wispfox: (Asanii)
I was reminded a couple of days ago that Winter Sowing was a thing that I could be doing, by this possibly visible post on Facebook.

Since our gallon milk jugs are white plastic, and it was trash and recycle day the day after I was reminded, I went spelunking in our neighbors recycling bin... and found ~15 gallon water jugs. I shall clearly have to hunt again next week!

So after shoveling and snowblowing, yesterday was winter sowing day. First, I made drainholes and cut off the top of those water jugs. I got a bunch of dirt from Wilson Farms (sadly, this is not the time of the year they have the truly enormous bags of their own dirt), put ~3" of dirt in the bottom of each jug, soaked them in water and let them drain, planted seeds, put in a plant marker, sealed the jugs to their tops again with masking tape, and put them outside. I did this with about 10 of the jugs, and filled another three with dirt for later. I'm likely to want a _lot_ of jugs, since there are many seeds I'd like to start. Also likely to snag the larger (2 liter?) of the seltzer water bottles of [livejournal.com profile] galaneia's.

Currently planted: Lettuce (possibly too early), spinach, sorrel, corn salad (possibly too early), black Dinosaur kale, dwarf kale, bachelor buttons, broccoli of various types, purple podded peas.

Pending for this month: More peas, cilantro, delphinium, hollyhocks, lupine, penstemon digitalis, echineasea, colombine, Johnny jump up.

March: chard, carrots, cosmos, zinnias, marigold, basil, lettuce, nasturtium, sunflowers (this last largely to give them protection from the birds while they are growing their first real leaves)

April: tomatoes, ground cherries
wispfox: (Asanii)
I'm not clear on how I can be exhausted at 8p and go to bed, then spend two hours being too warm but too tired to do anything about it, then hungry and eat food and fix the blankets then too cold and then not enough weight and seriously, sleep?

Awake at 6a, also, for no apparent reason.

I may be a bit dazed today! 

M'kay

Oct. 28th, 2015 05:00 pm
wispfox: (Default)

Driving when the world is surreal is definitely an experience.

It's surprisingly difficult to focus on driving and my surroundings in that state. Music helped.

But I'm home safe. And i don't think it's actually as cold out as i think (having had the heat blasting the entire way home), which between surreal and that make me suspect fever.

I don't know why it is that i want all the cuddles when I'm sick, but boy do i want all the people right now. All of them. Cuddle pile required! Stat!

Soon i will muster the energy to go in the house. My car's steering wheel should not be this comfortable. And probably isn't actually.

I would very much like to stop being sick, please. This month, why so much sick?

wispfox: (Default)
[livejournal.com profile] rowyn asks interesting questions about problematic tropes in fiction.

I have not enough brain to respond myself, but thought someone of you might be interested and/or have thoughts to share.
wispfox: (Default)
"I wonder if saying this would be too politically incorrect?"

Me: "...probably."
wispfox: (Default)
Trying to do the homework that my students will be asking me about tomorrow makes me very aware of the fact that I have _no idea_ how to find an appropriate IPA vowel for the way I say "fan" (pan, can, Dan, etc).

*is confused at Wiki's audio IPA vowels*

[poll.pets]

Oct. 9th, 2015 11:05 pm
wispfox: (Default)
[Poll #2024587]

Edit: I forgot rabbits, horses, and goats as options! Alas.

link

Oct. 1st, 2015 01:50 pm
wispfox: (Default)
This is really cool. (American dialects)
wispfox: (Default)
And my curiosity appears to be back and _staying_ back. This appears to be strongly correlated to how chipper I'm being.

for politeness )
wispfox: (Default)
It's often easier to remember things if I say them aloud, so for one of the questions I keep saying "inflect, derive, inflect, inflect, derive" and then either "yes", or I interrupt myself with "um..."

Also, periods of "yes, good, yes... what? No..." or "what?" followed by confusion probably sound pretty odd.

(grading is boring, so weird things occur to me! And apparently music means I can keep _doing_ it without insanity, but still boring)
wispfox: (Default)
In the context of my pending hair cut, being reassured that someone (who I have admittedly been dating a long time) is certain that I will continue to be beautiful with short hair, evidently makes for a mental stutter (hiccup? not sure).

IM may have meant my mental stutter was non-obvious, I have no idea. I did manage an appropriate thank you in a reasonable amount of time.

I think I was bemused for a number of reasons. First, the notification of pending short hair was meant to be informational. Mind you, we had just been talking about my leaving grad school, and I'd pointed him to my recent posts on the topic. (This was in large part both a 'fyi' and a 'this likely means I'm not visiting you this year'.) So he had good reason to believe I might need reassurance in general.

But, and I think this is the more interesting aspect, I have trouble thinking of myself as beautiful if the context is purely appearance-based. It's not that I don't think I'm attractive (although, yes, depression is not helpful there), but that to me the concept of physical beauty is both highly unusual (I think a _very_ small - perhaps nonexistent? - number of people are beautiful when based solely on appearance) and needs to be to the level of breathtaking/awe to make sense.

So what's beauty?

I can't think of a way I use it purely about people's appearances. A still photograph of someone just can't be beautiful to me. Water, sky, the play of light on things: things like this can be still shots and be beautiful to me. Not people. (and perhaps not animals or plants, either. Not without light/water/sky things going on)

Once you add motion, it's no longer just physical appearance. It's going to include how someone expresses themselves, how they move, how they carry themselves. Even if you ignore possible sound/vocal cues, there is a _lot_ of info in motion.

One example for which I am pretty consistent relates to graceful movement. If someone nearby is doing something graceful, and I notice and don't have a good reason not to, I will become entirely distracted and just watch. It's absolutely about awe and beauty and things for which words are not coming. And it is entirely possible that my jaw will actually drop.

I have a similar reaction to enthusiasm being shared with someone, where, if it's with me, it's usually stronger than if I just happen to get to watch other people enjoying that experience. Enthusiasm and glee about things are absolutely beautiful.

Other ways people move can be beautiful, although it's not often something I'll notice if I'm in the middle of a conversation with someone (paying attention to conversation trumps noticing physical things). I think it may still tend to involve either grace or enthusiasm, now that I think about it! Or sometimes the way the light catches someone.

Perhaps my bafflement at being called beautiful is simply that I don't have many contexts in which I find people beautiful. So it's a temporary (and often fleeting) thing ('estar'), not a constant thing ('ser'). Which, why do we not have two "to be" words like Spanish does?

What do you all find beautiful?

zoooo

Aug. 29th, 2015 10:25 pm
wispfox: (Default)
Went on my own on Monday now that I have a pass for the year.

photos! )

XKCD wins!

Aug. 14th, 2015 02:22 pm
wispfox: (Default)
http://xkcd.com/1564/ - very much a thing I have thought (and I'm not a sociologist).
wispfox: (Default)
If you decide to make s'mores in your toaster oven, even if you usually prefer dark chocolate, milk chocolate is much wiser. First, dark chocolate will go liquidy and stay that way the entire time you are trying to eat it. Second, it stays _quite_ hot. Also, ow.

And now you know!
wispfox: (Default)

What do you call the things in the title?

I have no go to word for this!

wispfox: (Default)
Exploring recent research on robotics and virtual agents and immersive virtual environments and whatever else I get distracted by while trying to select a useful topic for my fourth year project (and dissertation).

I doubt we have the hardware for the immersive virtual environment stuff, alas.

*continues exploring*

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