I think Veterans Day would mean a lot more if the only people who could take it off were those who have a DD-214.

Of course, then non-vets might get envious and bitter, and it would have the reverse of its intended effect.

"Hey, where's Charlie? He call off sick today?"

"No, this is Veterans Day. He's got the day off."

"Does he have to march in a parade or something?"

"Nah, he'll just sleep in and get an earlier start than usual gettin' drunk at the VFW."

One problem with Veterans Day is the way it's celebrated. I think a lot of people get confused and just think of it as "Memorial Day: The Sequel," when in fact, it's meant to honor living veterans rather than dead ones. The best way to achieve this, without leaving civilians out of the festivities, might be something along the lines of Mardis Gras, a nationwide shore leave of drunken debauchery, celebrating military personnel after their own fashion.

Giving everyone the day off also gives people something for which they can feel grateful to veterans. A day away from the daily grind means a lot more to folks than just expecting them to think, "Hey, thanks for 'defending my freedom' over there in Vietnam, Korea, and Iraq. I feel so liberated! I tremble to think what might have happened to me and my loved ones had you not gone over there."

I was a little surprised to learn that November 11th is also celebrated in other countries. It turns out it's the celebration of the end of World War I. We used to call it "Armistice Day" (other countries still call it that or "Remembrance Day"), but in the 1950's, a shoe salesman in Kansas decided that we ought to expand the observation to honor all veterans. That's hardly a surprise, as WWII vets were no doubt sitting around asking themselves why the old guys got a holiday and they didn't. (Or were we still celebrating VE Day and VJ Day back then?)

It's time for you to just scroll on past....

• 08:33 Finally got google voice, seems pretty cool :) #
• 23:38 I guess since I can't eat or drink after midnight, I ought to go on to bed #

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We're doing alright.  In fact better than average in all those ways most parents of newborns aren't.  We sleep, mostly because nursing this child has been a breeze: no pain and side-lying nursing since the second week. It's the ultimate in lazy childcare and allows me to do my late night feedings by simply rolling over, latching her on, and going back to sleep while she gets her fill. We're nursing on demand. and she demands a lot, mostly because she spits up most of what she eats.  Luckily, I'm producing enough, but I haven't been able to stash much.

Rocketboy is loving having a sister and is handling the change pretty well.  He says she's annoying because she sleeps so much and he's not allowed to kiss and hug her when she's sleeping.  I promised she would be more interactive soon enough.  I also promised myself that I remind him about wanting to give her more hugs and kisses in a few years when he gets really annoyed at her.

She's been traipsing around the city since her third week, since I couldn't exactly take it too easily what with Rocketboy's full homeschooling schedule.  It's foolish that they call it homeschooling, most of our school takes place anywhere but home.  Luckily my energy is back to normal.  Half the time we head out with a stroller and the rest of the time I keep her in a carrier.  I think I need to get a new carrier ('cause the 4 that I have aren't good enough).  The slings are not comfortable enough to be out and about all day, but are great for around the house or a little extra nusing support for when I need both hands; the Bjorn kills my back and is something Steve always liked better than me (center of gravity maybe); the moby is incredibly versatile, but is crazily long and made of heavy fabric - not practical to put on or adjust while out and about since the tails drag and this in not the cleanest of cities. I might get a Beco Butterfly or a Pikkolo.  I'm still trying to tease out which one has the best design for my needs.  I'm leaning Pikkolo since it has more carry options, but the Beco is just that much more attractive and is less expensive. I'm being shallow again, but the Beco is just sleek and cool looking (as for as any baby carrier can be).

I've been able to handle both of them pretty well and I only get overwhelmed at night.  I used to be able to be an actual functioning adult after Rocktboy's bedtime, but now I can't count on that since Audrey loves to nurse then.  As a result, my house is a mess and I don't get much time to do anything but childcare.  It got really bad last week and I found myself wishing for a day off from children so I could clean the bathroom and put away all the laundry - how pathetic is that!?!

As much as I'm doing nothing but childcare, Steve is doing nothing but work.  If you average it out, as a family we're balanced, but as individuals we each only get one dimension in our lives.  I can't imagine this being sustainable, since Steve misses being dad and I miss having an intellect.  In the meantime, we're hanging on while trying to make plans for how to change things so we can both be more evenly fulfilled. For now we still have no clue how to achieve that, but at least we've come a long way in identifying what we want. 

Asking the right questions is often harder and more crucial than finding an answer.

So we're out of balance, but our children are disarmingly cute, so we'll keep at it.

Is anyone interested in purchasing an Armstrong 4001 Bb clarinet, with case? Email me at mdespard at gmail dot com, if so.

• 07:21 @steelcorpfilms I'll swing by for at LEAST one movie. Address? #
• 07:37 @steelcorpfilms got my number? I don't know if I changed it on facebook yet. #
• 07:38 My Christmas shot glass design. I'm so proud of it, haha. Fun job! :) twitpic.com/p3ob9 #
• 07:45 @steelcorpfilms haha. Got it. What time is cannibal the musical? #
• 08:10 @steelcorpfilms cool! I'll be there. :) #

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Hmmm. When you were young and your heart was an open book, you used to say live and let live. You know you did. You know you did. You know you did.

But when this ever changing world that which we live in, makes you give in and cry...

Like a garden gnome but cooler.



$34.99

The hydroelectric plant that supplies electricity to much of Brazil and Paraguay lost three of five transmission lines in a storm. As a result, most of Brazil was in the dark for four hours. Power has still not been restored to some regions. "Off-duty police were called up as thousands were trapped in immobile elevators and subway trains. Cars were forced to nose through intersections made dangerous by suddenly extinguished traffic lights. Some cafes closed out of widespread fear of a nocturnal crime wave."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091111/wl_afp/brazilenergyblackout

I'm not sure if I've posted this link here before.  For those of you who are interested in small living spaces, check out http://tinyhouseblog.com/

I love this blog because it shows all sorts of creative living situations, usually eco-friendly, that range from rural to urban.  Today's entry is about a little cabin in the woods of Missouri.  Another one I enjoyed was from a couple in San Francisco who knew they'd never be able to afford a real house there, so they raised a tiny home on a friend's property.  I like the tree houses, Airstream trailer conversions, yurts, and modern "gypsy wagons."  Small homes usuallly use less resources, cost less to heat or cool, and --depending on your property--leave more room for gardens.  I imagine that people probably spend less to buy or build them, so they have less debt and more money to spend on the features that really matter to them.

yarrowkat has posted about her yurt, which is on a larger property and shows how a tiny home can be incorporated into an existing living arrangement.  Do any of you live in a tiny home?  In particular, I wonder how those with children manage.   The smallest home I ever lived in was a 500 sq ft mobile home, which isn't that small in the grand scheme of things.  I shared it with another person and it worked out, but I remember being frustrated that all our things were jammed together.  I now know about space-saving furniture and such, and I also simply got rid of a lot of crap I didn't need.

One risk is probably stability during bad weather.  It's scary as hell to live in a trailer during tornado season. 

I got some bargains today at the Salvation Army store.  They had a 10 for $1 bin!  So, for $1 I got 5 brand new packs of gift tissue paper, a brand new cardboard "Happy Halloween" banner, a brand new metallic Gold ink pad, a tiny roll of ribbon, a brand new pack of autumn leaf shiny confetti, and a brand new magnetic note pad of purple paper with a cute owl on it.  I could tell that most of this stuff (all but the roll of ribbon) was from the $1 section at Target.  It must have been their leftovers that they didn't sell.  SCORE!

• 06:52 @dirged Bird is the word. #

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Have returned from Sydney where I spent the last few days at the eResearch Australasia 2009 conference, a well attended gathering with almost five hundred of the country's senior IT/research managers present, although the suffix -asia is a bit of a misnomer. The conference was held opposite Manly Beach a site which is most quintessentially Australian and reminds me of Midnight Oil's Power and the Passion (original video clip available on YouTube). I wonder if Minister Garrett remembers saying "it's better to die on your feet than live on your knees ... sometimes you've got to take the hardest line?"). First day of the conference was spent at the annual ARCS all-hands meeting which could have been improved with earlier and more complete reporting from management on operational and strategic activities.

My paper, Social Networking and Weblog Sites for Researchers apparently went quite well; standing room only and people being very attentive and furiously writing notes during the presentation. I argued several points; that reducing the cost of replicated research is worth billions to the Australian economy, knowledge is proximal and networked, for researchers networking and 'blogging tools need to be combined (e.g., Livejournal/Dreamwidth), content moderation and public exposure is required, that content networks are more important than social networks (Flickr rather than Facebook) and that provision must be made to automatically assign researchers to content groups they require. The next step after this is convincing my managers that this is worth throwing some money at.

Microsoft attempted to make a big splash at the conference with the release "The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery", a collection of some twenty extended abstracts of scientific research involving high quantities of data and using MS tools. The claim that there even is a fourth paradigm (science via empiricism, then theory, then simulation, then data) receives some significant criticism in the scholary communications chapter from Clifford Lynch and John Wilbanks, the former arguing that the third paradigm is far from complete and the latter arguing that this in no way represents a paradigm in the sense of Thomas Kuhn. To think I had to read almost the entire book to find these remarks. Whilst the research is vaguely interesting, the theoretical grounding of the text is very weak.

victortenzin and I made a pizza the other day and I tried something a little odd. I was inspire by a sauce option they had at Papa Murphys briefly called something like Sweet Hawaiian (?).

For the sauce I diced up two tomatoes, put in about a tablespoon of spring roll sauce (a very sweet sauce you can get at Asian supermarkets), a tablespoon of finely chopped purple onion, about half a clove of garlic, and about a teaspoon of barbecue sauce. Then I cooked it for a while in the microwave. The result was a sweeet, tangy, oniony red sauce. We topped the pizza with cheese, mushrooms, bacon, pineapple and more onion. It turned out, in my opinion, pretty good. The sweetness of the sauce and the pineapple worked well with the saltiness of the cheese and bacon.

Please allow me to introduce myself... I'm a puppet with wrath and taste. (erm...)

Hi :) My name's Gus, and for the past year I've been producing a small online media literacy show which builds on my early interest in Adbusters. We've just joined LiveJournal because we like the community here -- there's a great mix of fan production and media critique. We welcome any feedback, questions, collaboration requests, tasty foods, etc that you might like to send our way.

Here's an episode we produced recently doing some culture jamming on Oscar Meyer and houseparty.com -- the latter is an attempt to get you to advertise to your friends in the comfort of your own home. It's a little longer than most of our episodes because we really couldn't bear to cut out any of the bits with the drag nuns:



Check our channel for more vids. Anyway, pleased ta meetcha :) hope to see you all around the LJ.

http://brighterplanet.com/project_fund_projects/48

+++

i just voted three times for this awesome project which will help move Appalachia away from MTR mining and towards a sustainable, locally-owned, decentralized model [by utilizing timber industry byproducts.]

the project will entail "feedstock feasibility studies and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification to ensure sustainable forestry."

please vote today! signing up for brighterplanet.com only takes about 75 seconds. they are in second place and the prize is a $5000 grant!

other suggestions on how to win this thing:

- blog about it!
- send the link and description out to list serves
- make it a point of process at any meetings which might relate
[eco-advocates? new college climate justice squad? alliance of concerned students? everglades earth first? black manatee collective? st. pete for peace?]
- send a LTE [letter to the editor] in your local paper
- etc etc!!

xoxo and THANKS!

as follows is the full project description:

( click to read more about the project! )

The current voting period ends on SUNDAY the 15th of November, so please don't put this off!
Also, you do not have to be a U.S citizen to vote.
Thanks, and please do repost... :)