i have a space fleet

Last night, a stray kitten wandered into our yard. She was very friendly, rubbing against our legs, but also obviously underfed, with dirty fur, so we fed her. It was pretty cold outside, so I put out a cat carrier with some towels in it, and food and water, but she kept crying, and I am a sucker for cats so I let her come inside. Turns out she's a really good cat. She slept on my bed all night (I'm a light sleeper, and I kept waking up and she would be sitting on my chest), didn't cry or try to bite me to wake me up, and hasn't peed on the carpet or anything (which is more than I can say for some of my others). She purrs constantly and likes to sit in laps, and although she cries if she's left alone (like, in a cage or the bathroom), she's pretty well-behaved otherwise. She's also adorable, a grey tortoiseshell, and she looks a little Siamese, with a pointy face and huge ears even for a kitten, though she doesn't have blue eyes. She talks like a Siamese, too.

We're taking her to the shelter in a little while so they can give her an exam and spay her, but there's only one no-kill shelter in the area and they don't take strays, the only accept adoptable animals from other shelters. So if she's healthy, we're going to foster her -- hopefully she'll get adopted soon because she's such a nice cat, young, and it's the holidays. I'm calling her Romana II for now because she reminds me of my last teeny feral kitten, and I don't know what her name is yet.

Seriously, sometimes he is awesome, but most of the time he's a fucking jackass and I just want to whack him with a board. And yet I can't stop watching Morning Joe, because I'm addicted to MSNBC. Yesterday, they were discussing Lawrence Summers and how there was some sort of academic conspiracy to get him thrown out of Harvard for asking a "good question". Yeah. That came from Mika. I want to like her, but I can't. She is way too conciliatory on important issues and seems to mostly have opinions on things that don't actually matter. So anyway, there was a feminist intellectual conspiracy to oust Lawrence Summers after he suggested that females were innately inferior to males in maths and sciences, because his daughter treated toy trucks like dolls. All the reasons that was a dumbass thing to say were enumerated by smarter people than I when it happened, so I won't go into it. But I couldn't believe Mika called it a conspiracy, said it was a reasonable question, and then they all agreed it was sooooo hard for poor Larry.

It's not a reasonable question, and when the president of a preeminent institution of learning makes stupid comments implying women aren't as good as men at a conference on diversity in the sciences, he should know what's coming (and he plainly did, with his disclaimers about provoking the audience). Frankly, I'm surprised that he didn't include a quaint anecdote about how girls like Easy-Bake Ovens and excel at home economics, even if they suck at regular, manly-man economics. But implying that girls are bad at maths and sciences based on flimsy (at best) scientific evidence and personal observation is bullshit, and there doesn't need to be a conspiracy of the intelligentsia to kick his ass out the door. (Honestly, university professors are too busy fighting amongst themselves to engage in conspiracy. A casual lunch is fraught with complex status issues; any discussion is likely as not to be gossip about so-and-so's doctoral students, how much the dean sucks, why the new department secretary isn't as good as the old department secretary, and how ridiculous all the university's policies are. Any conspiracy will be dedicated solely to stealing someone else's research, or possibly pinching a promising postdoc.)

And yet I still watch Morning Joe, even though I end up in frothy rage, wanting to throw things at the TV.

(I have no real opinion on Summers' possible appointment as Treasury Secretary, because I don't know what his qualifications are and I don't really care; if he can get the economy out of the tank I will take a slightly misogynist jerk, so long as he isn't in charge of HR. I will feel slightly less warm and fuzzy about Obama, though.)

YES WE DID.

I'm watching MSNBC's post-debate coverage, and there's a guy in the audience behind Chris Matthews with a sign saying "Never gonna let you down". Did the debate just get rickrolled? Because liek, LULZ.

Sarah Palin did a lot better than I was hoping (like Jon Stewart said, I am addicted to The Sarah Palin Show), although I was disappointed that no one called her on the fact that she wasn't answering the questions, and, in fact, stated that she wasn't going to answer the questions. I think she's good at rhetoric, which is all I saw from her, but I laughed when she talked about how terrorists hate us for having women's rights (and I wish women's rights had been addressed, in the only VP debate...). I'm kind of proud of Joe Biden; I though he sounded intelligent and composed, and after he choked up when talking about losing a child, I really just want to give him a hug. A lot of analysts are calling him boring, but I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing here.

I like that Gwen Ifill brought up gay rights. Palin gave the expected answer, which is that gay marriage is bad, deliberately misinterpreting Biden's question and quite clearly indicating her position on civil rights (gay people shouldn't have any). I'm scared of her New Federalist attitude, because she's perfectly willing to let important issues of human rights be decided by states. I'm for state rights, but some things should be national policy, and historically, civil rights had to be a matter of national policy, because local values would have created huge discrepancies in human rights across the country. Where does she think she's going to fit in the institutionalized caste system?

When she talked about personal responsibility for debt, that was interesting, because I'm all for personal responsibility, but way to blame the American public with backhanded lessons, Palin! Can I vote for you as my mom? Also, can I have a raise in my allowance? I promise I won't spend it on video games or mortgages!

But Christ, she scares me more than Cheney, because at least Cheney is clearly an evil old man bent on world domination, while Palin is cute and charming. She thinks the VP is part of the legislative branch? For reals? Has she read the Constitution? And the VP's powers should be expanded? Yeah, good, let's just give the president more control over the legislative process; separate branches of government is so last century! Also, it's kind of silly to dismiss constitutional separation of powers while holding up constitutionally guaranteed state rights. Maybe we should get some scissors and cut out the first few articles, yeah?

This woman cannot be allowed anywhere near Washington, please please please.

ETA: It was also extremely LOL when she said she didn't want to talk to the media anymore. But I thought The Sarah Palin Show was doing great in the ratings! ):

ETA2: Pat Buchanan thinks we should vote for her cos she's preeeeetty.

I have nightmares about sudoku. Or rather, one specific game of sudoku, the ultimate game of sudoku, that my brain is slowly solving one horrific dream at a time.

Which is weird, because until about a week ago, I had never played sudoku, and I pretty much hated the whole fad.

The nightmares are proving that I was right to do so. *hates*

I keep picturing Edward from Twilight as Edward from Full Metal Alchemist, with the lulzy anime-style flip-outs and running around and general snarky emo-ness, and OMG, I can't stop laughing. I <3 u both, bbs!

In addition to cooking, I'm learning to garden. I planted garlic before I ran off to New York, and when I got back two weeks later, they had sprouted. I love cooking with garlic, and it's apparently good to grow in desert country because it likes dry soil, so I figured it'd be a good Texas plant. Also, it's super easy to grow; all you have to do is stick one of the cloves into some dirt and water it a little bit, and voila! (Protip: Plant about an inch deep or it can't sprout; the one at the back left is tiny because it was too deep and I only fished it out a couple of days ago — but look, it's sprouted already.)



I've also got an avocado seed trying to sprout, but I'm not sure if it'll work. The seed has cracked, but I don't see any roots appearing. I planted some nasturtiums and some passion flowers, but the seeds were more than ten years old and they haven't sprouted; I think they're probably bad by now. I might try some onions, and an orange tree. I have a peach seed in the fridge, but peaches are high maintenance! I'm looking for other easy things to grow; gardening is fun, but the less I'm obligated to take care of it, the more I will be willing to take care of it.

I got eggs and ground turkey at the store today, because I am going to make ravioli! It will have some combination of mushroom/ricotta/turkey; possibly turkey/ricotta in mushroom sauce? Or mushroom/ricotta with turkey. Dunno. I'm going to make the pasta myself, I think it'll be fun.

I need more food/plant icons to reflect my new hobbies. Hmm.

When my mum packed the chicken in the freezer, she put it in the compartments on the door. Boned chicken. In flexible Ziploc bags.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah.

Now there are two pounds of frozen chicken stuck in the freezer door. The compartments have front-wall sort of things that connect to the door via tabs on either side. But the chicken all fell to the bottom of the bags before freezing, so it's stuck against the lip of the front-wall-thing, which can't be removed because the chicken is pressed too close to the tabs. And when I first tried to pull the bags out, they ripped apart. So there are two pounds of unwrapped frozen chicken stuck in the freezer door.

Who thought stupid compartments with weird lips on the inside edge were a good design feature anyway? What happened to little plastic bars? Why tabs? Why not easy-lift hooks?

Also, Jesus Christ, Mom, who taught you to freeze meat? FLAT. Flat, and stacked, preferably in the drawer.

I'm in Texas for the summer, spending time with my family, and particularly my mum, who is reminding me more and more of Bella Swan's mother in the Twilight series. I love her, she's sweet, but she's incredibly naive about certain things, and I have no idea how she managed to live on her own for large parts of her life -- let alone to climb the ranks in the Army Chemical Corps, considering some of the bizarre beliefs she seems to have about actual chemistry these days. (Like expired titanium dioxide causing a white chocolate coffee bean to taste like raspberries. Sure, mum, more likely? It was a raspberry-flavoured white chocolate coffee bean.)

Part of taking care of my mum involves cooking. She used to cook sometimes when I was very little, and in fact did quite good souffles, but lately her recipes all end up as a bog-standard "casserole" that involves throwing everything into a casserole dish with the same boring herbs and baking it. I know her influence is mostly English and Western European, but sweet lord, there are herbs other than rosemary and thyme! Also, rice and pasta in the same dish? Eww. And because it's all one-dish stuff, everything tastes like everything else, so what's the point of eating different foods? I'm not a food snob by any means, but I don't want to eat carrots that taste like potatoes that taste like rice that tastes like chicken that tastes like rosemary, the leaves of which are dried and have to be picked out before they poke holes in my gums.

( thoughts on foodz )

I think I'm having a love-affair not so much with food as with the actual process. I like figuring out what flavours work together, what order to mix things in to get the best results, finding the balance between too long and not long enough. People say cooking is chemistry, but I never really believed it. I used to think cooking was pretty damn boring, and if I was in the kitchen at all it was only to like the bowl after making brownies. But now, I'm having fun with it, and if I had to compare it to science, I'd go for chemistry meets mechanical engineering. For me, cooking is an intuitive process: I have parts, I know what the results should be, and I make a lot of stuff up based on what I know should happen. I always read the notes in chemistry lab, but usually I'm the girl who refuses to read the manual because that would take the fun out of it. Similarly, unless it's finicky, I tend not to read recipes beyond the ingredients list and stuff like "bake at 400° for 1 hour". I'm treating cooking like DIY, and having only basic guidelines is more of a challenge, and yields more rewarding results when you end up with yummy foodz.

So............ I have all these spectra. They have to be "fit" -- you have to find all the peaks and get their areas and blah blah blah.

It's so damn boring, and I've been sitting here for four hours doing NOTHING ELSE. UGH.

It's not creative, it's just endless typing and clicking, over and over: open spectrum, rename fit file, rename xcl file, fit background, add peaks, fit peaks, save peaks, change ratio, fit peaks, save peaks, export xcl file, open xcl, copy, paste, close, open spectrum, rename fit file....

And I'm not even done with the iron samples yet. BLAH. You know what we need? A macro that will do it all with the click of a button. I should go learn to program such a thing, and that will save me a lot of time and clicking!

Yeah, not really. This sucks. Kill me now, please.

Also sucky: My BFF is on vacation and I have no one to bother, and I had Pop Tarts for lunch/dinner. Hate Pop Tarts. SUCKS!

ETA 01:01: The Fe samples have a linear correlation with r^2 = 0.9974! Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.

My zinc standards have an r^2 of 0.9916 with a linear trendline!

I.e., the parts-per-million values have an almost perfect linear correlation with the X-ray photon counts -- and I'm only working with rough ppms now, so hopefully they'll get even better when I have exact ppm values.

THIS IS SO PERFECT. *does the beamline dance*

So.... someone is filming something on campus. Something that involves extras. I was innocently sitting outside, soaking up the sunshine after being trapped in the windowless, asbestos-filled concrete dungeon that functions as our "lab" for hours, when some woman came up and asked me if I was an extra. I was like, "A whu'? Huh?" -- not really coherent at this point -- and then she said if I wasn't an extra, then I needed to move so I wouldn't accidentally get in the shot. Which is like, okay, because I don't really want to be on film, regardless of what they're actually filming, but on the other hand, I really resent being kicked off my bench, dammit! I just wanted the vitamin-D-producing, jean-warming, cancer-causing solar rays, is that too much to ask? Now I'm stuck inside again with the fluorescent lights and dust and seething bitterness. *seethe*

Argh, argh, argh, two days to conference and I haven't finished my poster or my advisor's presentation, because I've been sitting here debating the right words to use in an email and doodling women in Victorian dresses. Being depressed is NOT productive.

Also, what's with all the Twilight-related venom on JF lately? Is the fandom suddenly starting to implode? I don't really know anything about the fandom except what I've learned on the macro comm, which would have you believe that Robert Pattinson is a smokin' bitch and Kellan Lutz is a pretty princess. Can't really argue with that.

The macro comm, like most macro comms, does not take itself or its subject very seriously, so I'm still looking at Twilight as Torchwood for vampire romances. It's so clearly over-the-top, plotless, and angsty that you can't take it seriously, you can only lol. SPARKLY VAMPIRES, guys. EDWARD:CHEESE::BELLA:WHINE. And yes, it's addictive like crack, if you like that sort of thing. Also Alice and Carlisle and Emmett are totes awesome and should get capes and fight crime!

*shrug* There is plenty in the source material for a good sporking, but it seems like there is less mocking of the wankiness and the books than there is mocking of the fact that people like the books. Which seems... wrong to me. It's like people are mad that the fandom exists, and I don't get it.

But that's okay. More sparkly vampires for me.

Sigh. Back to work now. ):

I read an article the other day about Stephanie Meyer and how religion influenced her writing, and it was surprisingly not boring, so when I wandered into Borders looking for a book I had not read a dozen times, I was compelled to pick up "Twilight".

Six days later, I've read all three of the books twice, and I'm starting "Twilight" again.

God damn it, I have like, two posters and four poster abstracts and a lecture to write by Friday! I'm not supposed to be reading anything unless it mentions synchrotrons, metalloproteins, or Gaussian peak-fitting!

And I watched the trailer a little while ago. A couple of times. You know, just seven or eight... teen.

Can it be December yet?

I think the trailer broke my brain. I don't know about the casting -- Robert Pattinson doesn't really look like the Edward in my head, but he seems to play Edward very well. Very, very well. Kristen Stewart is like, awesome and totally Bella. I loff her. And Kellan Lutz! OMG, he's SO Emmett! Smaller than I imagined him, but his attitude is perfect! I love Emmett. He is quite possibly my favourite character in the whole series, if only for that line where he's like, "How come Bella gets to fight with werewolves?" OMG, Emmett.

Ashley Greene is less petite than the teeny-tiny Alice that Bella goes on about, but she's got the perfectly freakish look going on. Yay Alice! Esme's too old, Carlisle blond hair looks HORRIBLE -- every time I read "Carlisle" in the books, I wonder why they all call him by his last name, because I keep thinking of Peter Carlisle from Blackpool, and it really messes me up -- and Rosalie just looks too nice and not bitchy enough. But based on the clips I've seen, they're all really, really good in their roles.

But this summarizes pretty much how I feel about the whole thing, including the part where I had to download the series to my iPod. *headdesk*

If it can't be December, can it at least be August already?

Or at least Guy Ritchie thinks so.

Remember how cookies are better than sex? This girl found the solution.

Yeah, so, that new series of Doctor Who? ( It's like awesomesauce. Awesomesauce laced with crack. )

Also, I am unspoiled for basically the whole series, except for companion casting in the finale. So please don't spoil me!

ANONYCON WAS EPIC WIN!!!!!!!!!!!

The backstory:

We were gonna have a party at the Marriott next to the Woodley Park Metro Station. But the Scilons went crying to mommy about how MEEN we were, and the Marriott kicked us out. They may or may not have fired the girl who made our reservation, but no one can get in touch with her to confirm.

But did Anonymous sit down and take it? No fucking way. FLASH RAID BABY!

The D.C. raid was AWESOME. I'm definitely going to Anonycon next weekend, and I cannot wait for Operation Reconnect. 4/12! I'm trying to recruit all my IRL friends into going, but they are lazy and think it's political. They don't understand the lulz, and thus they will not get delicious cake. (The cake, btw, was not a lie. And it was delicious.)

I handed out fliers most of the day. They kind of sucked and lots weren't folded properly -- I ttly appreciate the effort that Anonymous went to getting them made and all, but I'm also incredibly neurotic and the margins completely ruined the folding. So next time I'm going to have some printed properly and folded beforehand.

While we were doing setup, the first PI of the day showed up and started photographing us. He was SO INCREDIBLY obvious, and yet he kept trying to look like a tourist, just photographing the general area. I don't know why he bothered. We KNOW that he's a PI. We KNOW that his routine is an attempt at distraction so we'll feel safe in his incompetence, and maybe we won't notice that there are serious PIs watching us. Why don't they just stop the pretense and film us openly? WE DON'T CARE. Hell, we're filming ourselves anyway.

So yeah, we're setting up the sound equipment and the delicious cake, and he starts snapping pics, so I start filming him. There's only like 10 of us, max, at that point, because the rest of Anon are a couple blocks away getting ready for the march. Obvious PI starts taking photos of the corner across the street, where NO ANONS WERE, like we seriously believe he's interested in the Starbucks. I like coffee, but no one likes coffee that much. Then he wanders off, like tourists do -- only to come back from the opposite direction! I'm just like, WTF are you doing d00d? And then I ended up with this footage of Obvious PI being obvious. So here is a youtubes of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecu1CXA4S8o

There was a PLAN to go take a picture under Stephen Colbert's portrait at the National Portrait Gallery after the raid, but we failed at using Metro so a bunch of us got off at the wrong stop. We should have got off at Gallery Place, which is, hahahaha, right next to the GALLERY. WE R SMRT. Instead we got off at Smithsonian, which is over 9000 blocks from Gallery Place, and we had to walk there. But it was pretty cool, because we had a megaphone and an iPod with "LULZ: A Corruption of L.O.L." on it. So we played memey songs and scared the tourists and handed out fliers at a stoplight, and talked about mudkipz, and it was fun. It was also incredibly awesome to see a hundred Anons piling into the Metro station. We took up the whole damn platform and the operators had to yell at us to spread out because we were endangering lives by standing too close to the edge or something. (We weren't really, and if Metrorail would finish the fuck up with whatever "repairs" they've been doing for at least 100 years now, we wouldn't have had to stand there so long, but whatevs.)

OH AND. At Metro Center, we all switched to the Orange line, but the train that came was FULL of people (because of the repairs, there are fewer trains so they're all packed), and only half the Anons could get on and the rest of us were like WTF??? But THEN, a challenger appeared Metrorail operator came down and held the train for us, because the front car had space, so all the Anons zerg rushed the front car and we all got on! AWESOME.

And then our rogue group met the rest of Anon at the Portrait Gallery and we got pix and it was lulz.

THE END.

Yeah, so this is pretty fucked up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4XCjJidY_I

( thoughts on yaoi )