Sigh...

It's the Sunday before Christmas, the sun is shining, it's warm, there's blue sky.

And I'm about to climb into the attic to try to figure out why the bathroom fan is dripping water.

wheee....

Walkies

I've been heading up into McDonald Forest with Hazel, up road 6021, trying to find new ways to get elevation into the walk to make it a good workout. The trails I'd used in the fall are way to wet and slippery, so I'm mostly confined to roads.

The weather has been pretty nice lately. I happened to drive through a rainstorm on Tuesday to get to the trail-head with pretty much blue skies. On the last two trips I've taken the camera and here are some shots.

The fog started lifting today, and the sun started to shine.

Here we head off the road and walk through the grasslands.

Spiderwebs abound, luckily you can see them before running into them.

A ways off the road you enter some other world. We trekked right across this looking for other exciting places to hike. Hazel bounded down these hills like some wild downhill mountain biker.

In the drier times the grass is higher than Hazel. She still loves to ripsnort around the grass even though it's all laying down.

Can we keep going?

Headaches, part 2

Simone had another headache today. Just a little one, behind the eyebrow.

She said, "my brain is biting, biting, biting me."

This one didn't peek out her nose, but came up from her stomach, through her throat and into her brain.

It was very cute, not at all the disturbing sense that I'm getting now that I'm typing this...

A Hat!

A hat, I knit my very first hat.

It's for Miles' and Robie's baby girl (due end of January). Simone had a hat very much like this one, and people think this style is very cute. Not bad for my first non-washcloth project.

And now on to my next project - a mobius strip!

Tweet!

Simone has some new pajamas.

I noticed that one of them has a cute little purple bird on the shirt, shaped kind of like a paisley.

And it's saying "tweet. tweet."

I think it's her first geek shirt, it's a twitter shirt in disguise.

I was hoping her first geek shirt would be about Emacs, or xkcd.

Advent Spiral Walk

This week at preschool we had the Advent Spiral Walk. It's a beautiful way to celebrate Advent. Each of the kids (then the parents) walk with a candle into the center of the spiral, light it, and then walk out, placing the candle somewhere along the path coming out. A lady plays songs on a cello the whole time. The kids love it.

Some of the kids walk fast, some shuffle along, last year one of the kids walked with super slow and exaggerated steps (like a cartoon character trying overly hard to be quiet). Simone walked in very peacefully, lit the candle, walked out a ways and placed the candle. Then she proceeded to do spins, arabesques, and other ballet moves the rest of the way out. It was awesome.

Simone Update

Her favorite stuffed animal is "KittyCat" (or "Daisy" when her name comes out). And just the other day, Simone gave KittyCat a bath. KittyCat's nose is pink! Who knew?

Simone is climbing bunches. On the couch, on the chair, on me (when I crouch down to put something away).

Oooh, and she's ringing the doorbell right now. Gotta run.

Edited to add: Upon coming in, she started climbing on me.

Doodling In Math Class

I saw this page and was blown away by the doodles and Vi Hart's humor and explanation of the intricacies of math and doodles. They're well worth the watch.

(hat tip Ze Frank)

Random Thoughts

Corvallis has been smelling of cigars lately. Very odd.

I've recently seen a couple of people defend/promote vegetarianism on the argument that it's immoral to eat animals, for they are animals with the same right to live as humans. Usually bolstering the argument with the fact that most meat/eggs/dairy is produced in a CAFO setting (akin to torture, with which I agree). I understand that, but why differentiate between animals and plants? Are plants not as alive as animals? Shouldn't they be accorded the same rights?

Plants are the tallest organisms (trees), oldest (trees), largest by area (fungus), etc.

It seems kind of arbitrary.

Terrorism

Recently I read this article: Schneier on Security: Close the Washington Monument, which (more or less) leads off with:

I think we should close the monument entirely. Let it stand, empty and inaccessible, as a monument to our fears.

The actions we've taken to make ourselves more "secure" just feel like theater, or at best, crude political overtures in order to get funding/be re-elected.

I've found these articles to be somewhat sobering, and I hope that people in power start to read this kind of thing and take a few steps back toward thinking rationally.

• "Don't Be an Ass About Airport Security" - Christopher Hitchens
• "Full Body Scanners: What's Next?" - Bruce Schneier
• "The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother" - Cathal Kelly

A little thinking can go a long way...