And getting tired of trying to remember if my membership had expired, I signed up for continuting membership. Just easier that way, and I don't ever have to feel guilty about being on the wrong side of the ratio - only 1 in 9 KQED listeners is a member!
No, it's not Photoshopped.
The university was greeted by this smiling face this morning....
...and then about noon I was being asked by the University Police as to whether or not my webcam images are cached anywhere. Luckily for the happy prankster, they are not.
Christine took the picture - thanks!
Wow, I just heard from my old friend Lizzie. She and I were good friends back in the late 80's early 90s. She and I were both student assistants in the Library Microform Room. She was doing her masters in biology, studying this particular species of limpet and the kinds of seaweed they eat. I would sometimes help her as she gathered seaweed and limpets from the tidepools (or return them to the tidepools).
We used to shop together at CostoCo. Sometimes we'd run into people we knew from campus - they always looked a little shocked to see us together on the weekends and we joked about being a couple.... I think some people might have believed it.
Lizzie was supposed to be maid of honor at my wedding, but I had to reschedule the wedding, and it turned out she was already booked on a vacation to the virgin islands on the new date. Bummer.
I haven't seen her in years...
Another old friend made an appearance, albeit a virtual one. I was totally shocked to see Rick (whom I knew back when I was friends with Lizzie) in the latest Alumni Newsletter. He was another student assistant back when the library was the Ruben Salazar library. He once made up rapper names for himself, Lizzie and some other friends. He was "Minty Fresh!" I think mine was something like "DJ Master Babsalot." I'm sure that if his new boss, the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, new about his shady past, the Under Secretary for Homeland Security would be all over his butt.
These things happen in threes - so now I'm wondering who else will suddenly appear?
Ely loves the camera.
Delaney graduated from the SSU Children's School today, earning her diploma for early childhood education.
And boy, were CJ and I relieved. We'd gone through weeks of grueling late night study sessions, last minute cramming, culminating in the most strenuous academic testing of Delaney's young life.
It came close to all going down the toilet when she fell off the tire swing, totally screwing up her playtime grades. Luckily, she had really excelled in circle time participation and popsicle stick crafts, so it all worked out in the end.
We're still waiting to see if she'll be accepted into her first choice kindergarten. These California public schools are pretty exclusive...
Went to the Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Festival at the Discovery Museum in Sausalito today. Check out the pics.
OK, don't you hate when someone complains anonymously? I answer the webmaster@sonoma.edu email, and every so often someone sends in an anonymous complaint. There are three reasons why I really don't like these.
I just don't get it.
Apparently, Corellon thinks Lucinda needs to learn Humility. babs thinks our GM has confused humility with humiliation.
hmmpf!
Oh well, at least it's Thursday. Happy (humiliation) Savagebeatdown!
OK, so I had a really weird nightmare last night. I was a soldier stationed on an outpost on some wasteland planet. When I arrived, everyone else had been killed by the enemy, and there were burnt corpses on the ground. I had to dig in under the ground to get into the station. There was communication from my far-away commander telling me I was on my own and would have to defend the station. I knew the enemy was evil, and that they tortured and killed whomever they captured. Everyone I knew was afraid of them.
So, the station was in bad shape. Things were broken, exploded or in disaray. There was some sort of system that shielded the station, but only a few inches outside whatever walls and ceiling there were. On a display I could see the shield represented as a zig-zagging line around the perimeter of the station.
Eventually, the station was under attack, but I was safe as long as the shield held up. The attack subsided, and the shield went down. I realized the only way to fix it was to pull a new cable from one are of the station to another, but I would have to punch through 40 feet (or maybe 40 yards?) of soil and rock to do it. I thought I could it, because the enemy had to go 400 yards to get to me, so I thought I'd have just enough time.
I had a tool that let me thread the cable right through the soil. Oddly, the cable was really more like a big band of cardboard, wrapped in plastic - it looked sorta like a big stick of gum. Just as the cable was emerging into the room where I needed it, it was like big steel elevator doors closed on the cable. I had a hammer that I used to try to bang it into place, and only just got it connected in time before the attack started again.
It was sometime during this, that I became two people in the dream: the soldier trying to get the shields up, and another person - me, I think, who knew that a bad thing was going to happen. I knew that the enemy had realized the shield was down, and had sneaked into the station, and were hiding, waiting for the soldier-me to get back into the little cubby hole where he would sit to control the equipment during the next attack.
Hiding-me hid behind some big equipment, and I could see down a long hallway where the enemy were quietly coming closer. (They looked a little bit like the martians in Mars Attacks, but taller, no glass helmets, and not quite as cartoonish. At least one did have a pointy-collared cape, though.) My plan was to stay hidden until the enemy came around the corner, then I would sneak away down the hall and escape. To the left I could also see soldier-me climb into the little cubby, and could hear myself grumbling about how cramped it was there and that I couldn't even stand or sit up straight. Soldier-me focused on the zig-zag red shield display. Hiding-me watched as the enemy came into the room, bent over and grabbed the ankles of soldier-me, pulling him out of the cubby. After a millisecond of shock and fear, and the knowledge that I was about to die, soldier-me felt an immense, total and brilliant joy. I had the thought, "wow! this is great! maybe we were all wrong!" and then soldier-me was dead.
Moments later, hiding-me saw soldier-me stand up. He looked ok, looked better, in fact.* Soldier-me said "Hey, that wasn't half-bad. What's the big deal?" and laughed happily. But then both of us saw there was another part of soldier-me sitting on the ground, and I knew it was soldier-me's soul. It was dark and slimy, and totally corrupted. It had pointy ears and nose, big slanted eyes, and long fingernails. It was muttering "It burns, it burns,"+ and was slurping the brains out of soldier-me's real head.
That's when I woke up. I was crying. It took quite a long time to calm down and get back to sleep.
* I thought (that is babs thought during the dream) "Wow, that gave him a +4 to charisma."
+ Yes, just like Smeagol. Ely has starting saying this from time to time as a joke, and said it last night at Mary's Pizza Shack when he bit into his Bambino pepperoni and sausage pizza too fresh from the oven.
Reading a new book... today is definitely a four yellow cars in a row day.
