Topic: Personal
Getch and I got into a snowball fight when we came back from the bowling, but it wasn't a fair fight! I couldn't get the snow to form into tight enough balls - it was too powdery - so I just basically threw handfuls of loose snow at him, and he nailed me good several times with these tightly formed, non-breakaway ice-balls (they were too hard to qualify as snow-balls). Ow. I have no idea how he did it and he wouldn't tell me other than that he just knows more about snow.  I staggered into the kitchen with a ringing in my right ear from being hit, and he just complained that I snowed up his jacket.

You may ask what was Sheven and Milly doing all this time, they basically announced that they were not involved in this and did not want to be hit in the crossfire (Getch and I were attacking each other while walking up the driveway with the girls between us). I can't believe they won't back me up! Surely the three of us can take him down easily :-)

Topic: Personal

Backyard of the Poole house

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Milly, Sheven and Connie

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The Pooles. From Left: Beverly, Steven, Sheven, Getch, Willy

 

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Steve's Garden Cathedral. Can you believe that thing's supposed to be a storage shed? It's got a gabled roof and a skylight, for god's sake. He said that the view from the top of the shed is great and he's considering putting a deck on the roof. He was only half-kidding, too.

Topic: Personal
We went out this morning for a long walkie around the Poole's neighborhood. Milly wanted to run, so Sheven drew her a map of a route, then we decided to follow her in a walk. Getch decided to come with us, so we all piled out of the house and went into the crisp early afternoon. Sheven and Getch took me through their town and showed me where they went to school, and where they went sledding in the snow and biking in the summer.  Getch hit me with a snowball twice (it was the same snowball but it was so packed that it survived two hits on me and one on Sheven until she stomped on it).  The first hit was a glancing blow on my right earI did start the snowfight though, I decided this would be a great place to live and raise children, with the added bonus that they'd be so bored that they'd run away from home as soon as they turn eighteen.

It started to snow again as we were walking back, and now everything is white again and the yard looks covered in confectioner's sugar.

Pullman really is such a neat town, it has the quaint characteristics of a country village, but with the university nearby, it hosts a highly diverse and educated population with a far more sophisticated world view than you'd expect in a country town. No hicks here. Sheven wanted me to add that this is the liberal bastion of Eastern Washington. The presence of the lifelong townspeople support the little local shops, and the students keep the funky coffee shops and bookstore in business. The town ordinance prevents big box stores from moving into downtown, and even the fast-food joints are only allowed on the edges.

And it snows, it snows!

Topic: Personal
I tasted falling snow for the first time today. And walked on freshly fallen snow (it wasn't very much, I could still see the grass beneath it) and it's crunchy! 

All four kids were sitting in the living room eating chocolate and talking very animatedly about something (probably politics), which is great fun because as Sheven is passionate to the point of histrionics, her brother is dry to the point of laconic, yet they share the same world view and are perfect foils for each other. Suddenly their mom comes running down the stairs to tell us to look out the window - and it was white! Bare winter trees frosted with white, and when I slammed open the front door to run out, it was into a flurry of silence. Snowfall is silent. I never knew that.

Sheven's dad got such a kick out of my excitement over my first snow, that he took out the video camera and took footage of me running around their yard with my face to the sky, laughing and spinning with my hands out and trying to catch snowflakes on my tongue. Even their arthritic elderly cat came out to see what the fuss was all about. Sheven's mom threw a snowball at me and it went down my collar. When I came back inside, I couldn't feel my hands and my boots were wet.  I've never had such a good time while so bloody cold.

I never knew snow melted when it touched skin, but would stay in one's eyelashes, blurring the world beneath yellow streetlights into a series of prismatic halos.

Topic: Personal

We went shopping today. I caved in and bought replacement clothes. I'm leaving the jeans I wore here in her mother's Goodwill bag, because since I lost the surgery weight they no longer fit.  I had forgotten how much better jeans feel when they're the right size! 

Sheven's dad and I spent a good 45 minutes this afternoon talking about American conservatism, Libertarians, and Labor union politics, and I told him all about San Diego's pension/SEC woes.  It was an interesting conversation!

Milly wants to go out bar hopping, although this being Pullman, we would only be able to do it once, hopping from the one bar to the other in town. I'm trying to convince everyone that they want to watch Elizabethtown instead. I really like that movie, it's so quirky! And I love the sound-track.  The driving soundtrack Claire made for Drew's road-trip is exactly something I would do! It was well received here too - even Getch, who had resigned himself to watching a chick-flick with his sister's friends, said it was 'actually tolerable."

Topic: Personal

I took this photo today from the top of the Kamiak Butte, a 'quartzite steptoe 1,000 feet above the Palouse'.  The area in view is a part of the Palouse Prairie; undulating hills, lots of dryland farming, wheat, soybeans and lentils. In fact, Pullman has an annual Lentil Festival every August.  The concept of winter wheat was explained to me for the first time. We practically ran up the trail to stay warm, although the air was so cold I started to wheeze; not wanting to fall behind, I pounded up the final switchback and stood gasping at the top for a minute before I was able to straighten up again. There were patches of snow lacing the mossy branches along the trail, and a strong wind whipped through the treetops making a sound like a waterfall.

 

We've had our turkey dinner, and we sat around the table afterwards and just talked over homemade pumpkin pie.  The idea of illegal immigration came up and just about everyone in the room had a slightly different opinion on it, and of course as the representative colored immigrant in the room, I had to put in my buck twenty (more than 2 cents) on the issue too. It was wonderful to be able to talk about immigration policy, with people who have relatively informed opinions, with my experience as an naturalized immigrant, Milly's as someone working in the US on work visa and is considering going for a greencard, and then to find out what Americans (Sheven and her family), even liberal ones, know and/or feel about the issue.  Sheven was raised atheist by her hippy parents. Isn't that interesting? Most people who are atheist aren't raised in the non-faith, they turn that way,

I read this today in Fark... LOL'd
Topic: Fun

 

 

"Hey, look. A bunch of cows."
"Herd."
"What?"
"Not bunch. Herd."
"Heard what?"
"Herd of cows."
"Sure I've heard of cows."
"No, a cow herd."
"I don't care if a cow heard, it's not like I'm keeping any secrets from cows."

 

The Inspect A Gadget by Mil Millington
Topic: Review

I first got hooked on Millington's website, "Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About" which is also the title of his first novel, and I didn't even knew he wrote for The Guardian until recently. He's teh funnay. The website is teh funnay. His books are teh funnay. Tech reviews are, generally, hardly ever teh funnay, but he tries. Examples following...

The musical knife
Mil Millington|Saturday May 27, 2006

I've set myself certain goals with these columns: one is to seed them with cumulative subliminal suggestions that will seep into the general consciousness and so prevent there being another series of Strictly Come Dancing. A second (and the hardest) is to avoid their featuring a tedious succession of mobile phones, digital cameras and MP3 players. Although those three account for 97% of all new products, I want to focus instead on less obvious items. But, every so often, a mobile, camera or MP3 player comes along that is different enough to earn the right to be written about. The Swiss Bit S.Beat is just such a creature.

The S.Beat is an MP3 player combined with a Swiss Army Knife. It has a blade, a small file, a pair of scissors, 1GB of memory, an LCD screen and a built-in USB connector. But such details are secondary. You can listen to Goldfrapp while attending to a hangnail if you wish, but it's the audio book potential that excites me. Imagine having the S.Beat in a bar fight: its edge flashes, while it simultaneously feeds your ears with Marc MacYoung's seminal Knives, Knife Fighting, And Related Hassles (ISBN: 0873645448). And how improved an experience the Duchess of Windsor's autobiography, Heart Has Its Reasons, would have been if, during it, I'd had the soothing distraction of being able to stab myself periodically in the thigh. The S.Beat is obese with potential.

The Mathmos lamp
Mil Millington|Saturday July 1, 2006

If doing this column had left me with any self-respect, I'd tell you that the Mathmos lamp is an amusing toy for children. Sensible amounts of shame would compel me to leave it there and let you imagine that I possess the mature intellect and sturdy psychological balance that is the sine qua non of everyone who works for the Guardian. I'd comment that it produces a soft, variable light from what resembles an apothecary's bottle. How it does this is diverting, in its small way, I'd say with a superior smirk. To turn it on, or off, you merely wave across the top of it. You don't touch it at all - your hand simply sweeps through the air in a vaguely papal fashion.

In a similar way, increasing or diminishing the brightness of the bulb is achieved by lifting or lowering a palm above the lamp. The feeling is not that you're in your living room putting on a light, but that you're at Hogwarts and have double Potions. "The kids will love it!" I'd add, identifying my irony with a silly exclamation mark.

But a friend was here the day it arrived. "That's pointless," she said with a shake of her head and a grown-up smile. She then spent the next 20 minutes waving her fingers about, becoming more Witches Of Eastwick by the second. The Mathmos lamp feeds your inner Saruman. All too soon, you're daydreaming that you have the power to smite nations with a lazy movement of your thumb. If this thing sells, it'll be like the Age of Reason never happened.

Good Wine in Strange Containers
Topic: Opinion

A Loaf of Bread, a Box of Wine?

By Mike Steinberger
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2006, at 6:59 AM ET

http://www.slate.com/id/2146720 

 

A Letter from Iraq
Topic: Opinion

This piece of writing makes the most sense, about something that makes no sense to me.

From TIME Magazine: Posted Friday, Oct. 06, 2006

A Marine's letter home, with its frank description of life in "Dante's inferno," has been circulating through generals' in-boxes. We publish it here with the author's approval.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1543658-1,00.html