Frühlingsglaube

From some Christian blog somewhere:

"He has covered me in the robe of righteousness.
as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress,
and as a brie adorns herself with jewels."

That's some very fancy cheese.

My mother asked me to go through a box of old school stuff and take home whatever I wanted to keep.

Here follows a short essay from my social studies unit in grade 5.

I was asked to summarise and react to a newspaper article. The one I picked was an Associated Press article, 'Gulf war claimed 150,000 lives, says Greenpeace'. The date is 30/05/91.

SUMMARY
Greenpeace says that about 150,000 people have died because of the Gulf War and at least 5 million are now homeless or unemployed. Greenpeace based this estimate on interviews with relief workers, reporters and others. The civillian deaths came whether they liked it or not. In fact, things that our allies do "could be seen as "paving the way for new standards for humanitarian and military conduct," according to the report. They* really do not like IRAQs behavior and describe it as "Gross". Here are some facts: 100,000 to 120,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed; 500 to 15,000 Iraqi civillians died. 2000 to 5000 Kuwaitis were killed while their country was occupied.

MY OPINION
Why did this article have to be printed?

* Author of article I mean

Teacher's comment: "An interesting report."

( more school work )

I didn't sleep last night. I just went over to let out the chooks and give them their table scraps. No one lay anything overnight. We are talking some 40 birds. Greenie and Big Red were both being gigantic dicks (well, cocks) to the hens: Greenie blocked the door of his flock's run so the hens couldn't come out, and Big Red chased one hen in circles while everyone else was eating their baked beans on toast. [The table scraps come from the CERES cafe. This morning's fare was leftover baked beans, old toast, old bread, vegetable peelings and trimmings, and pesto.] [Oh, and for the non-UK/Aus/NZ people: baked beans on toast is a very common breakfast. Usually for humans, not birds.]

So then I came home and did a little pruning on my basil plant, and then came inside where Beatrice was sitting by the door. And she smelled me very thoroughly. I gather that my left arm smells absolutely amazing. I'm not sure if it's live chicken, sandalwood soap from the sink outside the barn, or the basil, but she was really impressed. Her whiskers tickle.

I just sniffed my own arm but couldn't pick up anything.

Time to go sleep and not get up until it's nearly dinner.

Illustrations
Undergraduate History, Illustrated

Reviews
Yelp review of Riker's Island Correctional Facility, Queens

Horrors of Menstruation, Continued
Amazon review of the Diva Cup Model 2: Prepare for Battle

Parenting Advice
A compilation of all the leading schools of thought about baby sleep and development, condensed into one contradictory and frustrating page.

Race
Australia's Aboriginal children have the world's highest suicide rate (Note massive suicide and child harm triggers. Also I wish the article's author hadn't saturated the article with photos of sad-eyed anonymous Indigenous children. It seems disrespectful, like they're scenery, not individuals.)

Mechanics
Edna elementary student builds custom hot rods

Depression
Common gene variants explain 42% of antidepressant response

Bottoms
Constipation: embarrassment, discomfort... and Poo Pride, a psych patient's guide to constipation

Translation
Kim Jong Il says the darndest things

Grave matters
101 ways to say died: a collection of tombstones.

Games
Inigo and Fezzik's favourite game.

No, content farm informative site about blood pressure, if caffeine increases blood pressure and celery decreases blood pressure, then that does NOT mean there is "a positive connection between celery and hypertension" and "a negative connection between caffeine and blood pressure". Please try again.

I think I'll go back to fanfic for a while.

Edited to add: "More worrisome symptoms include syncope, chest pain and sudden death." Thank you, Wikipedia. If I suddenly die, I promise to take that symptom seriously.

Ingredients: 2 packets instant noodles, sesame oil, soy sauce, half a wombok.

Boil water. Add the noodles (discard the flavour sachet) and rip off as much wombok as seems right with your bare fingers (thus obviating the need for a knife or a chopping board or bench space) and throw it in too. Cook for 2-3 minutes, then drain. Put in bowl, add as much sesame oil and soy sauce as seems right. Serve.

If you're not Australian, you might know the vegetable as napa cabbage, or 大白菜.

He tried to put my books on the shower.

No, let me step back. As you know, Bob, they've been remodelling my bathroom for just over a fortnight now. This has involved various indignities. Let's draw a jury-rigged shower curtain over most of them and just say it's not been a happy fun time for me and Beatrice even by normal renovation standards, and that today I started singing "Plaster's in the air, everywhere I look around," and managed to get quite a long way through my impromptu filk.

A couple of major issues (I'm talking here about the tradesmen, not my family) have been about communication and also use of my belongings. I did not raise holy hell, for example, when I found that they'd taken the throw-rug from my couch and put it on the floor to use as padding for their construction work. I just inwardly seethed.

Today the painter came. My sister (who is coordinating the repairs) asked him to rig up a temporary shower curtain, as the permanent shower screen isn't ready here, and I still have to wash. She would have done this herself, but she couldn't figure out a way to do it (the ceiling's cement, so she couldn't hang it from that.)

So half an hour ago he comes in and proudly shows me what he came up with.
( photos )

While I was still speechless with delight, he added that the board up there is balanced on the edge of the tiles on two sides, and weighed down with a couple of books to keep it in place.
"My books?" I asked, perhaps not as mildly as I intended to.
Perhaps something in my expression suggested that I was not totally happy with this idea, so he added "It's not like they're going to get wet."
I said "No. Just no."
He said, irritably, "Then I'll have to find something else to weigh it down." As he went out to his van to look for something, he muttered loudly "I was trying to do you a favour." He came up with an empty paint tin, but still had dark threats about how it wasn't heavy enough and I'd have to be really careful because a firm tug would bring the whole contraption down. He decided to add the duct tape on the inside as well as the outside, to be safer. He told me to make sure my showers weren't very hot, and estimated that it would last for two showers. He asked how often I shower.

I have a gym membership. I think showering at the gym sounds better than having a shower curtain, a 2x2, and an empty paint tin fall on my head. The glazier's coming on Friday with his merry glazier sound to put the shower screen in, so I won't have to be all that diligent about my exercise regimen. (Edit: correction, no he's not, my sister just emailed and said it would be next Wednesday, and oh, can I be home all day to supervise?)

I like to imagine that both Carla Emery and Amy Dacyczyn would have actually been entertained and impressed by this arrangement, except for the part where my family are paying someone to do that instead of kludging it together ourselves.

I've been avoiding the news reading Wikipedia articles about children's playground games.

- Ip Dip is common in the UK as well as Australia, but apparently my primary school's variant was a lot ruder than most places? Ours went "Ip dip / dog shit / you are now (or not) it / for the / rest of / the game." This was in the late 80s in North Melbourne.

- Stone Paper Scissors originated in China in the Han dynasty. There are people today who play tournaments of it.

- I couldn't find a page on Black and White, which was a choosing game like Stone Paper Scissors or Ip Dip. People would stand in a circle and tap their chest rapidly with one hand while chanting "blaaaack aaand..." and on "white!" they'd put their hand out, either palm down (black) or palm up (white), and then you'd sort the group into who played white and who played black. I vaguely remember that this was if you needed to whittle down the group's numbers more quickly than you could with Ip Dip or Stone Paper Scissors, only I can't remember how it worked in practice.