Miscellany

I get Rob Brezsny's horoscopes in my email every week, and I usually just skim them and don't pay a lot of attention, but this one struck my imagination last night. It isn't even my sign, it's for Capricorn:

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): From an astrological point of view, the coming weeks will be an excellent time to start a band and record an album. Your creativity is waxing, your attunement with the right side of your brain is especially sweet, and you will benefit immensely from anything you do to become less of a spectator and more of a participant. To jumpstart the process, go to Wikipedia and click on "random article." That's the name of your band. Then go to en.wikiquote.org and click on "random page." The last few words of the last quote on that page will be your album's title. Finally, go to tinyurl.com/9ydjk and choose a photo to be your CD cover. Or, if you don't like what's there, click on the link for "Get more interesting photos for the last 7 days." (My band is Widemouth Blindcat, our album is "More Time for Dreaming," and our cover art is a spiral staircase from here: tinyurl.com/c89rt7.)

So I did the exercise. Mine:

Band name: To Traverse Water (an opera by Tasmanian (Australian) composer Constantine Koukias)
Album name: Collecting Happiness (Quote: When we are collecting books, we are collecting happiness. - Vincent Starrett)
Album Cover: This image

Apropos of nothing, my current favorite song that I forgot about for awhile: "California Stars," written by Woody Guthrie and arranged and performed by Billy Bragg and Wilco, from the album, "Mermaid Avenue."

Current favorite iPhone app: Pocket God. I had seen advertisements for it, but it didn't seem all that interesting. Then on Saturday morning I was browsing the App Store and saw that they had dropped the price to 99 cents, so I went ahead and bought it. It's actually pretty fun, and very clever. You get an endless supply of "islanders" that you drop on your island, and then torture in various ways, like dropping them in the ocean to be eaten by a shark, striking them with lightning, etc.

You can also be benevolent and give them a coconut (which usually bonks them on the head) to eat, or giving them a fishing pole so they can fish (and about half the time they catch the shark, which tows them off the island).

You can change the weather, cause the sun to set and come up, cause violent storms; at night you can call a vampire bat to bite an islander, then that islander bites all of the others. It's actually a lot of fun. With the latest update, you can name the islanders, so it sort of takes on the aspect of a voodoo doll. Completely pointless and a total time waster, but fun.

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Books!

Books are a huge part of my life. I remember when I was in school, waking up at least an hour before I had to in the morning, so I could sit in bed and read before I had to get ready for school. There was a library within walking distance of the house where I grew up, and we could check out ten books at a time. I would walk to the library several times a week in the summer and pick out my books, and walk home carrying as many as I could.

I remember the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books that our teacher would read to us on rainy days, and I remember Harriet the Spy. I remember sitting out in our garage one summer afternoon watching over my family's garage sale, and reading Raymond Chandler. I remember walking up to the drugstore and agonizing over the paperback rack, trying to figure out which Agatha Christie novel to spend my allowance on next.

My father ordered the Happy Hollister series of books for us -- I wonder what happened to those? I read all of those, and I read all of the Nancy Drew books, and I read the aforementioned Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie, all of those undoubtedly forming the love I have now for mystery novels.

I don't read nearly as much now as I used to, the time I used to spend reading I now spend on the computer. But I try to read as much as I can, and I almost always have a book of some kind with me in case I get stuck somewhere. Give me a good book and something to knit and I can stave off boredom no matter what.

When I got my first Palm Pilot, one of the first applications I installed was eReader. I was thrilled to find that I could get ebooks and read them on the device; I became a frequent visitor to Fictionwise, buying mostly short stories and magazines--science fiction mostly--because the short format seemed more suited to reading on the small screen.

When the Amazon Kindle came out, I coveted it, but there was no way I could pay nearly $400 for it. Even when the price came down to around $350, it was still way out of my price range when it wasn't something that was strictly necessary. I could read ebooks on the Palm, after all.

Then the iPhone came out and I wanted one of those, too, but I didn't really need one . . . it wasn't until the second generation ones came out, and my job changed at work, that I really did need one. And there was eReader for the iPhone, and all of the books that I had purchased at Fictionwise and ereader.com could be transferred over, so now I could carry a library of a few hundred books with me on my phone. At that point I was glad that I hadn't bought a Kindle, since it would really just be another thing to carry around.

I know the screen is larger, and I'm sure the reading experience is better, but I figure it's probably not $350 better, and like I said, I don't really need something else to carry around.

And now, there's a Kindle application for the iPhone! The reading experience is pretty much the same as eReader, same size screen, after all, but the thing I really like about the Kindle app is the samples that you can get for free. I'll hear of a book that I might like to read, go find it on Amazon, and, assuming that it's available for Kindle (most recent books are), ask them to send me a free sample chapter, and I can instantly read it and see if I want to buy the book. That's huge for me -- one of the reasons I'll get books from the library rather than buy them is that I never know for sure (unless it's one of my favorite, known authors) whether it's something that I'll want to read or not.

If I get a book from the library, I can always read a chapter or two and, if I decide I don't like it, return it, with no hard feelings and no buyer's remorse. If I've bought a book, I feel compelled to finish it even if I don't care for it all that much. A sample chapter pretty much takes care of that problem.

I don't know for sure how many books I have on my iPhone right now, at least a hundred, probably more. Fictionwise runs a lot of sales, and quite often gives a 100% rebate on new titles, which is an excellent deal. They don't give you the money back, but credit it to your account, so you can buy more books for basically free. Last week I got a book from the library, "The Fallen," by Thomas Sniegoski. About halfway through the book, a paperback, there was a section of pages missing. I thought, well, I could try to request another copy from a different library, or I could see if I could find it in a bookstore, but oh heck, I just went to Fictionwise and bought it, downloaded it to my iPhone, and finished it that way.

In general, it takes me longer to read a book on eReader than it does a printed book, but I don't think that's all bad. I pay closer attention. I can't really skim. And I kind of like that. I read fewer books, but maybe I read them, and remember them, better.

I spent most of the morning today updating my Goodreads and LibraryThing lists, and then I worked on my I worked on my Amazon "A Store" for awhile. I'm trying to put up most of my favorite series books; I'm finding they're mostly paranormal mysteries, I guess that's where my interest lies lately. I read purely for enjoyment, and these books are, at least for me, a lot of fun.

I have a project in mind for knitters, and I would love it if any knitters out there would answer a short survey. Thank you!

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Facebook

When I was out at my folks' yesterday for Easter lunch, I mentioned that I'd seen pictures of a baby shower that one of my nieces had held for a friend of hers, and my mother asked me how, and I had to try to explain Facebook. I said I'd also seen pictures of them with my grand-niece, and showed them the pictures on my iPhone, and we ended up looking at all kinds of pictures. My dad, especially, was so intrigued. He's always been fascinated by technology.

I stole these pictures from my niece's Facebook page:

I also showed them pictures of my second cousin and said that she had posted things about music competitions that she was in and things like that. I never really thought I'd enjoy the "micro blogging" tools like Twitter and Facebook, but it turns out that I do, very much. It's fun to use it to keep in touch with friends, and to see what everyone else is doing. Social networking online. What a concept.

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Easter

I hadn't planned on doing anything special today, but my mom called and asked me to come out to lunch. Bob had to work today, so it was just me. We had a nice lunch, and I stayed out there a couple of hours, then came home. I normally would have stayed out there all afternoon, and maybe for dinner also, but I had a lot of stuff i wanted to accomplish today. I didn't really get a lot done, but I did make a batch of soap, and photographed and posted some new jewelry in the shop.

Bob had been using my cucumber-melon soap in the shower, and he was almost out, so I made him some more when I got home. I just made a small batch, but I thought to photograph it while I did. I've been writing some small "how to" articles at eHow, and I've wanted to do one about making melt-and-pour soap, so I can use these photos there, too.

It couldn't be simpler, really. I start out with a premade melt-and-pour base. There are several different kinds, but for this soap I used an avocado cucumber base.

You need something to use for a mold, a glass measuring cup to melt the soap in, color, and scent.

You cut the soap into pieces, pile it into the measuring cup, and melt it in the microwave. I usually set the timer for 60 seconds, take it out and stir it, then melt it for about 30 seconds more. It can take more or less, you just want to have all the chunks melted, but not boil the soap, so you need to take it slow.

Once the base is melted, add soap colorant and soap scent, or fragrance oils. In this case I'm using an already blended scent of cucumber-melon, since I already know that Bob likes it. I also used a "seafoam green" liquid colorant. Since the soap has already been colored white, any color you put in will result in a pastel color, but that's fine for this particular soap.

Then pour the soap into your mold, and that's it! If bubbles form on the top, spray with a little bit of rubbing alcohol, and they will pop. The bar in the bottom right looks odd because I waited to long to spray it and it had already formed a skin.

I'll leave the bars in the mold overnight, then in the morning I'll stick them in the freezer for ten minutes or so, then the bars will pop right out of the molds. After that, I'll probably let them dry for a couple of days before I give them to Bob to use. The longer they dry, the longer they'll last, i.e., they won't melt as quickly in water.

After I made the soap, I photographed some more jewelry that I made last week, and posted it in my Etsy shop. Most of the earrings I made were using some very cool ceramic beads that I'd had for awhile, mixed with my favorite silver discs. There are some things that I find that I love, and buy a lot of, and those silver discs are one of those things. I love them.

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Crazy weather

What a funny weekend! From the middle of last week, we kept hearing that we were going to get a snowstorm any day, but it seemed like it was going to miss us. The weather got cold toward the end of the week--much colder than it had been--but we didn't have much, if any, precipitation. We were thinking that the weather folks got it wrong, again.

Bob was going in to work at 1:00 on Saturday, so I wasn't in any hurry to leave the house. We got up fairly early and puttered around, then about the time that he went up to get ready for work, I laid down and fell asleep again. I woke up around 1:00 and looked outside--it was starting to rain. Even though I would have much preferred to stay home, I had to go out. I had to go to the post office to mail some Ebay and Etsy orders, and I had to pick up a book at the library. Those were my two main errands, with the post office being the most important.

By the time I had dressed and left the house, the rain was turning to freezing rain; the library building is being redone and is temporarily housed in a shopping center that has kind of a wind tunnel effect; when I was walking through the parking lot the sleet was hitting my face so hard it felt like little needles. Very uncomfortable.

The streets were getting slick, too. I spent a lot of time watching in my rear view mirror to be sure that the people behind me were going to stop. Not that I could control that, but I guess I just like to know . . . So I went to the library, and the post office, and the bank, and by now it was starting to snow. I needed to get some groceries, but that was really all I had to do, so I went to Target and figured I'd head straight home after that.

I was probably in Target about a half hour; by the time I came out it was practically a blizzard. I crept home, and was very glad to drive into the garage! It was only 3:30 or so, much earlier than I'm usually home on a Saturday, but I figured better safe than sorry. I took a bubble bath, put on my pajamas, and settled in for a quiet evening playing Second Life. I ran into a couple of friends and talked for awhile, then at 6:30 the lights went off. They came back on, then went off again, then came back on, but I figured I'd better shut the computer down just in case. I unplugged the power cord, and the cable modem, and then the power went back off, and this time it didn't come back on.

It was still light outside, and the snow magnified the light--I'd guess we must have gotten around 6 inches. It was beautiful, but weird -- snow like this in March, nearly April? The trees had already blossomed, I was a little worried about the pear tree in the front yard. I lit a bunch of candles, went upstairs and found a flashlight, got my phone, and waited to see what would happen. I had planned on cooking pasta for Bob when he got home at 9:30 or so, but if I didn't have any electricity, that wasn't going to happen. I figured I'd fix him a tuna sandwich or something if we didn't have power by the time he got home.

I couldn't quite figure out what to do with myself. I read for awhile on my iPhone, but I didn't want to drain the battery in case the power didn't come back on. I could have watched a DVD on the laptop, but same thing--I didn't want to drain the battery, although there wouldn't be much I could do with it anyway, if the power didn't come back on. Without power, the router wasn't working, so I guess it wouldn't have hurt anything to run it down. But I didn't like to do that.

I knew I had a booklight somewhere, but I couldn't remember where; reading with a flashlight was less than ideal. If I knew where any of Bob's headlamps were, I could have gotten one of those . . . It's just something that comes up so rarely, I wasn't really prepared. I did have a small flashlight in my purse, though, and knew right where to get it, so I wasn't completely unprepared.

I guess it was about 8:30 when the power came back on. I rushed into the kitchen to put the pasta on to boil, and brown some ground beef. I cooked the beef, threw in some tomato sauce and mushrooms, mixed in the pasta and put cheese on top, and stuck it in the oven. I figured even if the power went off again, if I could get the casserole at least heated up, Bob would have something to eat when he got home. But the power stayed on, we had dinner, and all was well.

The snow is almost completely gone by now. The trees don't look any the worse for wear, and I suppose the extra moisture will be good for the grass. I didn't leave the house at all today. I worked on Second Life stuff for awhile, then worked on marketing for the jewelry shop, making a FaceBook page and uploading a bunch of photo examples of my work. Then I sat down in front of the television and watched an old movie (Jane Fonda in "Sunday in New York") and made earrings. I'm kind of on a roll with the jewelry again, so I didn't want to stop.

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