Thinkig of installing this as it would make it easier to link to a page about whatever book I am reading.

The only thing is that I’ve always preferred to try to find a non-amazon link to the book (though I know the allconsuming ones I generally use will just link to Amazon themselves anyway) and I would prefer to support smaller bookstores.

It’s something to think about anyway.

Mostly just blogging at it because my bookmarks are a mess and I can’t seem to find most of the other plugins I was interested in. This way I can’t loose the link.

Just a few minutes ago I was watching Larry King interview Ron Reagan on CNN (I assume it must have been a rerun given the late hour and that a websearch I just did returned pages that already referred to things said during it). I do like the man. Ron Reagan I mean, though I have no dislike of Larry King either.

It made me sad to hear that he would never consider running for anything. This partly because I think he is a good and intelligent man and partly because of his reason. He says that as an athiest he has no chance of winning in any race. In a country that is partially based on separation of church and state…

One thing that caught my attention was an argument that he made in favor of stem cell research. He pointed out that no politician would ever dream of saying a thing against in vitro fertilization - not with so many couples struggling with infertility anyway - yet look at how many fertilized eggs are destroyed as a result of that.

I suppose that the difference is that you can point to the people are benifiting from in vitro fertilization now while there isn’t any individual that you can point to and say with 100% certainty that he or she will be helped by stem cell research. After all, he or she could step off the street and be hit by a bus before the research ever gets done, or he or she could die of whatever condition ails them, especially considering the roadblocks that are being put in the way of the research right now.

No one!

I’m still a just a permanent resident up here in Canada, so I can’t vote. If someone were to come up to me today and tell me that I could vote on Monday after all, I’m not sure that I would. I just plain don’t know enough about the system here yet or the candidates. I find it all a little confusing.

The scary part for me is that I am pretty sure that many people down in the US have no better understandng of our (um… our means US this time) government and the system than I have of the one up here in Canada right now, yet they still vote. I’m all for voting. I think everyone should vote. I just think that they should take the time to learn as much as they can about what they are voting for before they fill out a ballot. Those who don’t have a clue what they are talking about would do better to remain silent.

Anyway, if I could vote, this quiz (but where oh where is the Green Party?) tells me that I should vote for the NDP, which suits me just fine. I’d have to seriously consider the liberals if I could vote though. I think they are a little too full of themselves and need to be kicked down a few notches, but there is just too much going on right now that Stephen Harper is an the wrong side of, in my opinion, for me to not want to do everything possible to keep him out of office. Still, I probably would vote NDP.

Which is not to say that Stephen Harper is anything like George Bush. He isn’t. And if he should end up PM, he’s not going to lead our country straight to Hell the way GWB is taking the US. Not that he has a chance at becoming PM. Even if he does win the election barely, it’s my understanding that because of the whole minority government thing (which I still don’t understand completely) and because there is no one that he will be willing to compromise with to form a government, it’s just going to be one big mess.

This site (and they at least remembered to include the Green Party) is also a good one for finding out where each of the parties stands.

No one!

I’m still a just a permanent resident up here in Canada, so I can’t vote. If someone were to come up to me today and tell me that I could vote on Monday after all, I’m not sure that I would. I just plain don’t know enough about the system here yet or the candidates. I find it all a little confusing.

The scary part for me is that I am pretty sure that many people down in the US have no better understandng of our (um… our means US this time) government and the system than I have of the one up here in Canada right now, yet they still vote. I’m all for voting. I think everyone should vote. I just think that they should take the time to learn as much as they can about what they are voting for before they fill out a ballot. Those who don’t have a clue what they are talking about would do better to remain silent.

Anyway, if I could vote, this quiz (but where oh where is the Green Party?) tells me that I should vote for the NDP, which suits me just fine. I’d have to seriously consider the liberals if I could vote though. I think they are a little too full of themselves and need to be kicked down a few notches, but there is just too much going on right now that Stephen Harper is an the wrong side of, in my opinion, for me to not want to do everything possible to keep him out of office. Still, I probably would vote NDP.

Which is not to say that Stephen Harper is anything like George Bush. He isn’t. And if he should end up PM, he’s not going to lead our country straight to Hell the way GWB is taking the US. Not that he has a chance at becoming PM. Even if he does win the election barely, it’s my understanding that because of the whole minority government thing (which I still don’t understand completely) and because there is no one that he will be willing to compromise with to form a government, it’s just going to be one big mess.

This site (and they at least remembered to include the Green Party) is also a good one for finding out where each of the parties stands.

I think about it every once in a while - most often when Baby Girl has grabbed a fistful of hair and is yanking away with all her little might - but I could never bring myself to cut my hair.

You know why?

It doesn’t even have much to do with looks or style or anything. It’s just that if I ever were to cut it then I would no longer be able to experience the wonderful feeling of long hair brushing against bare shoulders.

This is what they would be singing..

(via Kellyne)

Yuck! Ick!

I swear, I just turned my back on her for like two seconds so I could check my email. The next thing I know I am hearing some banging from behind me, so I turn around to see what she was in to.

The office garbage can, it turned out. Worse, she’d pulled out a big clump of hair that I’d cleaned out of my hairbrush and was now happily sucking on it.

Ewwwww. I’m a terrible mother.

And now of course I just gave her my watch, which really isn’t that great of a toy for a baby, to play with to keep her happy for long enough for me to post this…

Borrowed from inkdot who I am sure borrowed it from someone else.

THE RULES:
1. Use fanfiction.net’s Search >> Story By Summary and look up your name in either Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. Because everyone knows that they are the fandoms with the highest Sue-quotient.

2. If there are any Mary Sues that share your name, pick the worst-sounding one and post the summary.

As if I could choose just one…

Here is my favorite from HP though:

ALERT: SLASH! Draco has hidden feelings for Harry and decides to take on the appearance of his autistic sister, Persephone, to woo the Boy Who Lived. Chapter three up!

(  )

Want to find The Murderhorn? Springfield Mystery Spot? The nearest Krusty Buger? Or are you just wondering where the Old Simpson Farm, Troy McClure’s house, or Duff Stadium (home of the Springfield Isotopes) might be?

Now you can with this great Guide to Springfield USA. Strangely enough, while I’ve found pretty much everything else I’ve looked for, I have yet to actually find the Simpson’s house on the map. I’m sure it must be there though.

Did anyone else see this segment on 20/20 a week or so ago?

Basically, the US government has released a new advertising campaign to promote breastfeeding. The ads were originally supposed to show pregnant women doing dangerous things followed by a list of statistics about the risks of not breastfeeding, that is, the risks of feeding formula. Now however the ads have been released with just the visuals and not the statistics. Strangely enough, this watering down occured after meetings with formula companies.

Among the original statistics, children who are not breastfed for six months exclusively are

(  )

Elena’s motercycle ride through Chernobyl - pictures and commentary

Chernobyl was an event. It’s a big fricken triangle on a timeline. It was a disaster and a horror story and a warning and a lesson to us all.

It’s not supposed to be an actual place that you can ride a motercycle through.

Somehow I hadn’t realized that it was still there. I mean, I know it is of course, and I remember the “ten years after” special section in National Geographic and all, but it’s just so easy to forget. Radiation levels won’t be safe for human inhabitation for six hundred years? That sort of thing can’t be real, can it? I sort of expected it to go away - the way the things in a book do when you shut the cover.

Viewing these pictures, I feel much the same as I do reading Oryx and Crake, which I have finally gotten into, by the by. Every once in a while I have to remind myself that this time it is real, this really happened, while the other is fiction. It’s like a splash of cold water in the face.

I don’t remember any of this being news. I don’t remember learning of it either, or ever not having known about it for that matter.

I would have been just a little past eight years old at the time. Challenger had exploded just a few months before when I was still seven and I do remember that - vague memories of watching it on the TV in my parent’s bedroom and not really understanding what it meant just knowing that a teacher had been part of the crew and I had a teacher at school - but I don’t remember Chernobyl.

Chernobyl has always been a part of history for me. It was never a current event.

Hence the cognitive dissonance - the knowledge that it happened yet the complete and utter failure to actually comprehend that it did. What would it be like to be a child playing in the deadly dust eight days or so after it happened without the slightest bit of knowledge that I was surrounded in poison? What would it be like to be a parent finding out that I should have taken my child and fled had only I had the knowledge the government kept secret? What would it be like to be a fireman responsing bravely but running into death with no knowledge that this wasn’t just another fire that could be fought and left behind as fires generally are?

Poison building up over years and generations of human carelesness I can understand. Such a change in the course of an instant I can’t.

I think that I can understand why some people chose to remain and live - or maybe die would be a better word - in the dead zone.

It’s a sobering wesbite, but a good one. Go take a look. Go take a lesson. Take a moment to remember.

So I was pregnant again, or so it would appear. Not just pregnant, but hugely pregnant, and thinking that things had progressed far enough that it was about time to head to the hospital. Even stranger: I was still up here with my husband, but the bed I was lying on was the top bunk of my old bunk bed which had been dismantled some years ago, and the room surounding me seemed to be that which I had grown up in.

I did have reason to think of that bunk bed last night. My parents have vague plans to drive up here with a van full of my stuff one of these days, and yesterday I randomly thought of that bed and wondered if I should ask them to bring it too for Munchkin to use when she is older.

Anyway, back in dreamland I remembered that it had only been nine months since my last baby, and while I suppose nine months might be possible in the most extraordinary cases, I knew that based on the events (or lack of certain events) in the weeks and maybe months following Munchkin’s birth, there was no darn way it was possible in mine.

Still, there I was at the hospital with no clear memory of how things had progressed. The examining doctor told me that it wasn’t a baby at all but some sort of tumor that I just had to get out and then I would be fine. The tumor turned out to be a rather bright shade of blue, and it looked like it was made out of pop-rocks or Nerds candy that someone had glued together.

I admit to being rather relieved that it wasn’t actually a baby. After all, how in the world could I care for a newborn and still spend my days chasing after my little hyperactive munchkin?

She loves being so mobile, she does. She’s into everything and anything. She’s so pleased that she can come to me now whenever she wants rather than having to fuss until I come to her. Of course she gets huggles whenever she wants and then some, though she had to wait a minute for me to dry off when she crawled into the bathroom to visit this morning while I was taking my shower.

Who would have thought the day would come when I am finding myself reluctant to pick up a book? Usually my problems lie in forcing myself to put on down in order to eat or sleep or accomplish any of the other mundane tasks that must be done in a day.

The past few days I have been finding one reason after another to avoid starting in on Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. Maybe I expect a little too much from this book having heard so many great things about it.

Maybe I’m a little intimidated by it. I still haven’t put myself completely back together yet from reading Fall on Your Knees, which completely tore me apart. I thought a dose of Fannie Flagg would fix me, so I’ve re-read Standing in the Rainbow since then, but it doesn’t seem to have done the trick. The thought of starting in on such a weighty dystopia right now is giving me a headache and making me feel oh so tired.

To cheer myself up, I just reserved The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams but it didn’t work. Instead now I’ve just grown sadder thinking about how he will never finish the book because he is dead.

Bugger.

Perhaps some Terry Pratchett would do the trick. If that doesn’t work, then I am really at a loss.

Another growth spurt has been completed, and so I’ve turned to moving the straps up another slot on Baby Girl’s car seat.

It’s a pretty simple task. I’m always amazed by the carseat though.

There is high quality crash tested plastic. There is EPS foam. There’s this and that safety feature, but when it comes down to it, there are just two loops of nylon webbing hooked over a metal yoke that hold my little girl in.

I’ve been feeling left out. Really, I have. Left out in the cold rain that is my sad little world and my pitiful existence without livejournal.

You see, everyone else has become one of those cool livejournal kids. I’m left being the geeky one still standing alone on the playground blogging on my own domain.

I did have a livejournal, but it remained empty. I used it pretty much so I could have the livejournals that I read compiled onto one handy friends page. I could have posted there, I suppose, if I wanted, but how could I abandon my darling domain? And I like having complete control of my site and design and of course my lovely skins which aren’t even up right now.

I could have posted some things in livejournal and some on my domain, but any time I’ve seen someone attempt that in the past, the non-livejournal blog always ended up sadly alone and abandoned.

And there they mocked my with their livejournal haughtiness passing around quizzes and memes like they were free! Leaving me cold and alone on my domain.

Then recently I switched my domain blog over from movabletype to wordpress which is another story of it’s own. This was the first step on my path to the way and the light. The second came the other night when I was glancing through wordpress’s support forums and discovered the handy dandy livejournal plugin pack.

Now I can post to my weblog and it will appear in my livejournal too! A link will even appear on the bottom of each livejournal post heading back to my blog.

Now I can be one of those cool livejournal kids and yet still maintain my integrity by blogging on my own domain! I can use livejournal tags and appear on other’s friends pages and laugh and sing because I am a livejournaler!

In short, my life is now perfect and I rock.

And.. umm.. yeah.. so my livejournal won’t be empty anymore. Unless I get tired of it.

And for those of you reading this in my weblog, please stay here as I like this verion better. However, if you really must, my livejournal is perseph.

This is a test. Feel free to ignore it and go about your normal business.

If you are nosy and really want to know what this test is about, if you will just die if I don’t tell you because your life is just that sad, you are out of luck. Sorry.

Um… actually, this is a test of the livejournal synch plugin for wordpress. If this appears in both my wordpress blog and my livejournal, then I will know that it is a success and my life will be validated because I will be able to post to both with one easy click of a button.

Just to make sure that I understand how to do extended entries…
(more…)

I read an article recently about a bunch of self-labeled activists who would be sitting out the coming election because after all each candidate is too far to the right for them and why vote when such a high government can’t possibly see all the way down to the needs of your community.

I remember three years and then some ago wanting to vote for Nader because I am that far left but not daring to do so as I lived in a state that was close close close. I remember hearing “a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush” from those cautioning against exactly what happened in the end (though the end result had quite a few twists and turns that no one could have imagined were coming) and hearing back that a vote for Gore might as well be a vote for Bush because there really was no difference between them.

Now I am wondering if those people are still thinking the same. I am particularly wondering about the Nader voters in Florida. Would Gore really have been just like Bush had he actually served as president the way one normally does after winning an election?

Would we be at war in Iraq making the world that much more a scary place to live in?

I don’t care if I have to vote for a lizzard to keep the wrong one from getting in - and did anyone just get the Douglas Adams reference.. Well, I do care, and I wish I could find a candidate that I truly believed in, but we do the best with what we have, so my vote will be counted.

Well now this is something I won’t have to worry about for a long time..

Except that I already sort of am in some ways..

But today my mother-in-law, who is British, suggested that we should send Baby Girl over to England for a year of school. Like as an exchange student when she is sixteen or so. This is because school over there is quite a bit different and they are more focused on personal development and less slaves to curriculum. This according to my mother-in-law who trained as a teacher over there but teaches over here.

This got me thinking firstly that I can’t believe she will ever be that old and secondly would be able to afford such a thing then and thirdly that school over here really does suck in so many ways.

One of these days (well, not one of these days, but someday within the next three years or so) I’m going to have to start researching all the options of how to make things the best for her.

I also started thinking that I really wish I had done at least a semester of exchange. I had my reasons why I never looked into it (re: my horse), but now I feel that my world experience is considerably less than it should be.

Well, not actually reading, but she’s been sitting happily just turning the pages of Pat the Bunny for a good ten minutes now.

What a big girl I have.

If she keeps up this interest in actually looking at a book, perhaps there is hope that someday soon I will be able to sit and read with her without it turning into one big fight as to whether or not we are going to read the book or eat it.