Here's a delightful animated short from a young Russian director, Anastasia Zhuravleva. Buttons are the featured players, but Miss Floss and her papparazzi make an appearance, too.
Mind the Gap!
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Social Butterfly
So, here's my whirlwind week ... well, okay, 3 day whirl out of 4, cuz I took Sunday off. Heh.
NY WRITE-A-THON
What a wonderful way to spend a Saturday, ensconced inside a venerable old library! The Library of The General Society of Mechanics & Tradesmen (est. 1820) is in a very ordinary-looking building at 20 West 44th Street ... but inside its character really shows. According to a brochure I picked up there, the library once functioned, until the founding of the NY public library system, as the largest free circulating library in the city. And to think I've lived in NYC for 40 years and never knew about it! These days it is still open to the public, but by subscription.
So I spent the day writing and writing and writing till my hand started to hurt (!!) ... and kept on writing anyway. I started with a workshop, there was a break for lunch, and another break for the guest speaker, Chris Baty, the founder of National Novel Writing Month. He was a delightful speaker, very funny and very inspiring. Afterwards, I sat across from him at a table, noting the "I'll sleep in December" sticker on his laptop (NaNoWriMo is in November), and I managed a fangirl hiya and told him how my friend John who wasn't at the 'Thon had introduced me to NaNoWriMo a while back ... and, while I'd never managed to complete the challenge, I vowed that this year would be the year. He grinned, we shook hands, it was a great end to the day. Oh, and I'd raised enough $$ to win a subscription to the Bellevue Literary Journal, which I had a copy of that I read on the way home and found to contain *excellent* work. So I was pleased, and I can't thank my sponsors enough!
SCIENCE SOIREE
Another day (Monday), another Library, this time the Science and Business Library at 34th Street and Madison. This was the 4th and last in a series sponsored by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories. I'd been to the first and found it interesting, so was glad I could make it to this last one ... it was about research into birdsong in an effort to understand language (umm ... right). I was mostly annoyed, this time, by the lecture, but by the time they got to the business at hand, I had already been awed: introducing the speaker was none other than Mr. DNA himself, Dr. James Watson! Now I didn't speak to him at all, but I did stand mere inches away from him, and let me tell you that was as much a thrill to this fangirl as was sitting behind Arlo Guthrie at the film festival.
Man, I love New York.
INDESIGN USERS GROUP
Another day (Tuesday) and this butterfly wasn't finished flitting yet. My first Users Group meeting, I was enticed by a chance to meet some fellow users (shop talk!) and to win the new Adobe CS3 suite. So I chatted with some folks, got a Mac techie recommendation (as opposed to using TekServe, which folks there apparently generally considered a pain), sat through a demo of XML (fellow kept saying "now here's the WOW factor ... ooops ... let me try that again"), enjoyed a presentation by a fellow who does a regular podcast (made me wish I had a 'pod' to watch 'casts on), and didn't win a thing, not even one of the books on offer much less the software. And no fangirl sightings. But a worthwhile evening nevertheless.
So now I'm spending the rest of the week resting up.
NY WRITE-A-THON
What a wonderful way to spend a Saturday, ensconced inside a venerable old library! The Library of The General Society of Mechanics & Tradesmen (est. 1820) is in a very ordinary-looking building at 20 West 44th Street ... but inside its character really shows. According to a brochure I picked up there, the library once functioned, until the founding of the NY public library system, as the largest free circulating library in the city. And to think I've lived in NYC for 40 years and never knew about it! These days it is still open to the public, but by subscription.
So I spent the day writing and writing and writing till my hand started to hurt (!!) ... and kept on writing anyway. I started with a workshop, there was a break for lunch, and another break for the guest speaker, Chris Baty, the founder of National Novel Writing Month. He was a delightful speaker, very funny and very inspiring. Afterwards, I sat across from him at a table, noting the "I'll sleep in December" sticker on his laptop (NaNoWriMo is in November), and I managed a fangirl hiya and told him how my friend John who wasn't at the 'Thon had introduced me to NaNoWriMo a while back ... and, while I'd never managed to complete the challenge, I vowed that this year would be the year. He grinned, we shook hands, it was a great end to the day. Oh, and I'd raised enough $$ to win a subscription to the Bellevue Literary Journal, which I had a copy of that I read on the way home and found to contain *excellent* work. So I was pleased, and I can't thank my sponsors enough!
SCIENCE SOIREE
Another day (Monday), another Library, this time the Science and Business Library at 34th Street and Madison. This was the 4th and last in a series sponsored by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories. I'd been to the first and found it interesting, so was glad I could make it to this last one ... it was about research into birdsong in an effort to understand language (umm ... right). I was mostly annoyed, this time, by the lecture, but by the time they got to the business at hand, I had already been awed: introducing the speaker was none other than Mr. DNA himself, Dr. James Watson! Now I didn't speak to him at all, but I did stand mere inches away from him, and let me tell you that was as much a thrill to this fangirl as was sitting behind Arlo Guthrie at the film festival.
Man, I love New York.
INDESIGN USERS GROUP
Another day (Tuesday) and this butterfly wasn't finished flitting yet. My first Users Group meeting, I was enticed by a chance to meet some fellow users (shop talk!) and to win the new Adobe CS3 suite. So I chatted with some folks, got a Mac techie recommendation (as opposed to using TekServe, which folks there apparently generally considered a pain), sat through a demo of XML (fellow kept saying "now here's the WOW factor ... ooops ... let me try that again"), enjoyed a presentation by a fellow who does a regular podcast (made me wish I had a 'pod' to watch 'casts on), and didn't win a thing, not even one of the books on offer much less the software. And no fangirl sightings. But a worthwhile evening nevertheless.
So now I'm spending the rest of the week resting up.
Monday, June 11, 2007
I've Been Tagged
I'm taking up Cynthia's challenge to post 8 random things about myself:
1. I usually wake up at 5 a.m. to the sound of birds singing / chirping / chattering. It's quite a cacophony, and I enjoy it.
2. On many Sundays, I sleep till noon. I don't know why I seem to need to do that, nor how my body "knows" it's Sunday.
3. I dislike make-up and never wear any.
4. Often when I come home, I leave the mail in the mailbox and grab it in the morning instead. In the morning, I can deal with things. By the time I return home at the end of the day, I just want to hide.
5. When I'm not thinking of anything in particular, my mind keeps busy by counting. I often catch it counting. Often to song.
6. Deadlines. Give me a deadline and I'm all action. No deadline? You have a long wait. Alas.
7. There are monkeys in my house. Also robots, a wizard, a Mr. Spock doll, and a big stuffed grinning Hershey's Kiss.
8. My eyes are blue.
This is part of an ongoing Meme. The rules of the Meme are:
1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves
2. People who are tagged write a blog post about their own 8 random things and post these rules
3. At the end of your blog you need to tag 8 people and post their names
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment and tell them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
Like Cynthia, I don't have 8 people to tag. Let's see ... who do I know?
Marianne G
and a couple of folks who don't have blogs. Well, John has, but not one appropriate for tagging:
JohnH
Penny
Well, maybe someone will drop by and post their 8.
1. I usually wake up at 5 a.m. to the sound of birds singing / chirping / chattering. It's quite a cacophony, and I enjoy it.
2. On many Sundays, I sleep till noon. I don't know why I seem to need to do that, nor how my body "knows" it's Sunday.
3. I dislike make-up and never wear any.
4. Often when I come home, I leave the mail in the mailbox and grab it in the morning instead. In the morning, I can deal with things. By the time I return home at the end of the day, I just want to hide.
5. When I'm not thinking of anything in particular, my mind keeps busy by counting. I often catch it counting. Often to song.
6. Deadlines. Give me a deadline and I'm all action. No deadline? You have a long wait. Alas.
7. There are monkeys in my house. Also robots, a wizard, a Mr. Spock doll, and a big stuffed grinning Hershey's Kiss.
8. My eyes are blue.
This is part of an ongoing Meme. The rules of the Meme are:
1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves
2. People who are tagged write a blog post about their own 8 random things and post these rules
3. At the end of your blog you need to tag 8 people and post their names
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment and tell them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
Like Cynthia, I don't have 8 people to tag. Let's see ... who do I know?
Marianne G
and a couple of folks who don't have blogs. Well, John has, but not one appropriate for tagging:
JohnH
Penny
Well, maybe someone will drop by and post their 8.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
On The Wagon
The wake-up call was a sudden sharp pain in my lower left leg, every single time I took a step. My instinct was to walk through it, but two days later I was still walking even more slowly (far more slowly) than I usually do. Then on the third day I tried hurrying to hop on a subway train before the door closed ... well, let me tell you, the pain brought on by that little maneuver was excruciating, stopping me dead in my tracks. The train went on without me while I hobbled to a bench to await the next one.
So off I went to the Internet to scope out this thing ... and, bingo, first hit I had the answer: there was either a bloodclot or a constricted vein. Super scarey and of course the first advice was to hie one's sorry self to one's friendly physician for a correct diagnosis and appropriate medication. Just exactly what I avoid like the plague. So I read further:
1) Stop smoking. Immediately. (But this is a vice I have never had. Lucky, wise ole me.)
2) Walk through the pain, and your body, your wonderful otherwise healthy body, will build a workaround for itself so that, with diligence, walking will once again be pain free. (Okay, this I can just keep on doing.)
And the third component? Other than medication? It comes something like this: Hey, dodo, what have you been eating lately? Whatever happened to those good intentions, those lovely salads, fruits, veggies, good whole-grain carbs and so on? Hmmmm?
Well, I'd been sort of back on the diet wagon for a week or so before this all happened, but obviously not to the extent I should have been. Too little too late? Off I went again to the Internet and once again, bingo, first hit I had an answer. Her name is Anne Collins, and let me tell you, I am soooo happy I found her and her site: http://www.annecollins.com
Not to be a shill or anything, but hey. This is the most sensible weight-loss resource I've ever come across ... and the cost is an amazing $20 per year, that's per YEAR, folks, not per month, although even so it took me a couple of days before I parted with that princely sum to gain access to the diet plans and the forum.
Did I say diet plans? Yes, I did. Nine of them, and each one a complete sensible program in and of itself. Honestly, did you ever buy a diet book? What did you pay? How about $20 for nine diet books? And just cuz these are e-books doesn't mean they are skimpy or lacking in any way. And why nine? Different strokes for different folks ... do one, do them all, mix and match, depending on your needs. And they come with access to an online forum, diet tips that aren't just one-line aphorisms that you can already recite in your sleep, and honest, down to earth, personalized one-on-one help if you need it.
I'm blown away. Best dang $20 I ever spent in my life.
And, oh yes, that leg pain? Took two and a half weeks, but I'm walking normally now, the pain has completely disappeared. No doctor's visit, no medications, just continued walking and healthy eating. I'm sold!
So off I went to the Internet to scope out this thing ... and, bingo, first hit I had the answer: there was either a bloodclot or a constricted vein. Super scarey and of course the first advice was to hie one's sorry self to one's friendly physician for a correct diagnosis and appropriate medication. Just exactly what I avoid like the plague. So I read further:
1) Stop smoking. Immediately. (But this is a vice I have never had. Lucky, wise ole me.)
2) Walk through the pain, and your body, your wonderful otherwise healthy body, will build a workaround for itself so that, with diligence, walking will once again be pain free. (Okay, this I can just keep on doing.)
And the third component? Other than medication? It comes something like this: Hey, dodo, what have you been eating lately? Whatever happened to those good intentions, those lovely salads, fruits, veggies, good whole-grain carbs and so on? Hmmmm?
Well, I'd been sort of back on the diet wagon for a week or so before this all happened, but obviously not to the extent I should have been. Too little too late? Off I went again to the Internet and once again, bingo, first hit I had an answer. Her name is Anne Collins, and let me tell you, I am soooo happy I found her and her site: http://www.annecollins.com
Not to be a shill or anything, but hey. This is the most sensible weight-loss resource I've ever come across ... and the cost is an amazing $20 per year, that's per YEAR, folks, not per month, although even so it took me a couple of days before I parted with that princely sum to gain access to the diet plans and the forum.
Did I say diet plans? Yes, I did. Nine of them, and each one a complete sensible program in and of itself. Honestly, did you ever buy a diet book? What did you pay? How about $20 for nine diet books? And just cuz these are e-books doesn't mean they are skimpy or lacking in any way. And why nine? Different strokes for different folks ... do one, do them all, mix and match, depending on your needs. And they come with access to an online forum, diet tips that aren't just one-line aphorisms that you can already recite in your sleep, and honest, down to earth, personalized one-on-one help if you need it.
I'm blown away. Best dang $20 I ever spent in my life.
And, oh yes, that leg pain? Took two and a half weeks, but I'm walking normally now, the pain has completely disappeared. No doctor's visit, no medications, just continued walking and healthy eating. I'm sold!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
