weirdquark: Stack of books (Default)
Old record = decimated! It's 107 currently in BCS! (~3:30PM)

As of 1 p.m., we're already up to 103. Some of us could easily hit 110 this afternoon!


As some of you have heard, the air conditioning in the east wing died a couple of days ago. The first day wasn't too bad because it rained and temperatures stayed under 100 that day. But we're having absurd heat now to make up for it. Hopefully the fans will keep the cats from being too miserable while I'm at work.

Woo, rain!

Aug. 25th, 2011 08:36 am
weirdquark: Stack of books (sky)
Getting some actual rain! Happy plants!

The weather report is still expecting that we'll get up above 100 today though, and the weekend is supposed to be amazingly hot, but rain!
weirdquark: Stack of books (sky)
We are a week away from matching the record of thirty days for most consecutive 100-degree days in a row. A few days past that and we'll match the previous record for most days over 100 in a year too. Forecast for the next ten days says we're due to hit over 100 every single one of them.

I'm all for record-setting, but if we're going to hit these, I'd like to start working on records for rainfall next, and I don't mean for drought, because we've already got that covered.
weirdquark: Stack of books (Default)
I was heading outside to the library and stopped dead because there are deer in our backyard. A buck and a doe, nervously eating the small amount of grass that isn't dead of drought in our backyard.


Deer by the lake
weirdquark: Stack of books (sky)
We braved the mid-afternoon heat to go swimming in the lake behind our house. The water level keeps getting lower, but we cannot quite walk all the way to the island (which is now a peninsula) though we only had to swim about twenty feet. Getting in and out of the water is not fun -- the ground is muddy and the water is hot when it's only an inch deep, but once we got out to the deeper water it was really very nice and worth going outside for.

Back inside now, where we can look at the water and the sky from the comfort of our air conditioned home. And if it ever feels too warm indoors because we turned the air up to save energy, going outside for ten seconds and coming back in does amazing things to make you appreciate the ~20 degree temperature difference.
weirdquark: Louise Lecavalier (dance)
Eating more fresh and fewer processed foods makes it much easier to get enough potassium and not too much sodium.

ExpandCut for discussion of bodies and eating )
weirdquark: Stack of books (books)
Last night I dreamed that I was searching for an extra hair elastic so I could braid my hair with it tied off at both ends and cut it off. In my dream I proceeded to cut it off, and then woke up, realized that I had only cut it off in my dream, and went looking for a hair elastic, etc., repeat two or three times.

I then actually woke up, a little overheated and sweaty, with my hair down my back because, once again, I had only cut it off in my dreams.

Possibly this is a sign that I should actually cut my hair off like I've been thinking about for the past couple of months. I like how long hair looks but lately all that mine is good for is getting sweaty and being in my way when I don't have it up.

Having short hair may also make me look closer to my age; it doesn't bother me when people assume that I'm a student, though I do find it somewhat baffling. And it'll be easier to code as queer, which I keep feeling that I should do -- long hair with no particular style codes as masculine to me, but that doesn't mean it looks that way to anyone else, especially here. Must obtain clippers. If I have clippers, I can cut my hair myself. This will save money, and also the time and aggravation that I won't have to spend explaining to the hairdresser that, yes, I actually do want to cut off all my hair, yes, really, that short.
weirdquark: Stack of books (Default)
My hard drive died yesterday. I brought it in to the local mac store so I could get a new hard drive -- it's four times the size of my old one because I bought my computer five or six years ago and they don't make them that small anymore. I've been teetering at the brink of not having enough space for at least a year, so it's a good thing, really, that I was forced to get more room. But having to reinstall everything is a pain.

I have files backed up, mostly, so it's just applications and settings that I need to recreate. Also, my new security settings that don't know anything yet don't like signing into LJ -- I don't know if this is generally what goes on with LJ or if it's having issues again. I'm sure that I lost more than I think I did, but if I don't notice, I'm sure it doesn't actually matter.
weirdquark: Stack of books (Default)
My parents gave me a gift certificate for Christmas and now that it's almost my birthday I've finally gotten around to using it. I went to the sporting goods store and picked up some weights. They're not as adjustable as I'd like -- there are 2.5lb and 5lb weights that you add to a barbell, but if you want to have the weights be balanced you have to add a 2.5lb weight to each side of it. Going from twenty to twenty-five isn't so bad, but five to ten will be tricky, and I may want to get weighted wrist bands. (When I was doing Morris dancing, I wanted to have the team practice with weighted wrist bands -- you have to lift your arms a lot and we had trouble keeping them high when we were tired. Practicing with weights and then taking weights off makes the off version so much easier...)
weirdquark: Stack of books (Default)
For the last eight weeks I've been participating in a program called Walk Across Texas. My co-workers and I have been doing various exercises in an attempt to log enough miles to walk across Texas. You can walk, you can do yoga, you can play squash; the WAT website has a calculator that gives you what it thinks is the equivalent number of miles for whatever activity you've been doing, which looks to be based on calories burned. I've been mostly doing the elliptical, and since the WAT calculator doesn't have options for working hard on it, adjusting my time on the calculator so the calories it thinks I've burned match the calories the elliptical thinks I've burned and get my numbers from that. Adding in approximate distances that I walk around at work, I've done the equivalent of 480 miles in the last eight weeks, which is half way across Texas all by myself, which is pretty cool.

Today I started following the program in The New Rules of Lifting for Women, which I ran across via [personal profile] telophase. It seems pretty cool, and even though I can tell that I'm going to need to get heavier weights (I own two 5lb dumbbells and only know where one of them is) I can also tell that it's doing something -- it felt like more of a workout than doing the elliptical does, which is only moderately difficult while I'm doing it, and it's difficult in an endurance sort of way. I'll probably keep doing the elliptical a bit on my "off" days; I'm supposed to rest to give my muscles time to recover, but if I back off the high resistance settings, it'll probably be fine, and improving my endurance is always good too. Hi, asthma, I like it when you don't effect my life! Let's keep that up, shall we? I've been doing the elliptical before going to work; the weights take slightly longer than I'd like, but I do have time. My work schedule will be helpful-- I work Saturday afternoons and have Sunday and Monday off, so I can do Saturday/Monday/Wednesday workouts and only have one day out of three where morning workouts mean careful timing.
weirdquark: Stack of books (Default)
I've started a DW account, partially due to LJ being flaky lately, and partly due to wanting to join a DW group. I'll still be on LJ and this is mostly to test the cross-posting feature.

Hey, people who read my LJ who are also on DW! You should tell me who you are so I can add you over there.
weirdquark: Stack of books (sassafrass circle)
Eclectic II: Prophecies & Lies is now up on CDBaby. It has all the Norse songs finished to date. I kind of want to submit Hearthfire for the Book of Imaginary Beasts's winter theme, but a) being a song, it's more of a poem, and b) I didn't write it. But it's perfect, and also awesome, and I want to share.

We sent them Eclectic I at the same time, but for some reason it's not ready. They don't have the cover art (it was sent to them the same way as the cover art for Eclectic II) but the tracks all seem to be okay. Hopefully we'll be able to straighten this out and confirm the album so they can put it up for download.
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