Author: Heather Meadows

I want to post something to push that other post below the fold, but I don’t actually have anything to say.

Scary, isn’t it?

I suppose a diary entry is in order.

Dear Diary:

Today was a little weird. Due to a situation I won’t go into involving my in-laws, I wanted to get out of the house, so after my shower I grabbed a Slim-Fast and my laptop and my bicycle and went to Brooke’s house. We puttered around a little and then went to the Greeneway to ride. It was okay, but my legs–just the very tops–were sore, and I still don’t know why. (Could they still be recovering from Wednesday’s bellydance class? It was a rough workout, but damn!)

We parked at Martintown and rode up to Pisgah Road, then back down to the Activities Center, at which point we stopped long enough to see Santa Claus and chat about insecurity. Then we turned around and headed back to our cars.

Back at Brooke’s place, we watched two episodes of Kyou Kara Maou: 運命の男 (Man of Fate, in which Yuuri and Greta help Izura and Nina and encounter Geigen Huber) and 炎のレース (Race of Fire, in which Yuuri is almost added to Louis Vinon’s collection–of course, Conrad would have carried him off “on foot”, right? :D). Really cool episode coming up, but Brooke was (as usual) falling asleep, so we stopped.

Then it was time for her to have her family dinner with her family, so I headed back to the house, put my bike away, and started dinner. Thanks to Amy Nakazawa, one of my newer subscriptions, I now know how to make “velvet” chicken, and so I did, with stir fry vegetables and steamed rice. It was very good.

I watched bits and pieces of Bruce Almighty while I was cooking. Pretty funny. (No, I can’t stop putting those links in. I think they’re cool.)

That has pretty much been the extent of my day. At this point I am living solely for December 17 18, on which day I will be baking cookies like a madwoman at Mari’s house. I can’t wait.

At least, according to Forbes.

Just thought you’d like to know.

(Also, Forbes agrees with me that Metropolis = Chicago!)

And just like that, the anger’s back.

I guess it was just temporarily overcome by Densha Otoko.

I was mad last night. I was so angry I couldn’t think about anything but how angry I was. I hated myself, and I hated Sean for being unable to say anything constructive, and I hated my life.

The reason I mention this is that I know I felt those feelings, so strongly that I’m pretty sure I was consumed by them…but by the end of the night, the feelings were gone, and now they seem so alien that it’s like I never felt them at all.

I cannot express to you how horrible a mood I was in tonight.

Really. It was terrible.

Densha Otoko helped.

A geologist in Taipei has theorized that the increase in earthquake activity in the Taipei basin has been caused by the construction of the world’s tallest building, Taipei 101.

Lin Cheng-horng, a geologist at the Institute of Earth Sciences at Taiwan’s most prestigious think tank, the Academia Sinica, said seismic activity historically had been low in the Taipei basin, home to about 7 million people.

But the city has experienced more micro-earthquakes (of magnitude 2.0-2.5 on the Richter scale) since construction began on the 508 meter (1,667 foot) skyscraper in 1997, he said.

[…]

Lin said Taipei 101 weighed 700,000 tons and estimated stress from vertical loading on its foundation at 4.7 bars, of which some would be transferred to the earth’s upper crust due to extremely soft sedimentary rocks beneath the Taipei basin.

“If a fault is about to crack, then a little pressure can trigger an earthquake. It’s like the last straw that breaks the camel’s back,” Lin told Reuters in a telephone interview.

But that’s only a theory, he said, adding that he could not determine whether or not Taipei 101 was responsible for the rise in seismic activity in the area in recent years.

“I don’t know if it’s just coincidence or if they are related,” he said. “It’s very hard to prove this scientifically, but it’s just as hard to disprove it.”

Thus, Lin is calling for immediate research into the issue, saying it could have far-reaching implications for other huge structures like the proposed 1,000 meter (3,281 foot) Sky City 1000 in Japan, another quake-prone area.

Somehow it never occurred to me that skyscrapers could cause seismic activity, but the idea makes sense. If it’s true, it’s just another example of how we can unwittingly affect our environment…

Sounds like a bad science fiction novel, doesn’t it? :D

Mom just linked me to an article from NASA about photographing shadows cast by Venus. Pretty wild!

With my Professional smugmug account, I can have a domain route to my smugmug via a CNAME DNS adjustment. Check it out! Is that cool or what? (The old URL still works too.)

According to Liz Pulliam Weston of MSN Money,

A gift, ideally, says, “I thought about you. I considered your likes and dislikes, your needs and wants, your dreams and desires, and found you this token of my esteem that I hope will delight you.”

A gift card says, “There! Checked you off my list.”

[…]

It’s official. Shame is dead.

Heaven forbid that givers use their own judgment and spend a little time picking out small items that might give the recipients pleasure. Just give us the cash and get out of the way.

[…]

It’s also not that I don’t understand the practical aspects of the gift card. I do. I just can’t help mourning the passing of a lovely tradition, one that helped us focus on each other and had the potential to bring us closer.

[…]

Sure, the old way included plenty of opportunities for misfires — for the tie shaped like a fish, the sweater that’s six sizes too big, the dolls from the aunt who could never figure out that her teen-age niece no longer played with Barbies. But those experiences taught us the fine art of tact and diplomacy, of expressing gratitude to people who tried to make us happy, however bizarre the actual result.

It also drove home the point, as few things do nowadays, that special occasions are about people — not about getting more stuff or increasing our net worth.

That last bit there really struck me. “Special occasions are about people — not about getting more stuff or increasing our net worth.”

I had a conversation with Brooke yesterday about gifts. I said something about missing having an mp3 player, and she said I should put one on my wish list.

“Hmm, now which one to put on there?” I said, which meant “I need to do some research to pick the right mp3 player.” Brooke suggested I put several different ones on the list, in different price ranges, so if someone wanted to buy one they’d have a selection.

Me (5:27:01 PM): hmm, but what if I get more than one mp3 player?
Me (5:27:03 PM): hahahaha :P
Me (5:29:07 PM): I know, I’ll make a Wish List called “In My Dreams”
Me (5:29:08 PM): XD
Brooke (5:31:08 PM): why not?
Brooke (5:31:33 PM): why not blog about what you’re doing, or wanting to accomplish with so many mp3 players on your list?
Me (5:34:09 PM): nobody can afford to buy me an mp3 player
Me (5:34:23 PM): I’m giving COOKIES as presents this year :>
Me (5:35:08 PM): I expect presents $20 or less
Me (5:35:42 PM): except a couple of people who wanted to give us stuff we lost in the fire, I don’t know what they’re spending
Brooke (5:35:50 PM): you have parents and in laws, you have family and friends.
Me (5:36:01 PM): and none of them is going to spend over $20
Me (5:36:13 PM): I guess they could pool their money, but the likeliness of that happening is low.

What is that, exactly? I got all defensive and self-piteous. Then I realized what I was doing:

Me (5:38:13 PM): I have quasi-advertised my wish list before, but I think going too deeply into “this is exactly what I want and expect” is tacky
Me (5:38:23 PM): people are free to look at my lists and buy me whatever they want to
Me (5:38:25 PM): or nothing at all
Me (5:38:37 PM): I don’t want to do a huge mp3 player analysis and get my hopes up
Me (5:40:03 PM): I’m not saying you’re wrong or anything, just that I Think Different(ly) and I tend to have to manage my greed
Brooke (5:40:37 PM): oh, I gotcha..
Brooke (5:40:48 PM): wow, I hadn’t thought of it as “greed” before..
Me (5:41:14 PM): that’s pretty much how I look at all my wants.
Brooke (5:41:22 PM): I’m usually pretty YEY! about ANY gift, no matter what it is, because I appreciate them all :-) I’m not saying you don’t, I’d just never thought about it that way, before
Me (5:41:24 PM): it’s my way of trying to keep myself from being too selfish.
Me (5:42:19 PM): if I get too excited about something I want, and start to think that someone will buy it for me, and then I’m disappointed, I can actually be resentful, which sucks
Me (5:42:51 PM): right now in my life I’m trying to just be happy that anyone would get me anything.
Me (5:42:56 PM): which is hard for me, because I suck!

Not long after that, I felt really uncomfortable, so I changed the subject.

This all harkens back to the Guilt post, and my feelings about receiving gifts in general. I’m 27 years old, but I still haven’t stopped thinking of Christmas as a time to get lots of cool stuff I want, despite my efforts. And it seems like I’m always a little disappointed, especially when I compare my situation to that of some of my friends, who get cool presents all the time.

Is this gift-envy?

Is this greed?

Is this me wanting stuff I haven’t earned…again?

Am I just feeling like this because I lost everything, or is this how I always feel?

Bah. I make myself sick.

[Update 4:37 pm:] I am shamed!

I had the neatest dream this morning. I was Eilonwy from The Prydain Chronicles, except I was an adult and had become a very powerful magic user. I was living in a huge, beautiful castle, but I had foreseen that someone was coming to assassinate me.

My aide and I started working on a powerful potion to use in a spell that would drive the enemy away or defeat him, but there were two ingredients missing that we had to find. Time was running out, and we began to make preparations to leave the castle in search of the ingredients.

We weren’t quite ready yet when I suddenly met the assassin on a grand flight of stairs. He was tall, with black hair and either a mask or a beard, and he was wearing red and black robes. There were two others with him, similarly dressed. He started to say something to me, but before he could even finish I knew his purpose, and I took off and flew–literally–over his head and out the huge window beyond the stairs, accompanied by my aide and what little we had packed so far.

Then we were on the run.

We kept moving through the forest as fast as we could, but when night fell we took shelter in what (supposedly) used to be Taran’s home. (Taran is the protagonist of the Prydain Chronicles, and Eilonwy’s love interest. Sort of.) There was an older man there, a tough-looking farmer, who made us dinner and took care of us. I believe at this point there were other people in our party, but I’m not sure who they were. I learned from Taran’s mentor/father/whoever that Taran had married another peasant and settled down somewhere, and I was a little upset. (Simultaneously, I broke the fourth wall and thought, “What a great twist! I need to write this down!”)

We lingered as long as we dared, then headed on our way. I believed that I would be able to sense when the enemy was nearing, as he would certainly be using magic to find us, but the only thing that drove us on was my own sense of nervousness. One of my companions suggested we stop somewhere else–I think it was my old home, but Eilonwy used to live in a tower, and the place seemed to be a modest peasant home in the dream. At any rate, I refused, because the enemy would know to look there.

After a long time of scrambling through forest, we came out into a beachfront city. A modern beachfront city. There was a huge concrete bridge ahead of us, and an old man was joking, “People keep asking me how to get onto the bridge! You have to go towards the water!” (It wasn’t funny in the dream, either, but he sure seemed to think it was.)

I led my companions onto a bus that went to the river, planning on catching a boat downstream. I reasoned that if we didn’t use any more magic in our escape, the enemy would have trouble pinpointing our location. (By the way, it never occurred to me that it might be odd in the modern world for a woman with long flowing hair and white robes and magical talismans and her similarly mystical-looking companions to take public transportation. I don’t think it was even an issue.) My aide mentioned that when we used magic, we put off a sort of magic molecule (there was really cool term for it in the dream, but I forget what it was), and I told her I was aware of that and had been plucking the molecules out of the air as we went along.

So sure was I that I’d covered our tracks nicely that it was rather surprising when the enemy suddenly appeared, rocketing through the air towards the bus!

I don’t know what happened after that. It felt kind of like how I feel when I suddenly reach a point in writing a story where I have no idea how I got there or what to do next. That’s probably why the dream ended.

Still, wasn’t it awesome?

Scientists have speculated that global warming might cause an ocean current called the Atlantic Conveyor to slow, bringing less life-giving warm surface water to Northern Europe.

According to the theory, rising air temperatures cause ice caps to melt, making the water less salty and therefore less dense so it can’t sink and flow back south.

For the first time, there is possible evidence of this phenomenon.

While measurements in 1981 and 1992 had shown little change, those in 1998 and 2004 had shown a major shift, with less of the warming Gulf Stream getting up to Greenland and less of the cold, deep returning current coming back.

Scientists are of course stressing that this is not conclusive, and further observations need to be made.

What if this is happening, though? How much of Northern Europe will become uninhabitable? Will weather around the world be affected? Where will people go to flee the cold?

‘Cause I have, like, 100 invitations. Drop me a line at my gmail account (cosleia) and I’ll hook you up.

Fortune has an interesting piece about the growth of the anime industry in the US. I found the depiction of fansubbers hilariously idealistic (there are quite a few who fit that description, but then there are quite a few who really really don’t), but ultimately I think the article makes some good points. I hope the author’s main message, that those who create/import entertainment should pay attention to their fans, will catch on in the industry.

(I previously discussed the US anime industry here.)

I’m unhappy that I find this paragraph amusing:

Hurricane-stricken New Orleans is largely destroyed and abandoned, but city officials said on Tuesday it will soon have universal wireless Internet service.

It’s written to sound ridiculous! Damn you, Reuters!