Jan 29, 2011

chilblains?

for years i've heard people discuss painful finger cracks they get in winter, and what to do about them.
i never experienced it until this week, when suddenly my right thumb got one!
first stop - google!
is it chilblains?
is it really?
wow!
didn't i read that word in some musty book we had to read in 6th grade about dreary new england depressives?
wow, cool!
immediately i begin a series of experimental treatments.
honey?
may help but too slow and kind of messy.
my plan was to go on from honey to try yogurt, vinegar, and super glue, holding back on cortisone cream as a last desperate measure.
unfortunately i lost interest and just went with a thick layer of johnson's first aid cream (disclosure - i have some shares of j&j) and using my left hand for everything.
using my left hand is an endlessly fascinating hobby i developed the year my shoulder was frozen.
it's more fun than curing chilblains.
i love seeing what it can and can't do.
oddly, my wii bowling scores as a lefty are about the same as righty.
all in all, i feel extremely lucky in life to be so easily amused!

Jan 27, 2011

barney and hank a few weeks later

we did wonder for awhile if Hank would kill Barney!
we hoped they would become pals.
i think it has finally happened!
they fight like brothers, and play like friends.
it is still a circus!
a ruckus!
the cat-town races!
a keystone cats show!
but now it's a fun one.

Jan 26, 2011

auspicious coincidence or loss of entropy?

i wanted a joke-a-day calendar
but border's in mid-january had none.
so i have a metropolitan museum of art
page-a-day calendar.
i love it!
on my birthday i was amazed
to turn the page and reveal
a tibetan buddhist painting
tanka style
of Onpo Lama Rinpoche (1251 - 1296)
in his indian incarnation as
Jnanatapa
surrounded by
the progenitors and abbots
of Taklung Monastery.

how did they know?

Jan 24, 2011

jack frost paints our windows

 the responsible thing would be to replace all the big old loose windows in this 1850s house with smaller tighter windows. but we get so little light in the winter!  and when it's clear and -24 F (-31 C) at night, and the sun rises bright and low, our morning glows with crystals and feathers thanks to jack frost!  at least we don't have ice on the inside of the windows, like we did in one place we lived!

now at noon it's up to 50 on our glassed in porch, from the sun!  (the predicted high today is 4.
























Jan 21, 2011

silence of the yams

clocks hum, cats ticking,
refrigerator purrs --
the snow makes no sound

                                
                                              ~mudpie

Jan 18, 2011

the monster is gone, but things are still bad!

the only vacancy in shanghai seemed to have 3 dead bodies stored in it.












so much for my whim to move back to the beautiful steelhead sims!
(click to enlarge)






things had not been this bad when i had my shelter open there.
a little research, and i discovered more than i wanted to know and concluded that i'd stick to higgins and raglan a while longer!
here is the latest from Dr. Beck 

Jan 17, 2011

driving route 1

i always think it should be fun to take road trips in second life, along the public highways.  but vehicles are difficult to control, and the scenery went by too fast to rez, so i didn't see much!
today i noticed a car in my lost and found, so i rezzed it, and decided to take it for a spin on rte 1.
driving seems much smoother now!  even getting a bit of the scenery and buildings as i tooled along!  sim crossings didn't crash me either.
the only problem was finding a place to stop!  i drove on and on -- no spot where i could park and resume my journey next time i logged in.  if i stop just anywhere, i have to go back to the beginning to rez my car.
finally i found a parking/rezing stop!  like finding a rest area on a real life highway!  yippee! 
however, i must say, it could win a prize for most boring spot in second life!
click for total boring effect - car was freebie from burning life or man or whatever it was

stranger than second life

fashion fail - Run Away! The British Are Coming!
Poorly Dressed

Jan 13, 2011

A Visit from the Goon Squad

by Jennifer Egan


another book i actually finished!  it started out as interesting enough to keep me coming back to it, although not compelling.  when the pages turned sideways i got really annoyed, then intrigued once i caught on to where it was going, then i skipped the graphs entirely.


but the LAST CHAPTER could have been standalone. i was totally hooked at the end. loved it.


(the last chapter has to do with a rock concert come-back by a long forgotten musician -- the music biz is a recurring theme throughout the book.)

harnessing the mind!

great news in medicine!
tiny mention in NYT science section a few weeks ago.
this could change lots of things.
doctors have discovered
that if they TELL THE TRUTH
then in certain illnesses, such as I.B.S.,
they give the patient a placebo, and
they say something like
"this is an inert substance, like a sugar pill,
that has been found to produce significant improvement
in I.B.S. symptoms through mind-body
self-healing processes"
the patients given the sugar-pills
in a bottle marked "PLACEBO"
reported significantly better pain relief
and reduction in severity of other symptoms
than those who got nothing.
not just a little better!
"The magnitude of effect here is very large."
said Dr Ted J Kaptchuck a researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

think of it!
trigger the mind-body self-healing process
by giving a pill!

Jan 9, 2011

Winter's Bone

a beautiful movie on many levels.
kinship, clan, crystal meth and above all, What Is.
the young heroine stays the path
avoids the pitfalls
goes through the trials
she does not have a scar on her forehead
well actually maybe she does by the end!
all in the stark color-richness of
children's book paintings.
if only Howard Frank Mosher's books
could have been movified so well.
if you thought the beans of egypt maine was
a depressing book, instead of a book about
real people and their lives, skip this movie!
i don't live in the ozarks, 
yet i know these people -
some of them are my neighbors.

Jan 8, 2011

the kitten formerly known as buster

update on buster the kitten. his name is now barney.
it was the name i wanted to begin with, after furdinand was rejected,
but i have a friend named barney
and also a wonderful book about a dead cat
"the tenth good thing about barney."
try as i might to call him buster, i kept calling him barney.
it's a time-honored method i have of naming cats.
think up a bunch of names for them and wait to see what sticks.
5 reminded me that i used to have goldfish named barney.
guess i like the name!
oh - the fish were not each named barney.
they were collectively named barney.
they were barney.

Jan 7, 2011

hankzilla vs buster brown

back on dec 12 i wrote this verse about kitten hank.
he turned out to be a born killer and we have the scars to prove it.

the hankosaurus never sleeps
onto your bed hankzilla leaps.
pouncing upon them as they doze...
his midnight snack - not toast, but TOES

on jan 4 we brought in buster
and they took to each other like a cock fight

here they are becoming frenemies

and after that i had to put the camera down and rescue buster!

we are fattening up buster and putting him in training - he looks like he'll grow up to be bigger than hank, but he's a lover not a fighter.

Jan 5, 2011

Nixon Under the Bodhi Tree

over the last year or so i have failed to continue to read so many books!
i start them and then realize i just don't care.
this is one of the few that i read cover to cover and loved.
it's short stories, a collection of  "Buddhist fiction."
i'm not always clear on what the Buddhist part is, but i liked all but maybe two.
alot!
the beginnings caught me, and held me to the ends!
i've bought a copy to keep.

Jan 4, 2011

theory of relativity

i've always loved the buddhist teaching tale
about the guy who was so enlightened 
that shit and gold were the same to him.
my sister glimpsed enlightenment 
last week when florida went arctic.
she and her dog went out 
for their evening exercise walk 
on the darkest coldest night.
not in the habit of thinking 'keep warm,'  
she forgot her gloves. 
it wasn't very long before
she realized her hands were freezing 
even in her pocket!
and then she had a happy thought
(picture the lightbulb going on above her head)
..."oh boy, soon i will have a nice warm plastic bag of dog shit in my pocket to warm my hands!"

Jan 1, 2011

happy 2011 W00T !!

raglan has the best new year's eve party from 1 pm SLT (same as california time) to 1 am SLT with dj's and live performers taking turns.
here's a picture of mudpie dancing at some time in the evening, giving you a look at her mohawk. 
it's hard to tell a girl hamster from a boy hamster, and even mudpie found it confusing sometimes. she's hoping the long hair and the dress might make her more girly.