The Wrong Side of the Door

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Stuff I want to do with the house
This is a list of stuff I or my roommates want to do with the house.

( Cut for the uninterested )

Accomplishments du jour
I need to start up the lists of things I accomplish each day again. The hard thing with being unemployed is that it's a summer that never ends. I really need to get things done and have no framework in which to get them done, which is hard for me. Thus I must make the framework.

Sorry for the lack of cut for this, lj won't let me use rich text and I forget the html tag for cuts. Skip reading if you're not interested in the mundania.

1. scooped litter box
2. did 1.5 loads of laundry (1.5 were done last night)
3. folded 2 of 3 loads (one was still in the dryer from last night).
4. put away 2 of 3 loads
5. paid bills
6. checked on storage unit payment - it's fine in spite of my credit card deciding to lower my limit to my current balance.
7. Said balance got a big payment to I'm nowhere near the limit.
8. helped my neighbor put up a shower caddy with my handy hacksaw, earning a beer for my troubles.

I think I need to add eating lunch to the list and thinking of what to make for dinner.

Lists and things
So, since my neighbors are now the Heirs to the Crown,

1. They have chosen the reign of Henry VII, 1485-1509, as their inspiration for their reign and clothing.

2. 1485 is damn close the the nebulous time of my persona, 1460-1480.

3. I have no clothing yet for my persona.

4. I have no excuse any longer for having clothing for my persona.

5. I have this pattern for late 15th century clothing that I bought at GNE.

6. I have a good sized stash of linen and linen blend fabrics, if they're suitable.

7. My roommate has fake fur he may wish to unload.

8. I think I'll be making a dress in a time period vaguely suitable to my persona and the upcoming reign.

9. I'm going to need help. The most complicated things I've sewn so far are T-tunics with trim and contrasting facing and a sideless surcoat that required some serious mental geometry, but not very complicated sewing.

10. I'm terrible at handsewing. Funny, because I'm pretty good at embroidery. Hopefully I can machine sew most of it.

The next few lists are things I want under an lj cut, but I don't rememer the html code for them and my Very Old Computer seems to not want to allow me the option of rich text editing. Thus they will be in separate posts that will more easily allow people to skip over them.

I have a cat napping on either side of me.

Based on the many posts occuring recently I have written the following letter to my elected state officials. I have edited it slightly so that I can post it publicly. Feel free to borrow all or some of the language herein to write to your own elected officials. Also, since I'm making this public, feel free to send along a link to this post. Since many of you live in MA, you can use this site to find your elected state officials. You can also use it to find out where to vote next week. If anyone wants to use other translations of the Bible, there are bunches available here. By the way, also from reading the Bible, I don't think that homosexuality is immoral, but that's the subject of another post.

Greetings to my elected state public officials,

I vote. Most of my friends vote. One item many of us are concerned with right now is the fact that propositions banning gay marriage are on the ballot in several other states. Because of this, many people are posting the following sentence in their blogs: "Copy this sentence into your LiveJournal if you're in a heterosexual marriage, and you don't want it "protected" by the bigots who think that gay marriage hurts it somehow." Most of these people are residents of [state], some of these people are also residents of [city], and some of whom are in my precinct. I hope they also write to you on this issue.

While I am not married, I may get married someday, and I am heterosexual. I see no way that my marriage could be hurt by someone else's marriage. What will sanctify my marriage is how my husband and I treat each other, not whether others are allowed to marry or not. In addition, marriage confers many rights and privileges that should be available to all people, regardless of whom they wish to marry. The virtue of the financial and legal benefits I will gain upon marriage will be lessened if they are not enjoyed by all couples.

I am a Christian. I also read the Bible, and when I read 1 Corinthians 5:12-13 (New International Version), it says "What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside." From reading this, I believe that it is immoral for me to judge people who do not believe the same way I do by denying them rights because I disagree with their morals. I also base my stance on passages such as Matthew 7:1-3, Luke 6:37-38, and Romans 2:1-3.

For these reasons I ask you to make a stand for equal rights for all people, no matter what personal disagreement you have with them.

[Signature]

[Mailing Address]

Current Mood: determined

RIP Patricia Sapko Zielinsky 1932-2008
I just got back from having a beer in the closest neighborhood bar. Unfortunately, it wasn't for my birthday, it was in memory of my Aunt Patty. She passed away this morning from lung cancer. The reason I had a beer in a neighborhood bar in her memory was that she owned and operated a neighborhood bar for years. This, of course, was back when women didn't own businesses, much less work outside the home, especially when they were married with six kids. She had to rip a few men a new one in order to get them to do business with her, but she successfully took over the bar from my grandfather and ran it for decades until she decided to retire. She was a fantastic cook, and still found time to cook for her kids, grandkids, and church bake sales, where her signature baked goods commanded premium prices and went fast. I'm not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if my mother got the spaghetti sauce recipe that I'm making tonight from her. I know for sure that we got our family lasagne recipe from her, a recipe that the Italians who worked with my uncle thought was better than their wives'. My aunt ran a business full-time while still caring for a physically abusive husband and six children, one of whom has a mental disability because my aunt was abused while pregnant. However, the regulars at the bar are the ones responsible for the fact that my cousin can now hold down a job. When my aunt had an emergency and had to leave my cousin in charge of the bar, the regulars helped her total orders, make change, and operate the cash register. After my uncle died, my aunt got engaged soon after to an old flame, but he passed away of a heart attack before they were married. Afterwards my aunt found a boyfriend whom she dated but never married, as her remarriage would cause her to lose her first husband's pension, without which they would not be able to afford to live. I'm sure I'll see my pseudo-uncle at the funeral on Saturday. With him my aunt travelled all over the US after she retired.

She never was able to go to college, she lived through abusive situations, but she accomplished remarkable things with what she had. Patty Zielinsky deserves to rest in peace. Please raise a glass for her (or a bottle or can, she wasn't fancy) at a neighborhood bar in her memory.

With friends like these...
So first I was addicted to the white jigsaw puzzles that

rufinialinked to in her lj, and now I'm addicted to nonograms that

etheriallinked to in a comment to one of my earlier posts. So that I might share the addiction, here it is:

http://www.puzzle-nonograms.com/

Help please?

I am trying to install a new game on my computer, since I now have time to play. (All grades turned in as of 2:30pm yesterday.) Unfortunately, I cannot get the setup program to actually run. Well, it seems to start to run, but no windows appear and nothing happens. It does seem to appear in the list of processes, but never mazkes it to the list of tasks. One time when I restarted the computer to try to get this to work, it had the setup appear on the bottom bar half a dozen times, or however many times I had tried to start it. Any suggestions?

In addition, my computer does not seem to want to talk to the internet now. This is after multiple restarts and doing all the usual things that get it to talk to the internet when it's being recalcitrant. Then, you may ask, how am I posting this? Ah, the beauty of a work laptop. If all else fails, I will install the game on this, but I really want it on my computer. After all, the work computer will go back to them eventually.

I really don't want to buy a new computer yet. I know, it's about that time, but I want to put it off some more if possible.

EDIT: internet is working on my computer now, I forgot the tweak of turning the wireless modem off and on. The setup still isn't working, so switching to work laptop for the attempt.

Apologies for the x-post.

Since dance practice is now on hiatus until January, and with the irony that I am now finally able to go, I would like to propose a couple of social nights in place of dance practice for the next two weeks. For next week let's meet at my apartment (directions and info on request, I'm in the Liber but parking is difficult so get the directions.) For the week after, if someone has a great idea for a place to go/thing to do/wants to host, suggest it! I'm more than happy to host again, but want to let others have a shot at it (besides, there's no parking here.) So, next Wednesday, December 26th at 7:30pm, meet at my place in Waltham. We can listen to dance music, watch a movie, chat, or generally eat, drink and be merry. Bring holiday leftovers that you would like other people to help you eat.

Kick some Ball
The place kicker for the Framingham State Rams football team is a woman, one of only two playing NCAA Division III football. How awesome!

Happy Birthday

pisicutsa!!

Watching Paint Dry
Yes, it's that time again, the time when I alternate between being bored to death and being incredibly busy. It's test time. I gave a stats test yesterday, graded it yesterday and today, I'm giving the test to the night class right now, and tomorrow I give one to the College Algebra classes. Since I'm done grading stats, I have nothing to do while my students ~~squirm~~ take their test. I will madly grade algebra tomorrow night in an attempt to get the tests back to them the next day, but I'm not holding my breath. They'll get it Friday. I'm now wondering if I need to use a larger multiplier for gauging the time it will take this class to finish their test. I finished in about 7 minutes and they have an hour. Maybe I should cut questions to get the time down to 6 minutes for me in the future. 50 minutes have now passed and only 4 out of 12 have turned in the test. Make that 5. 6. 7. Well, maybe the multiplier I have is fine. Only 3 still working. Now to read the book for my book group. It's a teaching book group, so it's for work.

I want to exchange bacteria colonies with you

The new thing I learned today is that an average of 275 bacteria colonies are exchanged in a kiss. Well, that's motivational.

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: outlander's kitten purring

Oh , the other thing I was going to post is that I'm on ravelry now! That means nothing to most of you, but something to a few of my flist. My username there is based on my mundane name. I've already added tpau and knitprincess as friends. And I found out that there's a book coming out in December on Mathematical Knitting! It's written by a couple of people I've met at math conferences. They run a so-called knitting but in actuality a general craft network for mathematicians. That's funny, because I was just commenting to a colleague that I want to learn how to knit a torus, and there's a pattern for one in the book.

So my post for today was going to be a copy of the last email that my best friend sent me with names deleted to protect the guilty. However, she started an lj account today!!! Give a big welcome to

reggary! She lives in Northshield and is just getting into the SCA. I'm infecting someone...

So I guess that leaves me with nothing to post, other than that I'm still not feeling entirely well. That's mostly cured by not eating, but at this point I'm sick of being hungry, especially when I feel okay otherwise. And the downside of eating happens the next morning, so it's hard not to eat. I think next I will eat something I usually crave during illnesses like this, pear juice. Oh yeah, with canned pears, because that's the only way to buy pear juice in Hannaford's.

I flatly refused to bring work home today. Not that I really needed to, as nothing needs to be done for tomorrow. I do need more recovery time, as I probably wasn't quite 100% back after yesterday. I'll be back in the swing tomorrow. I'm even on top of things right now, and may even have time to start reading the paper I'm refereeing. So far I'm just working on locating copies of the references. This, of course, will change by 1:30pm Monday, when I finish giving the first of three tests for the week. Sigh.

I hate it when lj eats my posts.

I felt sick, so I left work early. What seemed like a minor intestinal complication earlier, solvable by a bathroom trip or two, is now accompanied by temperature fluctuations and nausea. Since I do not want to throw up in class, I am home. I'm off to rest.

Still batting .000

And I'm not talking about the Sox. Next!

(Although I have to admit, that has to be the nicest refusal I've had yet, although another is a close runner up.)