EEK I'm a GEEK

Ok, you know you’re a geek when,you have the babylon5_Station font.  My family laughs and laughs at my geekness.

We’ve often discussed the degrees of geekness.  We were told the story of a man, who owns a lightsabre, dresses up and drives half-way across the continent to attend Star Wars conventions and has the nerve to call other people geeks.  One has to wonder.

I do a lot of geeky things myself.  I, on the other hand embrace my geekiness.  Hell, geeks rule the world.  I don’t think Bill Gates would consider himself anything other than a geek.  If he does, he’s in serious denial.  My friend, who I think still knows the names of all the original Star Trek episodes and what they were about, says I speak geek when I talk about computers.  

Now I would never go to a Science Fiction convention, because my spouse would never stop laughing.  NEVER.  I think it would be fun.  It would be cool to talk to some of the authors who write the books you love, or the shows you watch.  What’s wrong with that?  I think it’s because of the costumes and dressing up.  I think that kind of thing is viewed as childish, however, at Halloween, I put a lot of work into my whole family’s costumes.  They are usually historical in nature, but I may move on to other themes.  I like to mix it up.  My family thinks this is great fun and no one laughs at me then.  

I guess being a geek is starting to be acceptable, but until people start to recognize their own geek within it will still be something to poke fun at.  Oh well, I can console myself at Jeff Russell’s Starship Dimensions  http://www.merzo.net/index.html website.  Wowhoo!

How Privacy Became a Christmas Card

Well, long time no blog.  I’ve been thinking about a lot of things lately.  Why do people spit?  Why don’t people pick up after their dogs between October and April?  What’s with Christmas starting so damn early?

I’ve also been thinking about sending Christmas cards.  At our house this is a huge project.  It all started several years ago when, due to identity theft, we started shredding all the paper in the house with personal information on it.  Great, now we’re safe, but what to do with all the shredded paper.  You might say throw it out, but, and there’s always a but, we have recycling.  Great you say, but, our garbage guys are a little fussy, lazy, whatever you want to call it, they don’t always pick everything up that they should.  They particularly won’t take anything for recycling that is put out in a plastic bag, and you can’t just throw the shredded paper loose in the recycling bin.  So, now what?

I have heard you can use the paper in the composter in your backyard, and I have done that, but, paper draws a lot of nitrogen out of the soil to decompose.  In the composter that is not a big problem, but, it means adding fertilizer to the compost bin to keep things moving.  It’s also why shredded paper is not a good idea as a mulch.

That’s when I saw a kids show talking about making paper at home, from scraps.  Wow, great idea, I get rid of my shredded paper and we have a craft the kids can participate in.  Yeah, sure.

Well, I do get rid of the shredded paper.  Although, I have found another great use for the shredded paper.  When you dig up things like canna lilies, caladium, tuberous begonias, dahlias, etc. store them in a cardboard box, unwaxed, and fill around the tubers with shredded paper.  Store the box in a cool spot in the basement.  Voila, in the spring they’re ready to shove back in the ground.  

Well, this innocent little endeavor has grown into a hand blender for mixing the paper pulp, various chemical agents to size and dye the paper, and cotton to add a nice richness, and a little strength.  Paper made entirely from scrap paper tends to be a little weak.  I have also made paper from plants in the backyard.  I’ve done hosta paper, which smells just like smushed up hosta and looks the same.  I quite like the way Siberian Iris paper turns out.  The long tough fibres give it something of a Japanese look.  

The plant paper does tend to make the neighbors stare.  I cook the plants in a pot with soda on the barbeque side burner in a giant pot.  The smells are interesting to say the least.  All that’s missing is an apple, a crooked nose and a hairy wart.

So, I make the paper for the Christmas cards, decorate them and send them out.  My kids do help.  They add glitter, tear paper Christmas trees, fold origami and help with the production line.  I hope they like it.  After all, it’s all for them.  We recycle the paper, protecting the planet.  We protect our valuable personal information so that their vast (ha) inheritance is safe.  They better like it.

Braces

So, today I find out I’m in store for paying for $6,600 worth of braces for a kid that has pretty good looking teeth as far as I can tell.  This puts me into that whole parental guilt thing.  I usually don’t give in to that.  No rolls off my tongue with ease.  There’s no pang, no, maybe I should say yes just to put a smile on their cherubic little faces.  Guilt free, or should I say Low Guilt parenting.

The braces thing moves into a whole new realm.  The  “They need it for their health” arena.  Now, I have had an experience with a really seriously ill child.  You do whatever it is going to take to make sure they get better.  No qualms, no questions, I’ll hock the house if I have to.  Braces.  No real life saving element in braces.  Sure, the overly friendly (I say the whole office is on Prozac, and I know they can afford a fruit bowl of it) orthodontist mentions things like the long term stability of the teeth, premature wear, proper functionality of the bite and other crap I’m just not buying.  At least when I was a kid they didn’t beat around the bush.  It was, “Those teeth look horrible, and we should make them look better.”  

I noticed the other day, when Prince Charles was on Sixty Minutes, that his teeth were crooked.  It hasn’t killed him yet.  He can certainly afford $6,600 worth of braces.  But he’s not running out to protect the long term stability of his teeth.

Truth is I’ll probably do it and grumble the whole time.  It’s almost half a car, but I’ll do it.  I’ll spend the next two years yelling at a kid to brush their braces better, I can still see steak on them, and we had steak two days ago.  It’s all part of growing up, my growing up.

What Grows on Trees and it Ain't Money

Today I was thinking about the word “Natural”.  People bandy the word about as if it had some magical properties.

“Is it a vitamin?” someone asks.  “No, no,” they are assured, “It’s natural.”

Yeah, cause those little tablets grow on trees just like that.  If the only quality required to qualify as natural, was that something had to start out its life as a plant, animal, or mineral, why, then everything would be natural, which I argue it sort of is.  But now I digress.

French fries, I love them, start out as potatoes, but I don’t think that one would describe them as natural.  Cars start their lives as metals found in the ground, but they are just not even remotely considered natural.  So why, tell me, do some people consider everything in the health food or naturopathic store natural?  I bet most people couldn’t tell a lithium capsule apart from a St. John’s Wort capsule.  Lithium, an element from the periodic table, not natural.  A plant, pounded, powdered, processed, stuffed into lovely naturally growing gelatin capsules, they grow on bushes, check your local nursery, now that, is as natural as it comes. ?????

Natural, according to Webster, adj produced by, or according to, nature; not artificial; innate, not acquired; true to nature; lifelike; normal ( a natural result); at ease; (mus) neither sharped nor flatted. –n one having a natural aptitude (for), or being an obvious choice (for); (inf) a thing assured of success by its very nature, a certainty.

Nowhere in that definition do I see an assignment of good or bad.  However, this is an attribute which the word natural now carries.  Natural, good and artificial, bad.  

But here’s the thing.  We are creatures that by our very nature, create, problem solve, build, and explore.  We also exploit our surroundings as do other creatures.  Would one call a termite mound, unnatural?  It didn’t grow there by itself.  The termites built their artificial home because it was in their nature to do so.  If the termites destroy the habitats of other creatures in the process, they don’t lose sleep over it.  I don’t know if termites even sleep at all.

This is not to say, that humans should run roughshod over the planet because it would seem that that is our nature.  No, we are self aware and therefore should be expected to exercise responsibility, not because we are the stewards of the planet (a wholly impossible job), but because we wish to remain part of the natural environment of the planet.  If we screw things up too much, the planet, nature will go on.  Look at Mt. St. Helens.  That area took a beating, and yet life persists.  The question is do we want to be part of it.

Welcome

I would write this from my shower, but for the whole electricity and death thing, for that is where I usually do my best thinking. All my great ideas start out all wet. Maybe that is where it should stop. I do talk at my husband, but he's heard it all before and quite frankly I'm getting tired of that glassy look in his eyes. So, I decided to give this a try. A Blog. Somewhere to empty my head into. Unless there really is nothing there.