Chikuru

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abeyance: suspension; temporary cessation.

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Red Meat for Saturday, November 07, 2009

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091106.html

A familiar sight to sky enthusiasts with even a small telescope,

Most of the kids I went to school with had braces at some point or another.  They all complained about them.  I wish I'd been so lucky.  My teeth have always been reasonably straight (with the exception of my bottom teeth but they're not that noticeable most of the time and they're not too terribly bad), but what I did (and do still somewhat have) was an overbite.

My dad took me to the orthodontist just before 7th grade (or maybe 8th), and I prepared myself for the fact that I might have to get braces.  When the doctor said I didn't need braces, my excitement was short-lived.  He pulled out a model of something that proved to be far worse.  A crazy large retainer-type thing called the Bionator.  This, he explained, was what would mold my jaw and pull my lower teeth forward.   At first I would need to wear 24x7 except when eating or brushing my teeth.    Day and night with a huge piece of plastic in my mouth.

Here was the problem....as previously mentioned, it was huge!  It wasn't one of those small things that are placed under the tongue or that are glued to the roof of the mouth and are fairly unobtrusive.  No...it took up my whole mouth.  Here....here's a picture...



Now imagine trying to talk to people with this thing in your mouth.  I was somehow supposed to manage participating in classroom discussions and socialize with my classmates while wearing the equivalent of a mouth guard.  As you might've guessed, this didn't go over too well with my already vicious junior high classmates (not that mine were particular vicious...just that junior high is when kids are really just rotten to one another).  My friends suggested that I spit it out before answering a question in class.  GROSS!   I saw people spit out their retainers at lunch-time and cover them up with napkins...was there really no more discreet way of doing that!?!  I was mocked for not washing my hair every day by these same people--a fact that wasn't lost on me at the time, but my parents were adamant that we not be mean.

Forget it, unless I got called on, I wasn't talking.  And teachers grew weary of listening to me try to talk through that thing and stopped calling on me.  The orthodontist promised that I would get used to it and learn how to talk with it.  Clearly he was a sadistic liar.

Daytime was definitely the worst, but night time also met with challenges.  For you see, my subconscious didn't really care for having something in my mouth while I slept.  I would invariably spit it out every night.  This resulted in the daily morning ritual of searching for my Bionator.  Sometimes still in the bed, sometimes on the floor, sometimes behind the bed or nightstand.  Every so often...across the floor on the other side of the room.   I stepped on it more than once when getting out of bed, but luckily never broke it--I don't know how much it cost, but I'm sure it was very expensive.

And then my orthodontist would yell at me for not wearing it enough.

After months of doubting my claims that I spit it out (come on--was that really such a rare problem?), he added four braces brackets to each side of my mouth so that I could put rubber bands in my mouth to keep the stupid thing in there.  Making it so that not only did I have to wear this silly thing but I still had to take on the pain and frustration of braces. 

Somehow I still managed to spit it out while I slept, but just not as often, and it wouldn't get nearly as far.  Sometimes I would awaken in the middle of the night with it halfway out of my mouth...or still in my mouth, but all crooked--that was comfortable.

I can thank heaven for some small favors...at least I wasn't prescribed the Frankel Applicance.  I weep for those kids--I'm pretty well convinced that the person who came up with the SAW movies had to wear one of these when he was a kid:

Thus twoth TooManyTribbles, anyway.

I'm ashamed to confess I didn't even realize that the First (hopefully) Annual Carl Sagan Day was upon us. Or will be tomorrow, the 7th, anyway.

But that's the nice thing about holidays and other special occasions.  Just tack an "eve" on the end, and you get two excuses to party for the price of one. \0/

So take a moment to light a candle in the darkness, or watch an old episode of Cosmos, or read one of his nifty books.  Or puff on a fat ol' doobie, 'cause I'm pretty sure he'd have liked that, too.

It's amazing what you can accomplish when you have a real passion for something.

A little hackneyed, you say? Let's see if I can make it a little more amusing by adding another equally true observation: our cat has a passion for bathroom tissue.

It started with the usual kitten antic of unrolling the rolls all over the floor. We tried reversing the rolls. That took her about five minutes to figure out, then it was all over the floor again.

Then I got inventive. I made a little two-ring adjustable strap to fasten the roll so that it couldn't be unrolled. It could be tightened as needed as the roll became smaller, and human hands could easily shift it to one side when the roll was needed. This did defeat her for awhile, and I was very pleased with myself about the elegance of this solution.

Alas, there were two problems with it. First, humans forget, and cats are quick to take advantage of that forgetfulness. In other words, the strap would sometimes be left on the side, with predictable results. Second, our little feline genius soon discovered that even when she couldn't unroll it, she could claw the edges of the roll to a delightfully dramatic fluffiness.

We finally resorted to hiding the tissue in the cabinet under the sink. That worked for several days... then I found a mauled roll among the shoes by the front door.

I'll be childproofing the cabinets next week.

And now for an informational post. I like these kinds of posts the way I like filling in bubbles at the top of a standardized test. It's sort of rote, the entry of such trivia, the black and white of one's name, SSN, etc. But in this calm-before-the-storm, the time before the test when, for just a few moments, there are no wrong answers - just the facts - there is a lovely, low-stakes serenity. So...

I filled up my car's gas tank last week, and calculated my mileage: 42.3pmg. Pretty good!

After about a month off (I waited a few weeks before renewing my CSA share) I picked up my veggies the night before last. There's still plenty of stuff, i.e. Texas fields are still turning out much delicious produce, but it  has calmed a bit from the summer craziness. Here's what I got: bag of arugula (which I now keep because I like it in soup, and in that form it doesn't cause what I think is a mild allergic reaction to the raw stuff), bunch of kale; about 1kg sweet potatoes; about 0.7kg tomatoes; 2 eggplant (sm-med); a crapload of hot peppers (serrano, jalapeno, and others I can't identify); a smallish (thankfully) bag of okra; 4 kohlrabi; 1 bunch radishes (5 lovely red orbs w/greens still attached). 

I've already made: arugula soup (tasty but not as good as when I included potato), a kohlrabi/radish green soup (the kohlrabi gives a lovely creaminess), and steamed pumpkin (I still had a rather large orange pumpkin-like thing from last pickup). The latter was DELICIOUS; I had it for breakfast and will hope to bake something with it. I may make a stew, as mbt001 and her husband did, but I am loving the pumpkin just as it is, too.

Other exciting news: There is cheese-making in my future... for my bday I got some supplies (enzymes, cheese salt, a book, non-reactive double boiler/stock pots, a curd knife) as a gift from my friend L. My first attempt will be mozzarella (just as soon as I am finished with the cheese I have opened now; I also intend to try ricotta, and then move on to cottage cheese. Fun with fermentation!!  I do intend to stick with fresh/young cheeses, as making any sort of hard cheese would be very difficult in Texas without a special fridge kept at the proper temperature. It's too warm here for making hard cheeses.  Or for sprouting, for that matter.

http://www.bunny-comic.com/1441.html

Today's XKCD got me thinking.

Oh, there's a wallpaper of this one. Hopefully there will be wallpapers and prints of other recent comics as well, but we'll see.

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http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/archive/2009/11/06.html

felicitous: apt or appropriate; also, delightful.

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http://xkcd.com/659/

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091105.html

Halloween s Moon

There was a mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas today. At least twelve people were killed and many more were wounded. A cousin of mine posted about it on Facebook and expressed concern about a friend who lives there. "What's wrong with people?" she added.

But the sad fact of the matter is that, on a planet of six or seven billion people, it is statistically certain that some will be broken, and a few will be very badly broken indeed. We can look for early warning signs and try to avert individual incidents, but we can no more cure the whole problem than we can eradicate tornados and tidal waves. Crimes will happen; even horrific and senseless crimes will happen from time to time. It's a built-in hazard of the miraculous, fertile chaos that is humanity.

None of which is likely to comfort the wounded or the family and friends of those who were killed, of course. Sorrow is appropriate -- just maybe not rage.

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Fun movie.  Believable, in the sense that if you spend much time in the martial arts it's not hard to meet (or become) guys like the ones portrayed in the movie. Not believable, in the sense that I just can't buy Ewan MacGregor as a nebbish twit---he always looks like he's on the verge of shagging your sister.  Sweet, in a Hollywood kind of way.

( Flawed, in a Hollywood kind of way. )

Here's what's not so fun. The Iraqi army has been using fake equipment to search for explosives at security checkpoints. They're basically dowsing for bombs, and it doesn't work. Is it just me, or is dowsing for bombs an awful lot like remote-viewing for terrorists?

Anyway, here's a nice interview with Jon Ronson, who wrote The Men Who Stare At Goats. It sounds like the book is more serious than the movie, and it might be worth a read.

http://www.bunny-comic.com/1440.html

I apologise if this comic makes your eyes explode.

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http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/archive/2009/11/05.html

maunder: to talk or wander aimlessly.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091104.html

Our Sun may look like all soft and fluffy, but it's not.

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