Dorm Kitties!Spring 2005
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Sunday
I finished my book! Woohoo! Finally.
I feel like I was reading that cloud book for ages. It was pretty good, but I'm ready for something different. Not sure what is up next, but I'll let you know soon enough. It could be anything from greek tragedy to oceanography to civil war...thats what is in the pile of library books etc. that I'm working through.
Today was a lovely day. It is beginning to maybe kinda get like spring. Very sunny this weekend and not too cold today. I gymmed it, napped with a cat on my belly, and went for a walk...and I even did some dishes!
Now I am enjoying a beer and its worth each and every one of the three points its costing me - I'm doing weight watchers (although not officially because I can't afford that - my mom gave me the literature and a calculator because she is doing it with friends from work). It may be too early to tell, but the scale is down 2.5 pounds from tuesday... :-) Here's hoping its not just normal fluctuation!
I feel like I was reading that cloud book for ages. It was pretty good, but I'm ready for something different. Not sure what is up next, but I'll let you know soon enough. It could be anything from greek tragedy to oceanography to civil war...thats what is in the pile of library books etc. that I'm working through.
Today was a lovely day. It is beginning to maybe kinda get like spring. Very sunny this weekend and not too cold today. I gymmed it, napped with a cat on my belly, and went for a walk...and I even did some dishes!
Now I am enjoying a beer and its worth each and every one of the three points its costing me - I'm doing weight watchers (although not officially because I can't afford that - my mom gave me the literature and a calculator because she is doing it with friends from work). It may be too early to tell, but the scale is down 2.5 pounds from tuesday... :-) Here's hoping its not just normal fluctuation!
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Hiya
Jello - I am posting because I have not posted in some time and I know that all one of you who read this will very excited for news...even though I see you every day. So, here goes.
Um....
Well....
Haha! I guess I don't have all that much to say. Life has been pretty satisfactory lately, including a new old friend who is turning out to be a blast to hang with. I'm thinking I'll be pretty sad when he leaves in August to move abroad, I'll just have to console myself with good weather because we should have some by then...right? I can't wait for warm weather. I totally LOVE prowling around town and that is so much more fun when its not freezing and snowing and raining and being icily windy. However, summer is also going to mark some sad occasions, the aforementioned leaving of T, but also the leaving of my dear SA and AK at work. Ithaca really is a transient place. We'll see how much longer I am here, probably at least another year.
In other news, I finished reading the first five books of the Amber series by Zelazny. This was lent to me by someone from okcupid that I had coffee with and have never heard from again...I guess I'll have to try emailing him through the site so I can get the book back to him...or if I were mean I'd just add it to my collection. I don't really like it enough to be that catty though. Anyway, the series is pretty good once you get past the first book.
I'm now reading "The Invention of Clouds" which is about Luke Howard who came up with cloud classification (cirrus, stratus etc.) and also the time period. It's really interesting despite how dorky it sounds. Learning alot about the time period and how science was kind of a free for all citizen thing back at the start of the 1800s. People went to lectures for fun!
Well, I'm going to go home now, so ciao!
Um....
Well....
Haha! I guess I don't have all that much to say. Life has been pretty satisfactory lately, including a new old friend who is turning out to be a blast to hang with. I'm thinking I'll be pretty sad when he leaves in August to move abroad, I'll just have to console myself with good weather because we should have some by then...right? I can't wait for warm weather. I totally LOVE prowling around town and that is so much more fun when its not freezing and snowing and raining and being icily windy. However, summer is also going to mark some sad occasions, the aforementioned leaving of T, but also the leaving of my dear SA and AK at work. Ithaca really is a transient place. We'll see how much longer I am here, probably at least another year.
In other news, I finished reading the first five books of the Amber series by Zelazny. This was lent to me by someone from okcupid that I had coffee with and have never heard from again...I guess I'll have to try emailing him through the site so I can get the book back to him...or if I were mean I'd just add it to my collection. I don't really like it enough to be that catty though. Anyway, the series is pretty good once you get past the first book.
I'm now reading "The Invention of Clouds" which is about Luke Howard who came up with cloud classification (cirrus, stratus etc.) and also the time period. It's really interesting despite how dorky it sounds. Learning alot about the time period and how science was kind of a free for all citizen thing back at the start of the 1800s. People went to lectures for fun!
Well, I'm going to go home now, so ciao!
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Image of the Day
Ithaca at NightI spent many nights wandering campus so I have a whole series of these type shots...if I had a steadier hand or the inclination to lug around a tripod, there would be more and they'd probably have come out better. This one has some cool colors though.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Saturday, March 1, 2008
An Afternoon of Articles
Some interesting tidbits from articles I've been perusing this morning:
"Barack Obama has made a clear political choice during the presidential campaign. Guided by his palpable yen for consensus as well as his own polyglot sense of identity, Obama has chosen to speak a transracial, indeed a nonracial, language — and endured a good deal of criticism from old-line black leaders for doing so. Nor has he made any attempt to woo Hispanics as part of a “black-brown” coalition. He has, by and large, addressed minority voters not as minorities but as Americans. And it may be no coincidence that Obama has not been hindered in the past by ethnic rivalry: in his 2004 Senate primary, Obama took 70 percent of the Hispanic vote — even though one of his opponents was Hispanic. And his standing among such voters this time around has steadily improved, perhaps as they have come to know more about him.
Paradoxically, it has been the Clinton camp that with an increasing feel of desperation has tried to make Obama into a black candidate, whether by comparing his political success with Jackson’s, as President Clinton has done, or by insinuating that Hispanics will balk at his candidacy. (“I want to say this very carefully,” Bendixen cautioned.) It’s the white candidate, that is, who has stirred the pot of identity politics. And perhaps it will take a black candidate to lay some of the shibboleths of identity politics to rest."
-"The Emerging Minority" by James Traub, NYTimes Magazine
I think its fantastic that someone is trying to treat voters less as groups to attract, but as one group to speak to: Americans. Focus on who we all are instead of the differences...unity. People complain about racism and try to make things more equal, but I can't help but think part of the problem comes from each group wanting to be seen as a group. Whites are willing to be identified as whites, blacks as blacks, hispanics as hispanics. As long as this segmentation continues, there will continue to be inequalities and problems. It is not bringing each group to an equal footing that needs to occur, instead it is a blending of the groups that I believe is needed.
Next quote:
“If she does not win on Tuesday — and I’m confident she will — I am not voting for president in November.”
-quote in the article "In ’08 Politics, Rhode Island Defies Its Size"
Oh please, if your candidate doesn't get the nomination, you are just going to sit back and say to hell with it? This is the next four years of your life that we are talking about. If my candidate doesn't make it, I'll sure as heck be looking at who is left, making a decision, and going to the polls!
And another one:
"Fewer than half of American teenagers who were asked basic history and literature questions in a phone survey knew when the Civil War was fought, and one in four said Columbus sailed to the New World some time after 1750, not in 1492."
-"Survey Finds Teenagers Ignorant on Basic History and Literature Questions"
Um...wow...this article makes me want to be a teacher and get something through to the youth of the country. I'm not overly well versed in history, but at least I know when the civil war was...what are they studying in school these days?
"Barack Obama has made a clear political choice during the presidential campaign. Guided by his palpable yen for consensus as well as his own polyglot sense of identity, Obama has chosen to speak a transracial, indeed a nonracial, language — and endured a good deal of criticism from old-line black leaders for doing so. Nor has he made any attempt to woo Hispanics as part of a “black-brown” coalition. He has, by and large, addressed minority voters not as minorities but as Americans. And it may be no coincidence that Obama has not been hindered in the past by ethnic rivalry: in his 2004 Senate primary, Obama took 70 percent of the Hispanic vote — even though one of his opponents was Hispanic. And his standing among such voters this time around has steadily improved, perhaps as they have come to know more about him.
Paradoxically, it has been the Clinton camp that with an increasing feel of desperation has tried to make Obama into a black candidate, whether by comparing his political success with Jackson’s, as President Clinton has done, or by insinuating that Hispanics will balk at his candidacy. (“I want to say this very carefully,” Bendixen cautioned.) It’s the white candidate, that is, who has stirred the pot of identity politics. And perhaps it will take a black candidate to lay some of the shibboleths of identity politics to rest."
-"The Emerging Minority" by James Traub, NYTimes Magazine
I think its fantastic that someone is trying to treat voters less as groups to attract, but as one group to speak to: Americans. Focus on who we all are instead of the differences...unity. People complain about racism and try to make things more equal, but I can't help but think part of the problem comes from each group wanting to be seen as a group. Whites are willing to be identified as whites, blacks as blacks, hispanics as hispanics. As long as this segmentation continues, there will continue to be inequalities and problems. It is not bringing each group to an equal footing that needs to occur, instead it is a blending of the groups that I believe is needed.
Next quote:
“If she does not win on Tuesday — and I’m confident she will — I am not voting for president in November.”
-quote in the article "In ’08 Politics, Rhode Island Defies Its Size"
Oh please, if your candidate doesn't get the nomination, you are just going to sit back and say to hell with it? This is the next four years of your life that we are talking about. If my candidate doesn't make it, I'll sure as heck be looking at who is left, making a decision, and going to the polls!
And another one:
"Fewer than half of American teenagers who were asked basic history and literature questions in a phone survey knew when the Civil War was fought, and one in four said Columbus sailed to the New World some time after 1750, not in 1492."
-"Survey Finds Teenagers Ignorant on Basic History and Literature Questions"
Um...wow...this article makes me want to be a teacher and get something through to the youth of the country. I'm not overly well versed in history, but at least I know when the civil war was...what are they studying in school these days?
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