The Topic of Great Randomness

[smile]

I just got back from my vacation... I had a great time, though I couldn't stop worrying about Koko while I was away (your sister's nickname, right Emi? I think the coincidence is funny). Annie was hit by the car while I was on vacation last year, which still hurts sometimes, and I miss her all the time... but that's why I was freaked. I was good after we got there, but when I was leaving her home, I was rather upset (we left her home...our neighbor takes care of her while we're away, and I take care of her dogs and bird when she is away). I loved it there, but I'm happy to be back.

Thanks about Uncle Ted, Emi. I miss him, but he was very sick, and he has never had any patience for being sick. So I miss him, but at least I know he is in his version of Timeheart (because there has to be something like Timeheart, even if it isn't called Timeheart. anyone can disaggree with me, but for me, it's what happens). And my cousins are good. Well, I think you know what I mean. So really, one of the most important things is how they are.

My sister is going to college, and I'm going to miss her soooo much. We get along really well, unlike some other siblings. It'll be fine, but I'll miss her. I hope you like college! And your roomates. : )

I am currently pretending school is a long way away.. apart from my homework... but I'm doing my best not to let school hang over my head.

I'm going downstairs, and I'll post later... We just got back late yesterday, and we've been relaxing today... Thhey're all downstairs, and I promised I would be down.

dai!

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

kk: Yeah, Lee gets around, doesn't she? :-) Hey, Lee, did the artist get you right when "you" showed up in Diane's "The Last Word" Trek comic?

In other randomness, tomorrow night, the Brewer Hometown Band is having its last concert of the summer. When I joined a couple of years back, I asked if there was a chance I could put my college conducting class to use at some point -- tomorrow, I get my chance. I'll be conducting Grainger's arrangement of "Irish Tune from County Derry", and I'm nervous as all get-out. As I said at the first rehearsal (out of a whole two *shiver*), soloing in "Flight of the Bumblebee" last summer didn't scare me, but this did. :-)

Grainger was kind enough to use what he called "elastic scoring", allowing the same arrangement to be used with different groups of instruments. Here's the same arrangement played by a brass band in the movie "Brassed Off".

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F5vBsY9VZ8"]YouTube - Danny Boy (Brassed off!)[/ame]

[smile]

Garrett - I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I love your signature : )

I'm going to get to see my family this weekend! We're have a mini-party, which is only a party because we want to see our relatives... it's mostly a get-together.

A bird literally just walked outside my sliding door, just next to me. The bird was so tiny! We have to families of birds (two occupied birdhouses) and the bird mught have been one of the babies... that's how tiny he/she was! (I love all animals, so it's exciting for me)

I guess I'm lucky my cat Koko is asleep... she could get the bird, but she would really want to.

I don't have very much to say... Nothing much has happened lately, which can be good, because it usually means you get to relax a bit.

dai!

[Kathy Li]

Just found this via Eddie Campbell's blog. Thought some of you might enjoy seeing it as well. Knocked my socks off. It's the winner from Ukraine's Got Talent. Her medium is sand.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=518XP8prwZo&feature=player_embedded]Kseniya Simonova - Sand Animation (??????? ??? ?????? / Ukraine's Got Talent)[/ame]

[seabiscuit1009]

I can't remember the last time I posted here, or even came on the site and had time to actually read any posts! Work kind of consumed my life this summer; luckily, last Saturday was my last day at work. Kind of bittersweet, since although I hated living out where I was working, I didn't mind the work at all. I worked at an amusement park this summer, selling and taking tickets, and taking pictures for the season passes that guests can buy there. Like I said...the work wasn't too bad, I just hated having to live away from home, and my roommates were crazy. Two of them were from Taiwan, and barely spoke any English. Honestly, I tried to be tolerant of them, seeing as they come from a different culture and have a different way of living than I do. But a girl can only be woken up at 4:30 AM so many times before she starts to be very sleep deprived and cranky.

What else happened...not much, other than the fact that I'm dating my best friend; he finally got up the guts to just ask me out, which is nice. I'd be a lot more excited about this, but he's having a problem with the fact that since we were doing the long distance thing, we were having trouble moving out of friend mode into boyfriend/girlfriend mode. So I sort of broke up with him...only not really. It's a mess, and we still have to talk about it more, because I think it's really hard to start a relationship long distance when both people are fairly inexperienced in being in a relationship anyway, and that we should give it another try now that we're both going back to school (at the same college.) I guess I should just accept that I will never have a normal love life, because I am just too unconventional for that. You think, when you're little, that you'll meet this guy, and yeah, it'll be hard to make it work, but you can never imagine the ridiculous challenges that come up in life. It's a pain, let me tell you.

I'm still trying to get my bedroom in order after I switched rooms with my younger brother. I almost wish my parents had done it while I was at school, since I'd only have half as much stuff to find room for as I do right now. But I've got clothes in the dresser, and books on the shelf, so it looks like someone lives here now.

I go back to school on Sunday. I'm excited; I love my college, love my friends there, and I even want to get back into doing schoolwork. It's just...this summer showed me a little of what life is going to be like after college is over, a little over 3 years from now. And life? Life scares me.

Sorry, I'm ranting a bit. My brain is all jumbled and going 400 miles a minute due to all the stuff I'm trying to remember to bring to school.

Well, I went horseback riding yesterday for the first time in 4 years! I remember when I first started posting on here, life was all about horseback riding (hence the username...) I miss it a lot, honestly. Some people get their thrills through the roller coasters I saw at work every day, others get them through sky diving and driving fast; I get that kind of thrill from riding. Hopefully, when I'm older I'll have enough money to be able to pick it up again; it's one of the things in life that I regret having to quit doing. Although I am rather sore right now, in areas that haven't been sore in 4 years.

This week my mom's kind of trying to cram in all kinds of fun, since I've been at work all summer and we couldn't go on a vacation this year. So, we went kayaking earlier (I love kayaking. A kayak is another thing I would buy if I have enough money when I'm older) in the week, and are going rock climbing tomorrow night. Keep in mind, I'm the only one in the family who's ever been rock climbing before, and that was 8 years ago. So, this ought to be interesting, honestly.

I guess I need to go pack more stuff for college. I'm a horrible packer; at the end of last school year, I literally just threw stuff in the back of the minivan, which yes, did make it really hard to unpack. But now I actually have to pack it up neatly apparently. And I have approximately 2.5 days to do it. Yippee.

[Tuttle]

hungry: Kayak! What kind of kayaking do you do/enjoy? I'm a sea kayaker. My family owns four boats, one of them is mine, though I don't know if I'd keep it when I have somewhere to store it that isn't with them. If not I'll buy it off my parents, 'cause is my boat and I know my boat in such ways that I don't use others. This is a 16 foot long polycarbonate sea kayak . My boyfriend is meaning to make his own boat - a skin on frame one.

And hungry's name reminds me of food, so I'll talk about food :P. Homemade salsa fresca is tasty, though strong. Am eating salsa fresca and cheese quesadillas, is tasty. We also got stuff to make guacamole with. Quesadillas are nice and fast to make . We've actually finally gotten to making our own food basically always rather than getting lazy about going to the store and eating out. It means now we sometimes make pseudo-chinese food as well - fried rice, pseudo-lo main, and general tso's tofu.

Slide rules are amusing. I taught myself how to use one recently, and have been planning on bringing it to a calculators banned exam if I have one. I want to see professor's reaction to pulling out a slide rule and using it. They're actually really easy to use, and the idea behind them is simple, though requires knowing about logorithms to understand.

My sister is moving to her college soon. It's really weird to me that my younger sister is going to college, even though I'm planning on graduating soon. I haven't been around much the past few years so I still imagine her a freshman in high school. Once she moves then I'm getting the mattress she was using moved to my apartment and I'll have a nice new mattress rather than an old one that came free with the apartment. Also, she'll have moved out of my room so I'll finally be able to go get stuff from there again. I need to decide how many of my books to move here as most of them aren't here.

My classes are starting up late this year, but only around two weeks from now. I made up a list of things I need to do by then and its long. I have to read around 200 pages of a math book to prep for a grad class I'm in, as well as figure out a topic for a research paper, and get work done for my big math project. As well as do things like getting here cleaner.

Also on the topic of school, looking for grad schools is strange, especially when you're someone like me who didn't put that much into looking at colleges. I'm planning on graduating after this next semester and am planning on getting a master's degree (at least) immediately. I have the problem where I'm looking at staying in state and I'm interested in pure math, not applied math and there isn't that much there. Well, most of the applied math programs will work and am planning on applying to some of those schools at least. I just need to figure out all the places I want to apply, get applications in, take the GREs,... its like getting ready for college all over again, except now I have less help with it and it feels more important because of needing to know what you're going into. At least grad school will be better than finding a job in this economy, and going to state school I would have a really good shot at a TA position .

This living in the city is really getting to me. I am needing to be more active for my sanity and I can't be here. The smoke allergy really ruins any chances for a lot of stuff. I mean, my senisitivity to smoke is high enough that I can't even walk down the front stairwell because the downstairs neighbor's mom is in the area and she smokes, even though smoking inside isn't allowed. We're thinking of complaining to the neighbor and then to the landlord if it doesn't change because right now I can't go check the mail and need to always use the back entrance. It means am trying to figure out ways to exercise inside an apartment. There's some amount of looking to get an old used bike-stand, which you put the bike in and ride and don't go anywhere. Boyfriend wants to hook one of those up to a generator, and then power laptops by riding bikes, and have a stand for the laptop so can be using it at the same time. I laugh at him, but like the idea.

Oh, I was writing this a few hours ago and then got distracted looking at stuff about toughbooks and mil-std.

OH, that reminds me. I really like the new avatar I have here, though its still weird for me to look at it, because it doesn't identify as me to me. But its a tiger chewing on a laptop. And people actually gave a tiger a toughbook and the pictures of it are cute. This lolcat is based off of it, but the pictures from the new article are also amusing. I made one of the pictures tiny and have it as my avatar now. Though I suppose its all someone's photo. I need to find my own tiger to have try to eat a laptop so I can have a cute picture of it? . Or I could just switch back to the nethack one I made.

I had something else to say in response to someone but I forgot what it was after a few hours so I'm just going to post my ramblings.

-Tuttle

[Zergplex]

I wasn't sure where to post this, so I figured the Topic Of Great Randomness is as good a place as any!

I just finished The Wizard's Dilemma through Wizards at War for the first time this week, as well as To Visit the Queen (I never realized DD wrote more YW books after A Wizard Abroad until recently). Amazing books, it reminded me how much I loved this series and that I love them just as much now that I'm older as I did back then.

Any/all if this could be a spoiler in some way, so I spoiler the whole thing. Just looking out for ya ^_^

Overall I enjoyed Wizards at War the most, it reminded me the most of the earlier books and seemed a bit more focused then the others. I loved the concept of the Hesper and Carmella getting involved brought into play something I really wanted to see (nonwizards fighting the good fight alongside their wizardly friends). Also the return of past characters (Ronan, Darryl, S'ree, etc) was a great touch. And I am totally in love with Gigo. Gotta love those mobiles!

A Wizard's Dilemma and Wizard's Holiday had some great moments in them as well. The entire last stand with the Lone One vs Nita's Mom was epic. I kinda figured that was where the book was leading early on, and it was just as good as I expected. On the other hand Wizard's Holiday I loved for a different reason, the new characters. Each and every one of them was a fully realized and developed character that really made you care for them. Roshaun is the perfect foil to Dairine, every moment I read them together cemented it more in my mind. Carmella finally got fleshed out in the last two books into a more complete character, and I'm glad. I was really hoping we might get to see more of Kit's family, and I'm glad to see we did.

Overall I was very impressed with the newer books, though the older ones still hold a large place in my heart (I don't think any of the YW books will ever top High Wizardry as my overall favorite, it's one of my favorite books of all time. Though Wizards at War came close).

I'm not sure how to end this post, so I'll just say to Diane Duane, good job madam. Keep up the great work!

fixed spoiler tagging-gf

[illiriam]

Ugh, I feel like I haven't been on this site in forever. Oh, that's because I haven't been. Silly me.
I have legitimate reasons. My computer decided that it hated me being the main one. And so every time I got on it, I felt like throwing it out the window, which would be bad.

For a quick response, I love kayaking. It's so much fun. My family and I used to go out all the time, out in the bay and down the gentler rivers. Then my sister with her "strong cheerleader arms" decided that it was too much work and consistently got tired halfway through, so we stopped going.

But school is going to start again, and I just transferred colleges. Exciting, scary, the whole scha-bang. I was looking for cheap textbooks and decided that I should share my newly found favorite book website for any of you who are suffering due to the outrageously high prices for textbooks (you know, those books that cost $120 and you will only use several times during the semester.) www.Alibris.com It is amazing. The prices for my books are all cheaper than the used prices from the school bookstore. My expected bill for books went form near $400 to a little over $200. THat is almost enough savings to get a new phone once mine dies for good... (speaking of which, does anyone recommend any type of verizon phone? I can't decide if I want to keep a flip phone of move to that newfangled touch phone. Hmm, decisions, decisions) So I will be getting all but one from either alibris or amazon (the one being one that is published by the school, stupid greedy college that it is.) I just wanted to share that with anyone who could benefit from it.

And I hope everyone's summer has been a happy one. Even if it did fly by.

[Emi]

illiriam: I'll take a look into the site, thanks!!! I got another one, it's for renting books: http://www.chegg.com. Really cheap, and you can rent it for a semester, quarter, or a full year. And one book was like under 10 bucks. Crazy???

Hungry: Good luck in your second year, also with your bf situation. I know what you mean when you said that when we were little, we dreamed that we'd meet a guy and it would be perfect. My first/last relationship was an eye opener. Hopefully my next one won't be like that.

smile: Yeah my sister's nickname is Koko. That's cute that your cat is named that.

Okay, so my college shopping is officially done. I think. I hope. If I'm missing anything, then I might just have to get it while I'm there. Or have my mom send it up to me. I've got everything packed... and I hope that all of my stuff can fit in my parents' car.

My roommates. They are from Wisconsin, Connecticut, and New York. I haven't heard from the one in New York, none of us have. Hopefully she'll be nice and we will all get along. I have a feeling that the three of us (WI, CT) are going to get along okay. I just hope that I make good friends while I'm there.

I always feel like I write a lot, and then when I post it, I don't. This makes me sad, because I take like a really long time to figure out what I'm going to say so I can post a long one, and it never is one!! I just made like a run-on sentence...

I'm not sure if I'll be able to come on to this site a lot while I'm there. I'll be leaving in 2 days. Even my writings will be affected by the college move. I feel bad for all my readers on fictionpress and fanfiction, because I already know I'm not going to update a lot. Haha.

Oh well.

I hope everyone's going to do well in whatever they're doing!! and I hope I get to post a lot on here, but if I don't... don't worry, I'm not dead!

Dai!

Emi

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

Here's the recording my wife made of me conducting the Hometown Band last Thursday. Next time, I'll know to put the camera further away from the band, so that the audio isn't so variable, and make sure it's zoomed in before recording starts. Gotta warn you -- it's a bit painful in the middle, where the band gets out of sync for a few bars. *winces at the dissonance*

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pWfzCNhBVM"]YouTube - Irish Tune from County Derry - Brewer Hometown Band[/ame]

[Stormwind]

That is cool Garrett!

Thanks for the birthday wishes... I'm just sorry I received them a day late, as the nightmare of the weekend came to an end today...

Our AC went out on Friday... any of you familiar with Texas knows that there is Humidity... and temps that range in the high 90's... We had all of those this weekend.... Anyway, the repair guy couldn't even come until yesterday (some way to spend my birthday... hot... exhausted.... and with cranky toddlers...) and he tried to fix the unit... but it was totally fried... we had to replace the stupid thing... too much money later and we have a new unit, installed this morning... at least the house is dry and cool again...

Anyway, that catches up what's been going on with me... hope everyone has been having a good week so far... no one has written in here in 6 days...

more later

[smile]

Hey Everybody!

Sorry I haven't been here as much as I would like... My sister is going for her first year of college, and it's been hectic here, and I've been spending time with her. She isn't going thaaat far away, but I won't be seeing her that much (unlike many sisters, we get along great, and I'll really miss her).

I loved the sand animation video, but I just came to post this quick... We're driving her up today, but in a couple days, I should be back.

Then school begins again (sigh) and hopefully I won't be too busy.

Dai!

And happy birthday Stormwind! sorry about your weekend...

[nelina]

I tried this twice at school today and failed. I can look but not post.

but I just got dsl, and IE 8 has inprivate browsing

anyway, its been 4ever cause I'm not allowed, and I had so much better grammar this morning, but now I'm tired and in a rush.

anyway I've become addicted to flickr (that I'm allowed on), and this is my url:

www.flickr.com/photos/greenscheme93

and I have 3 blogs, (that I'm not allowed to have)

http://upyoursleeve.blogspot.com
http://theoriesontheuniverse.blogspot.com
http://nodoublestandardshere.blogspot.com

My username on blogger is The Answer Key, and its also The Answer Key on yahoo answers.

I have a computer programming class online (ncvps), and blogger isn't blocked at school, so I can update them more often now.

I've also joined kongregate and I love that too.

well, that's all that's new. I'm still lliving in the world of endangered love.

l8r

[bookgirl]

Hi everyone! Hope you've had a great week.




really good audio books that I might enjoy? (Or direct me to a thread if this has already been discussed.)

[dorotheia]

Melting Stones in the Circle Universe was pretty much written while recording it. The audio came out before the book. (She got to pick the voices for her characters, and sometimes changed the words to fit the voices, etc.) I haven't any experience with the YW audios, though.