I recently had a friend describe me as a "straight arrow" in a vaguely critical way to someone who passing around their combustible drug of choice. I.E. "Ray doesn't partake, he's a straight arrow."

Pardon my social blindness, but since when was not choosing to indulge in your drug a decision worthy of criticism?

The definition of straight arrow being: A person righteously devoted to clean or conventional living.

Clean? Meh. Conventional? Hardly. Admittedly, my quirks are fairly mundane and my record is clean enough for the government to think I pass a sniff test. Perhaps this is owing to most people not knowing me very well. 

I guess I'm okay with that.

But there's always later today. 

Engraved on a sample of cherry hardwood flooring, about 4" wide. 

Another thing, just a test. Islamic tile pattern in four colours. 

This is not a self-referential poem.

In fact, it's completely obsessed with talking about all of 
the other poems that influenced it, those poems which 

once 

were read by poets come and gone, or in other cases come 
and not gone so much as moved quite far away, or had their 
weltanschauung changed so greatly that this poem is not any 
longer 
particularly 
impressed
as such things go

This poem is extremely, embarassingly well read; 
it just finished 
the Cantos (that wretched man), 
and 
the Duino Elegies (translated, sadly (but well-)
and it re-read 
The Sonnets 
for the umpteenth time just last weekend...

this poem has an inferiority complex

It wants to apologize for its existence, but it can't seem 
to find the right words. Which is just so...much...a thing

It has big important neighbors, this poem, and often gets 
lost in the shadows, but at least it's not a self-referential
poem...this poem doesn't like self-reference, and honestly 
resents being the work of a poet who does

This poem would consider itself a complete failure if it 
didn't have something in common with the Iliad, namely, 
this poem doesn't end, it stops

We usually wear name tags in choir. There's  more than a hundred of us so. Anyway people like to be creative with them. I have a hallowe'en themed one I'm wearing this month but needed to make one for November. 

It's a kind of intarsia with felt and foam. I cut the pieces on the laser. It was "fun" working with the different colours. Did you figure that cutting blue/violet things with a blue/violet laser might be very different than cutting black things?  I spent hours working on the right settings and insets to get the kerfs to match. 

I have to glue all the bits to something, probably black construction paper, but that's a project for tomorrow. 

oh, yes, I'm singing alto. 

I woke at three in the morning to answer a call of nature. I'm one of those people who has to have moving air on me at all times when I sleep. So, in a pitch black room I open my eyes and I see a halo of light in front of me. I quickly blink to see if I'm hallucinating, but nope, it's still there.

Because I'm me, I alternately close one eye and then the next. The halo disappears when my right eye is closed. Hmm, says I. What fresh Hell is this? I lay there while my sleep-addled brain turns this problem over.

Finally, I realize that my right eye has the perfect paralax to see past the spinner of the fan and be able to observe the faint spark from the brushes in the fan motor glowing in the dark room.

Cool.

POODOO INHINT
  CA Q
  TS ALMCADR

  TS BANKCALL
  CADR VAC5STOR

  INDEX ALMCADR
  CAF 0
ABORT2 TC BORTENT

OCT77770 OCT 77770
  CA V37FLBIT
  MASK FLAGWRD7
  CCS A
  TC WHIMPER -1

  TC DOWNFLAG
  ADRES STATEFLG

  TC DOWNFLAG
  ADRES REINTFLG

  TC DOWNFLAG
  ADRES NODOFLAG

  TC BANKCALL
  CADR MR.KLEAN
​​​​​​​  TC WHIMPER

Yesterday my hubby and I chose to skip a JMU production of Twelth Night that we had bought tickets for months ahead of time in order to see Alien on the big screen in Charlottesville. At first I felt a little bad because I'm sure the students did a really good job (they always do), but I'm deciding to consider it a donation to a favorite institution. I'm sure the people who were sitting in the seats next to ours wondered why anyone would not show up to something for which they had paid $40 (the show was sold out), but it wouldn't be the first time. We've attending many events at the Forbes Center where we knew seats were sold and then not filled, so I'm sure we weren't the only ones who didn't show up. I wish I could've done both events, but the showing of Alien was a last minute thing (as far as I can tell) and there were only two showings on Sunday, both of which conflicted with the play which was going on right in the middle of them. So we chose to spend another $25 (plus the gas to get there) and see one of my all-time favorite movies on a giant screen. And we were not disappointed! I've watched Alien countless times, but I was only 11 when it came out and apparently I missed the re-release that happened for it's 25th anniversary, so I was thrilled to celebrate its 40th anniversary with about a dozen other fans in the theater. It doesn't matter how many times I see that gruesome thing pop out of John Hurt's chest, I love it every time! Definitely money well spent!

I have tried both Google's my maps and scribble maps and boy, it is a pain in the ass to just... make a map of an interesting route. With some waypoints and some connecting lines. it's not impossible, it's just so fussy that I say forget it. Is this always so bad? Is there a tool that everybody swears by? should I just give up on the idea that I should be able to do this on my phone?

So it took me a little while, but I just realized that I had accidentally created two accounts on here. At least I never wrote anything on the other account. My first clue was the fact that I couldn't find the couple of other posts I had made on the other account. I figured they had just been deleted because I hadn't written in so long, and I was ok with that. But then I saw my own name in the people list and I'm like "Wait a minute!" LOL So now I'm good, just excuse my stupidity. :)