Raising geeks instead of media-junkies (parenting/interview link)

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:30:33 GMT

10:21 http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/08/raising-well-rounded-kids -- Good food for thought/planning to parents & my nieces.

No sleep, but cool critter news link

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 03:30:33 GMT

12:51 I HATE insomnia. I'm also very grateful to BFC staff for their sympathy this a.m.! Thank you, K, K, A, A, J, etc. You folks rock.
16:58 news.nationalgeographic.com/news/animals.html Just something nifty to leave you with before I go get Mojo

got lucky: critter spotting

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 03:30:31 GMT

06:50 While in triangle post this morning, I saw a young raccoon wobbling round the house. I followed it from window to window, smiling.

things that didn't quite go as planned

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 03:30:38 GMT

10:53 Rain ... R still going to cut some wood today. We both feel "running out of time" stress. Sigh.
14:55 Off to Barnes & Noble for change of scene. Hope this is the right decision. We're all pushing var. boundaries & buttons today! Eeek.

Yes, some wood was cut. Yes, I got to see some nice folks. Yes, it was good to be out of the house.

But I probably should just have gone away for the weekend. Just too much overall. One of those days!

daily scatterstatus

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 03:30:29 GMT

11:58 Getting vague ideas of correlations btw blood pressure, mood, energy/hormones, fasting sugar. Good to have data... wish I weren't so tired.