Greetings from warm, sunny California! Which is where I am, enjoying the company of the Panda, whom I had not seen since April.

We have only vague plans for the most part. Go to a winery (where I can partake of the wine-tasting, yey!). Go to a Zen Garden, because I have not been to in nearly a decade. We will go see various members of the clan who live in this state, including Rich Cousin Jacob* and Aunt Naomi. I have also been informed that while San Fransisco is Not Happening, we will do Los Angeles. So peoples, make suggestions! I can probably even swing IRL meetings if anyone is interested.

Whoo, jet-lagged. We started at five thirty in the morning, EST. From about 11 to 12 local time, we had an hour-long layover in, of all places, Las Vegas; I lost my slot-machine virginity and have decided that slots are the least interesting way to lose money. Now, it's not about four, PST, which puts me into hour fourteen today on slightly more than four hours of sleep, plus what I got on the plane.

Mmm, nap time now, I think.

*Who pays for this kind of thing.

Are killing me ded.

Wish me luck on the molecular and cell biology final, I needs it.

My Uncle Andy is dead. I was not particularly close to him, that branch of the family living in California, but . . . sudden. Cancer sucks. Medical complications suck.

So, MW is flying down to Florida to be with my grandmother.

That was the depressing. The Cute:

I live with three Chinese exchange students, who are apparently from Southern China and got snow, once, ten years ago. So when it snows, they all get dressed in jackets and go outside and dance around. It makes me stop and think and remember that nothing is common, and everything is a miracle.

This is from my molecular and cell biology class. Everything shown is to scale, showing the actions and movements of white blood cell proteins.



Isn't Science! cool?

Obligatory RvB Thanksgiving Day Special rewatch.

The Menu:
Pre-meal snacks including chopped bell peppers, celery, baby carrots, pita, a hummous
Salad
The Turkey
Stuffing (made by me!)
Tsimmus (it's made mostly of sweet potatoes)
The kind of cranberry sauce with raw cranberries and horseradish
The kind of cranberry sauce made of gelatinous goop
The kind of cranberry sauce made of gelatinous goop + cranberries
(at this point, someone said 'good' grief)
Grilled vegetables
Green beans with garlic
Chocolate cake
Pie

. . . and yes, there was more of everything.

Happy food-coma tan.

On a completely different subject, a new species of sentients has shown up in my head. They are interesting in that, while each individual is fairly smarts, they don't occur as individuals ever. They occur in groups of five to five dozen, and they have an overmind. Which is like a hive mind, but instead of one mind with thousands of bodies, it's like thousands of different minds with a telepathically-assisted direct democracy. Also, they have interesting physiology.

. . . now I need to figure out what to do with them. XD

So I figure that I ought to tell you people what I have been doing for the past two weeks, but I am not going to. Instead, I will deluge you with Science!

( So Don't Read this if You're Not Interested in Poison )

Isn't Science! cool? :D

This was an odd one, starting s it did with my family driving cross-country to visit a tourist attraction (in itself not unusual) that consisted mainly of a very pretty lake and some aggressively French gardens (which we have done IRL at least once) and degenerating somehow into a vampire horror flick. In which I defeated said vampires with towels and blueberries.

What I have learned: Anything which is a symbol of faith can defeat a vampire, even if it is not, strictly speaking, a religious symbol. Coolies.

Title: Pearl
Fandom: Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
Rating: G
Warnings: Long distance flirting.

( You Thought this Fic was Dead, Didn't You? )

Dun dun dunnnnnnn!

And ZOMG this did not want to be written. But I wrote it. Yey! And now you will all plz to comment. Plz?

So, I came back from a dream slowly, which means I came back with most of it intact. The dream told me to remember that the world is an amazing place, just by being itself; and if we need things like mystic gaia-forces and sekrit covenants of the Ebon Night, we're tripping over the answer while running around searching for it.

Then I have a fairly normal Caturday. I replayed most of PoP:Sot. I say most because I am determined this game not to die once-which means reload from save every time I do. The last little bit without insta-rewind powers, is hard this way >.<

JJ, who is a high school senior, went trick-or-treating, but with a twist: he asked for cans of food, which they were depositing at mobile drop station Sam's minivan, and which will be delivered tomorrow to the local food bank. There were, as I understand it, a number of five- or six-man teams around doing this in our neighborhood. Kudos, li'l bro!

Then we went to Carebear's party. Carebear's version of a wild party is: baking cupcakes. And it was awesome. With cream cheese frosting for extra nomability XD

Not I should really go to sleep, seeing as I have a lab report and food to be taking to some friends whose mother just died and a computer to be wiping and stuff. So good night, you intarwebz you!

So, I am in Kzoo. For those of you too lazy to look at a map of Michigan, this means that I had to drive across the state. I drove through quite a lot of rain, because it's autumn in the Midwest and that means Wet.

Anyway. There was this frog, that came out of its ditch probably because of how wet it is, and then I ran over it. This struck me as hilarious because of Frogger.

There were also some quite pretty cloud formations, painted pink by the setting sun, once I got through the rain.

The Boy is being unappreciative. But I have an Evil Plan (TM) to get even :3

I had one. It was looooooong, complicated, and not something I have the time to transcribe here just yet. However, two important things:

1. Child, what you ask is not a small thing.
Lord, there is now a free firebird.
. . . that is worth everything.

2. The Puck is apparently a changeling. It explains a lot. Also, his home is populated by its powers. And there was a Wild Hunt. Yes.

Halp. I needs it. With inorganic chemistries. The naming is fairly simple, and the isomers, while more difficult, still make sense. I run into problems when we hit matrices and started to predict IR spectra. Well, no. It's these Character table things that make no damn sense. If anyone out there would be so kind as to explain this shit, I'd write a drabble or shortfic.

With that out of the way, I can tell everyone about my new phone. The most important feature as far as I was concerned was the flip top, which will hopefully prevent me from randomly calling people when it is in my pocket. Other features include bigger buttons which the phone actually registers on the first try, and total lack of antenna. I have named her (she's small and cute) Imnwy. And she was only twenty bucks, which is pretty good for a new phone. \o/

Brian D, who is friggin' genius and nerdy enough to have thrown a party when CERN tried to blow up the planet, is now going to grad school in Florida*. But he came back up to the frigid North so as to help his parents move. And then this happened.

Katie: You know, I don't have your phone number.
Brian: I'll fix that. [takes Katie's phone] How does this work?
Katie: I don't know!

* He'd probably be at Southern Technical Florida University, if it existed.

So, the singing of songs was done, the Horah was danced (with the Torah), an then the Torah was duly rewound so we can begin rereading it. Again.

For a review of weird Simchat Torah customs, go here. However, I seem in that post to have completely neglected to mention two additional weird facts:

1. When doing Hakafot, you take all the Torahs out of the ark* and dance with them. On most weeks, you only take one out to read from, and on holidays you might take as many as three; it has to do with where in the book the holiday readings are, since they tend to not occur right next to each other and making people wait while while you search isn't very nice. Anyway.

Most Shuls these days have more than three Torahs, with seven being a pretty common number. And for Simchat Torah, you take all of them out to dance. No one is supposed to carry a Torah for more than one Hakafa. If you went back and read the stuff about Hakafot, you will realize this requires at least forty-nine people above the age of Bar/Bat Mitzvah.

And in fact, more often than not this means that you have upwards of one hundred people dancing. This being a Jewish event, we are dancing the Horah. But also we dance a song that basically goes, "The Nation of Israel still exists, neener neener," and another that goes, "Yey Water!"

And of course, being a Jewish event, there is food.

2. The flags. They are made of a foam flagpole and cheap but brightly colored plastic, and they are given to the children to celebrate. In theory, the children wave them. In practice, the children promptly rip off the flag bit and start hitting each other with the foam, which makes great play swords.

. . . yeah. Fun holiday :D

* Not the Ark of the Covenant. It's basically a big standing wooden box in which we store Torahs.

And in other news, it's still Sukkot. I thought I'd share a bit of humor from JJ with all you people.

JJ has a pretty wooden box with foam inserts, whose purpose is to carry the etrog. This is important because of the laws for Kosher etrogs*. If the little stem bit at the top is broken off, the etrog is no longer Kosher and cannot be used. JJ and I, being geeks, naturally decided that this was a Box of +1 Etrog Holding.

Then he took it up to eleven and decided that if you were in possession of a full Box of +1 Etrog Holding and a lulav at the same time, you can use them as reagents to perform Summon: God.

. . . this should tell you something about JJ. Possibly, me posting it should tell you something about me.

*Not Kosher in the sense of eating it, Kosher in the sense of using it in ceremonies.

I turned 21 today. \o/

And then I had a kahlua and cream. I like cream, and I like coffee-flavored candies (although not the coffee itself) so I figured it would be okay. But it was icky and not good at all and next time I'm going to have straight Rum and Coke, or a Tootsie Roll, or Vandermint. I likes my sugars.

So we were discussing alcohol, and my ability to purchase it, and JJ started talking about Cosmos. He finished with, "And it will make you stupid."

Me: How is that different from any other alcoholic drink?
JJ: . . .
Me: So what you are saying is it makes you stupid faster.
JJ: . . .
MW: [laughs]

Of course, since the actual consumption has never at any point in my life been limited, and since I take after MW in that alcohol makes me pass out on the nearest horizontal surface before I can actually get drunk, this doesn't really change much. Still, I only turn 21 once, and it's all downhill from here.

I'm not sure if you use the recipe gadget for iGoogle, but this popped up today. It's about gluten-free cooking and links a site with some recipes that I might even want to try. I thought I'd share:

http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/cooking_gluten-free/

That's all.

And all is right with the world.

Hey anybody out there, I have time in the next two days. Thus, it is drabblefest time! Thus: fandom, character or pairing, and prompt. The prompt must be a kind of vegetable matter. Fruits count. Trees count. Rare and precious herbs count. Metamorphic rock does not count.

Go!

I thought I'd share a little tidbit about the Day of Repentance. Well, venting and a tidbit.

Venting (you can skip this if you want):

We got to Shul at 10 AM. The service started (I believe) at 9 AM. When we left, at 2:30, they were still (probably) ninety minutes from finishing. Services start again at 5:15, only it gets worse with Ne'ila; instead of sitting and listening to the cantor chant the prayers as slowly as possible, you get to stand (from, let me remind you, 5:15) and listen to the cantor chant the prayers as slowly as possible. This lasts until about 8:00 (yes, you read that right, three hours of standing) when we do Havdalah*.

This is normal for Yom Kippur.

ETA: I told a lie. In fact we had a quite normal evening service immediately prior to the very long Ne'lia service. This would be less ridiculous if the services did not involve exactly the same prayers, in the same order, proving that Ne'ila could be done in half the time without the chanting 9.9

Tidbit:

On Yom Kippur, you are supposed to be repenting of all your sins. This means that you're supposed to wear white, to show your purity. I generally wear black, because I feel it's more sincere to wear something reflecting the actual state of my soul. Also, you're not supposed to wear leather. This makes sense, because if you're trying to be pure, wearing bits of dead animal is not going to endear you to anybody. I therefore own a pair of canvas sneakers, which I wear for about twelve hours a year. I expect them to last me pretty much the rest of my natural life.

And now, to take a nap before hauling myself off to Ne'ila.

*Havdalah: A short service that occurs at the end of holidays, mostly to serve as a spiritual divider between holy and not-holy.

So my journal is all dressed up for autumn. I played around with Flexible Squares, but I can't make extra blurb boxes without paying LJ, and I take it as matter of pride that I can do this on a free basic account with some added CSS. Still, colors are easy enough. Maybe I will play around more with other layouts later.

Yom Kippur, aka the Day of Repentance, aka the holiest day of the year, aka the worst holiday ever starts tonight at sunset. Wish me an easy fast, all. And I wish the same to those of you who are Jewish and will be fasting.