Author: Heather Meadows

Mat linked me to this awesome video. Oh, the pop culture sci-fi references! Oh, the cinematography! You are required by law to watch it now.

Despite record snowfall over most of Japan this past month, Mount Fuji remains oddly bare.

…or so claims Reuters! But this Flickr user took this photo of Fuji on January 8.

That looks like snow to me!

(Note: I would prefer to link to a smugmug photo, because I abhor Flickr, but Flickr’s search was faster and easier to use, alas.)

I’m eating T.G.I. Friday’s Vegetable Grill, which is

A Portabella Mushroom Marinated And Grilled With Artichokes, Asparagus, Roma Tomatoes, Red Pepper, Zucchini And Squash. Served With Angel Hair Pasta, Tomato-basil Salsa And Balsamic Vinaigrette.

and O…M…G is it delicious.

Reuters: Eagles used to prey on our ancestors

Scientists announced on Thursday they had definitive proof that the “Taung child”, a 2-million year old apeman skull famed as one of the most dramatic human evolutionary finds, was killed and eaten by an eagle.

“Birds used to eat us and in doing so they shaped our behaviour,” said Dr Lee Berger, a palaeoanthropologist at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand.

“Birds of prey are one of the few things that some modern primates have special calls or alarms for,” he told Reuters.

Berger said the child had probably been scooped up by an eagle and taken to its nest, where its eyes were ripped out for dinner. The child’s skull eventually fell out of the nest, only to be found almost 2 million years later.

Eww.

Today’s Sluggy = hi-larious. (Read this one first.)

I dunno, somehow the old magic seems to be back.

Let’s hope it holds out!

I got the worst night’s sleep ever last night.

Sean’s on his 1 to 10 pm shift this week. Lately he’s been taking his laptops into the other room out of consideration for me, but tonight we were planning on watching some Smallville season 4 (it finally arrived! wh00t!), so he brought them back into the bed. However, he got involved doing…something, I don’t exactly know what, and time kept passing, and finally I decided to just go to sleep so I could get up in the morning.

Sean stayed in the room, so I had to contend with the sound of his typing and occasional chuckling, and the light of two bright LCDs.

Ah, misery.

This morning when the alarm woke me at 6:45 I did not want to get up, but when I went to reset it for 7 (or 7:30 even) I remembered the thermometer, and dutifully put it in my mouth and snuggled back under the covers. It takes its sweet time to come to a temperature reading. When it finally started beeping, I forced myself out of bed and headed to the bathroom.

After recording my basal body temperature (97.15 today; it was 97.2something yesterday and 96.91 the day before), I went to take my medicine. I’m currently on thyroid and blood pressure medication. The blood pressure medicine comes in pills that are twice my daily dose, because it’s cheaper, so I bite them in half when I take them. (I used to have a nifty little pill cutter, but, you know.) This morning the pill half I was going to take slipped out of my hand, and I heard it skitter away on the floor.

The problem was, I couldn’t find it.

Normally when you drop something, you will eventually catch sight of it again…especially if there’s nothing on the floor but your feet and a rug. But the pill wasn’t anywhere. I looked and looked. I even raked my temperature chart under some of the seams between the floor and the paneling/door/counter, but to no avail. I have no idea where that pill went.

What a pain.

When I went to take my shower, I discovered that my towel was wet. I don’t know what this means. Sean might have shaved late last night and used it to wipe off, but it seemed too wet for that. So maybe Reid used it for his shower last night.

I bought those purple towels for me, damn it!

I finally just went and got the other purple towel, because I don’t like using towels after other people.

Work hasn’t exactly gone smoothly this morning, either; I’m having trouble finding my focus. Which explains this blog post ;P

Oh well. Time to try and get my day on track.

Napping instead.

:/

(And I’d note that I’m listening to “Let the Music Take Control” by Darude.)

Okay, so I may have bitten off more than I can chew here.

My client recommended me to a friend, and I accepted a new project. Now I have to learn an entirely new system, and figure out what the previous designer did with it–of course he didn’t just use a default template!

I think I could have handled this if I hadn’t said it would take me ten hours to complete.

Somehow, setting a deadline always seems to destroy my ability to think, thus completely undermining my productivity.

HappyNews.com pointed me to The Remembering Site today. It’s a nonprofit website that helps people write their autobiographies.

The brainchild of [Dr. Sarah] McCue and biographer DG Fulford, The Remembering Site is a new non-profit initiative that allows anyone–anywhere–to create their online autobiography by answering a series of story-telling questions from birth to present day. When completed, the author can email the biography to loved ones, make it available for others to read online or even print paper or hardback copies.

“Writing a biography is not as daunting as it appears,” said McCue. “The way we have designed the site makes it easy, fun, and once you get into it, you just can’t stop.”

I would love not only to do this myself, but to get everyone in my family to do it. Mom and AJ might be more willing than Dad and Ben, but I want all of their stories. To get Grandma’s answers I might have to get the questions and take a tape recorder over to her place.

And not just family–I’d love to hear stories from Brooke and Mari, Sam and Hai and Dawn, Noelle…everyone.

Wouldn’t it be neat to have the life stories of the people you love written down?

That’s why I love blogs and blogging…the stories. I love being transported into someone else’s life. And I love the idea that the people I love can live on through their stories.

Apparently it’s $10 to sign up for the website. So that’ll be $10 for each person whose stories I want to hear. Definitely a worthwhile investment, but probably something I’ll have to do one person at a time…

At this moment, I am very eager for it to be tomorrow. I have been eager for it to be tomorrow since this morning.

Tomorrow, I’m sure I will want it to be the next day.

And so on.

Because now I have more than a vague understanding of what to look for to figure out what’s going on with my reproductive system.

I want to take my temperature.

Well, my endocrinologist was very pleased to hear that I’d had a period last month. “I hear you have some good news!” she said excitedly (I’d briefed one of the med students before she came in). Our new plan is to hold off on hormone treatment a little longer to see what happens. During this time I am to check my basal body temperature every morning before doing anything else, and keep a chart. This is to see whether or not I am ovulating. I am to fax her the chart after two weeks or when I get a period, whichever comes first.

She mentioned offhandedly that if I am pregnant, the temperature will stay high on the chart. “Just for your information,” she said.

I’m seeing the endocrinologist tomorrow, and this is what I’m telling her:

1. My timeline of periods:

   9/23-30: last period on hormones; normal
   ~10/1: stopped hormones
   10/6-9: extraordinarily light period
   12/16-20: normal period on 12/17, light/spotty on all other days

2. Symptoms I’ve been having occasionally for the past month or two:
   • Mild to moderate nausea
   • Abdominal cramping

Maybe they hypnotized me into not writing a post about them.

Because both times I’ve encountered the little old man and little old woman on bikes, I’ve meant to post about it, and then never gotten around to it.

The first time I saw them was April 2, 2005, and I’ve had a post sitting in Drafts ever since then. The post isn’t even really about them, except to say that I saw them heading up Evans to Lock on my way to the Canal Trail and then, later, I saw them on their bikes in downtown Augusta. That day, we never got close enough to speak. But on the last day of 2005, I did speak with them, several times, and I even got a picture:

They’re “fruititarians”. They don’t pay rent and they don’t pay taxes. They live somewhere in Hephzibah, and they get to work every day by bicycle. They spend 24 hours a day together. Once a week they ride their bikes as far as they can, talking to as many people as they can about their way of life. They don’t get sick. Their New Year’s day is in the spring, when everything is new, “in the month of Abib”.

They gave me their literature on CD, but I haven’t looked at it yet. I have no idea what religion it is, only that it’s compatible to some extent with the Bible. The little old man said that I was in the literature he gave me, in chapters 37 and 38. He said it was a very inspiring thing to find yourself in the text, along with everyone else in the world.

The first thing he said to me, completely randomly, as he was riding past me (I’d stopped for one of the many pictures I took that day and was just getting moving again), was something about how you have to be careful who you spend your time with, because you don’t want to spend your time with losers who will drag you down. I agreed that that made sense. Really, I thought he and his wife were cute, and I am always interested to hear the philosophies of others. So I rode alongside him a little ways and listened to what he had to say.

I kept passing them and stopping to take pictures, giving them ample opportunities to tell me more about their beliefs. I was intrigued by the fact that they ride their bikes everywhere they go, even as far as Macon. It reminded me of Justin Klein’s “Tour de Japan“. Ever since I got Syuusuke, I have imagined taking a long road trip on my bike. The little old man and woman carry a sleeping bag and one change of clothes. They only eat fruit, and they don’t drink alcohol. I’m not sure if they find their fruit in the woods, or if they buy it at a store…

During our final meeting, heading up the hill towards the Pavilion and Evans to Lock Road, the man finally passed me the CD and told me where to find myself in the literature. Then he and his wife headed off, and I got into my car (and it stalled).

I found the encounter unique and fun. I’ve not been a very outgoing person in my life. Now I’m trying to be more comfortable with talking to strangers. It’s nice when they approach me willingly; it gives me some experience. (Earlier in the ride I saw a large family out together. A train pulled up and parked nearby and the father engaged the engineer in conversation. I said nothing to any of them, but did take some pictures.)

I don’t know that their lifestyle is for me, but I do find it inspiring. It’s great to see people living the way they want to. I often feel like I just go along with the flow rather than pursuing my dreams…

Today Brooke and I met up at the Activities Center at the Greeneway and went around the walking path. I’d never done it before. It’s a lot shorter than the Greeneway proper, and near the Activities Center there’s this awesome water fountain:

After that we headed towards the golf course, intending to head down the river side of the Greeneway and see if anything new is going on with Hammond’s Ferry. However, when we got to the new soccer field that’s being built, we decided to follow the sidewalk alongside it to see where it led. We ended up hiking down rough trails through the forest, spotting deer tracks and awesome soft yellow grass in swirls, until we realized we’d walked in a big U and were back at the soccer park. Like a moron, I didn’t take pictures of any of it.

We headed back towards the Activities Center; Mari had called and wanted to join us, and she would be done with her workout inside soon. So we waited for her on the hillside beside the center, and while we waited we chatted and looked into the sky and I took some pictures.

Then Mari appeared, and Brooke took this picture, which is rather frightening:

And all three of us headed back the way Brooke and I had originally gone, this time making it down to the river. We stopped at the boat dock for pictures before turning around to come back.

It was a nice walk. I really enjoyed being with both of them. We talked about all the usual stuff you might expect girlfriends to talk about. It was cool :)

MSN Encarta has a piece from Tamim Ansary entitled “News: Fact or Fiction?“. I love this guy, and I’ve often thought about this very subject. His is a thorough discussion of the possibilities. Here’s a snip from section two, “Why some news is untrue”:

Since Watergate, we often think of anonymous sources as brave souls revealing dangerous truths at great risk to themselves. But they may just as easily be people injecting falsehoods into the news stream at no risk to themselves.

Indeed, someone can “leak” information into the news anonymously, and then use the resultant story as evidence for a claim: “It must be true–it’s in the paper!”

News reporting based on anonymous leaks can thus turn the press into a particularly insidious type of propaganda outlet. Most people distrust explicit propaganda, but leaks framed as news skirt suspicion.

In the third section, “What to do about untrue news?”, Ansary makes this controversial statement:

In the end, professional journalists and their employers are accountable because they have profits and livelihoods to lose. Behziz, Blair, et al. got fired–every one of them. What can happen to a blogger who lies? Nothing.

I have nothing against bloggers, but “citizen journalism” isn’t journalism. It’s the crowd around the traffic accident. That’s where journalism begins, not where it ends.

The end of the article is a list of things we can do as news readers to sort out fact from fiction. These are some very good recommendations. Here’s the list; go to the article for the explanations of each item.

1. Follow story threads.
2. Randomize your exposure to news sources.
3. Decide if a stated item is a fact. Not a true fact, just a fact–a statement that can be proven true or false.
4. Distrust attribution to vaguely defined groups.
5. Consider a source’s competence and motives.
6. Consider why an anonymous source wants anonymity.
7. If it would make a good movie, be suspicious.

Start thinking critically now! Where are the facts in Ansary’s piece, and where are the opinions?