Living in fear is no good to anyone.

Thanksgiving is at JPL this year because king_luddite moved to Albuquerque. There's a website listing who's coming and what they are bringing (it also shows earlier years in case you need ideas):
http://www.clanspum.net/~jarrod/showfile.php?file=thanksgiving.txt
Leave a comment here or send me an email if you are coming and listing what food you will bring. Feel free to invite some friends; it's best if everyone can contribute something so there's enough food to go around. :) Dinner will be served at around 4 p.m.

My birthday is next week, so Movie Night this week will double as a birthday party for me. I've only been a perfect cube twice before and won't be again for 37 years.

You scored as Tweedle Dee & Dum. Yes, you're both - because they're exactly the same. You're quite dumb, and blatantly oblivious to most things going on around you. You love to tell stories and screw around. You're loveable, but sometimes extremely annoying. </td> Tweedle Dee & Dum 69% Caterpillar 25% Cheshire Cat 25% Alice 19% The Mad Hatter 13% Queen of Hearts 13% White Rabbit 0% Which Alice in Wonderland Character are YOU? created with QuizFarm.com

There is movie night tonight. I'm making farfalle with a red sauce, royal_spice is making a salad, lalabob11 may be making bread, and I've heard rumor that niap_si_efil is making cupcakes, but I don't know. I have no idea what the movie(s) will be.


Random things:

( Look At These Fucking Peppers )

( Curves )

Movie night was very crowded. The fried chicken came out good and was all eaten quickly. There were a bunch of friends of Omni's that few others knew. Most of them didn't really seem to fit in or enjoy our crowd. Things didn't quiet down until about 0330 when most everyone went home.

Saturday, lalabob11 and I drove out on US-60 East and up into the Manzano Mountains. I had planned a route, but part of forest road 422 was still closed for the winter, so we ended up having to backtrack to the highway. I took some photos of a deep wash while we were exploring. The photos will be uploaded to Flickr eventually. We then went up NM-55 and NM-337 to Tijeras. From there we had planned on going up to Sandia crest and watching the sun set, but instead decided to go to Hobby Lobby and buy crafty things. I got a couple of sun-catchers to put together and bake and lalabob11 got some point protectors for double point knitting needles. Then we went to visit her sister and see the new baby (I hadn't seen him in person yet). After that we had dinner at Shogun Sushi which was relatively cheap and reasonably good. The scallop sushi wasn't the freshest I've had, but it had especially tasty seasoning, so it was the overall best scallop sushi I've had. On the way back to Socorro we stopped at Walmart to see if they had the pocket knife lalabob11's been wanting. They couldn't be bothered to have someone come to the back and open the cabinet to see if they had the knife, so we couldn't get one (jerks). I ended up getting a set of two cast iron pans that I've been thinking about that were ~$5 cheaper than at the Socorro Walmart. The pans are both about 10 inches in diameter, but one is deep (3 quarts) and the other is shallow. The cool thing is that they can be used as lids for each other.

Sunday I was around the house all day, doing random stuff. I did some dishes, made turkey mole, baked a rich chocolate cake, set up and used the Roomba Sage that I ordered that arrived the other day (it vacuums pretty well and is relatively quiet, but it's not good at edges) and I made the sun-catchers. One is a planet with rings and the other is two frogs sitting on a lily pad. It's hard to find these sorts of sun-catchers in stores, but the company that makes them has a website, so I think I can order more directly if I want.

If you cross the U.S.-Canada border with a computer, you may be uselessly accosted.

Many Mennonites are leaving Missouri due to new ID requirements.

Only on Tuesdays

Smith v. Smith (scroll down a bit) is an interesting case regarding child custody and the gender identity of the child

In 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith spoke out against McCarthyism with this speech. There's good material to learn from there.

...the president can displace from office a man whose merits require that he should be continued in it. What will be the motives which the president can feel for such abuse of his power, and the restraints that operate to prevent it? In the first place, he will be impeachable by this house, before the senate, for such an act of mal-administration; for I contend that the wanton removal of meritorious officers would subject him to impeachment and removal from his own high trust.
--James Madison

I forgot to post earlier. It's omnipaul's birthday. I'm making fried chicken.

The "War" on Women

There is movie night tomorrow. I'm going to make green carne adovada. I don't know how it will come out as I've never tried making something quite like this, but it should be tasty even if it is totally "wrong". I'll have tortillas, cheese, and some rice to go along with it.

The other day chamewco posted about poetry. I don't have exactly the same "block" he talks about, but I often don't notice poetry and lyrics. With songs, for instance, I usually don't hear the words until at least the third time I've heard the song. The sounds are much more important to me than whatever the words may be saying. If the song sounds bad to me, I won't care about the lyrics.

I found a fun comic I'd never seen before, ( The Warehouse )

This is an interesting bit of code I encountered today. It's both straightforward and complicated at the same time.

while((bFirst ? 
       FProcess32First(hSnapShot, &processInfo) : 
       FProcess32Next(hSnapShot, &processInfo)))

On Friday evening, I put the top down on the jeep because I knew I'd be doing a bunch of driving and the weather would be nice. Movie night went well; some people that don't usually come came, making the crowd about as big as it would usually be excepting that people were away on spring break.

Saturday morning I drove up to Albuquerque to meet popefelix and pick up the bar stools I ordered from Unpainted Furniture. Lunch at Taj Mahal ended up being more complicated than anticipated, but was OK. After lunch I went up to Desert Rat, looked around since I hadn't been in the store before, and bought a tow strap and clevices to replace the ones that were stolen back in January. Next was 328 Chinese to get a bunch of takeout for dinner. Ying and John were both very friendly, chatted with me a bit, and gave me some free crab rangoon and chicken in foil while I waited for the takeout to be prepared. It turns out they've been open since January 26th. When I asked Ying, she said 328 is "just a name; a lucky number." Finally, I went to Unpainted Furniture to get the stools. It had been my understanding that they would be assembled stools I would just need to finish, so I had taken the back seat out of the jeep. They were actually just pieces in boxes that I'll have to put together myself. This is good and bad: it's more work for me, but they will likely look nicer than if they had been pre-assembled. When I got back to Socorro, I bought a hat at Brownbilt's to protect my head from the sun when my jeep's top is open. Finally, we had a big dinner of the take out from 328. The dishes were all as good as before at the old Hong Kong.

Today, Sunday, royal_spice and popefelix came down and we went out to explore in the jeep. We first went out to Garcia Canyon (it's west of Water Canyon) and drove until we ran out of road the jeep would fit on. We then parked and hiked up the canyon and then up the west side for a while. Next was Jordan Canyon (it's west of Garcia), but a short way up the road, there was a locked NFS gate with a "Road Closed" sign. There was a track over some big rocks around the gate that I could have made, but it was decided best by all to just go somewhere else. We instead went back to the Water Canyon road and up the South Baldy road to the top. Up there, we hiked around some looking at the panorama. Once we were tired, we went back down and to Socorro and had dinner at Sofia's. After dinner they left. A good day was had by all.

Photos of 328 Chinese were uploaded to my flickr yesterday. Photos from today's trip will be uploaded tomorrow, probably.

There is a movie night tomorrow. I'll be making a very simple mac and cheese, maybe some fried hamburgers to optionally mix in to the mac and cheese, and also some green vegetables of some manner. I have some ideas for the movie, but nothing is definite yet, so feel free to bring things to be played.

Women and the Bush Administration

This is really long, but an interesting discussion:
Event Transcript "Same-Sex Marriage in California: Legal and Political Prospects"

This might be a new restaurant run by John of the former Hong Kong Restaurant in Socorro. schlake is probably going to eat there tonight and let us know if it's him and how the food is.

I went to a kirtan with royal_spice on Saturday. I was feeling ok before the chanting started. Then things got started and I felt really uncomfortable and alien. I couldn't bring myself to sing with everyone. I was thinking really hard about it. I realized I had to stop trying and it might come to me. About half-way through the second chant (there were four chants totaling roughly 2 hours), the uncomfortableness went away. I wasn't able get myself to sing along, but it wasn't a bad experience; once I got into it, the feeling was akin to dancing at a club or electronica concert but without moving and instead, sitting uncomfortably.

"[Attorney General] Alberto's [Gonzales] history reads like a paint by numbers, how-to instruction manual on how to destroy your local democracy."

A Silly Thing

A non-Silly Thing

There is movie night tomorrow. We won't be watching Dr. Tran (yet), but I will be making a big turkey and dressing.

Every time I go to Walmart, I glance at the empty shelf the Nintendo Wiis go on. On Tuesday evening, the shelf wasn't empty. There were two. I wanted to buy them both and sell the second to one of my friends at cost or eBay it if there wasn't interest among my friends. While waiting for 40+ minutes for someone to come over to unlock the case (I prodded many employees and there was an announcement over the PA), a couple came over and also wanted one. I didn't feel like being a dick/fighting about it, so I only bought one Wii.
For those of you with Wiis connected to the internet, my code is: 3369 4653 4227 1295

Hopefully the UCSF study will add to the pressure on the US government to rethink its irrational ban on the medicinal use of marijuana -- and its destructive attacks on patients and caregivers in states that have chosen to allow such use. Rather than admit they have been mistaken all these years, federal officials can cite "important new data" and start revamping outdated and destructive policies.

President Bush has not yet subordinated our judiciary to the military, but the more we learn about U.S. attorneys fired for failing to succumb to Justice Department and congressional political pressure, the more the Bush administration looks like the tawdry, third world, small-time dictatorship its opponents accuse it of being.

More anecdotal evidence for the ~30% crazification factor:
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cm/content/view/179/159/

Why Private Police Forces are bad for most of us.

The other day, niap_si_efil lost his phone. He then found it. The condition he found it in sucks, but I was entertained.

I thought I had a good understanding of knitting looms. It appears they can be far more complex.

This is an interesting list. I'm surprised at how few names I recognized.
The 50 Most Important People on the Web

lalabob11, two_pi_r and I won't be in Socorro on Friday night, so there won't be a movie night.

This is weird. On September 11th, 2001, the BBC reported live that the WTC7 had collapsed ~20 minutes before it actually did. The not-yet collapsed building was on screen during the live broadcast. WTC7 is the brown one, right behind her head. If you watch the video, you can see it, or you can scroll down in the article to see stills of it.

How could our government not be interested in an unknown, highly technological object hovering over a major airport, as reported by competent airline personnel? What about passenger safety? Or national security? Or just plain scientific curiosity?

This copyright navigator is really cool.
http://navigator.carolon.net/

For MySpace users:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v209/ichagirl/myspaceass.jpg

There is a movie night tomorrow. For those that had heard about my friend Amber from WA, she had some stuff come up with work and won't be here this weekend. I'm cooking ham steaks, brussels sprouts and corn. The movie might be a documentary about modern history and religious extremism, but it could also be something else someone brings.

"The News Media and Secrecy" by Phil Hoskins:

If we are to have any freedom at all we must always have the right to know about, debate and make decisions about any government program that impacts our personal lives in any way. It is our right as a citizen and there is never a justification for abrogating this right, at least absent "exigent circumstances."

And there is that phrase again, the one that this administration contends has already come into existence because some idiots flew planes into buildings and killed Americans. If this is all it takes to be "exigent" we are in deep trouble. A common definition might be "Generally, an emergency, a pressing necessity, or a set of circumstances requiring immediate attention or swift action." If this is a never ending war, the Administration's reasoning is merely a cover up for a power grab of unprecedented dimension.

The last line in that quote there really sums it up: the "war" on terror is never ending and the reasoning provided is just a cover up of the completely unreasonable, anti-democratic power grab of our now near-despotic executive branch.


Can Richardson build national appeal?

There is a Movie Night tonight. royal_spice is making eggplant parmigiana, I am making some yet to be determined manner of salad, Dorene is making rice and beans, and niap_si_efil will bring some pizza. I don't know what film we will watch.

Rob Kezelis summarizes many of the reasons I won't be voting for Hillary for President:

There are only 100 of you. You promised to uphold the constitution and protect it from enemies from without and within. At the very time that many smart, experienced and honest voices questioned Bush’s intel, you played it safe and hid in the crowd. Not exactly leadership qualities, eh?

When rape is a matter of timing
By Betsy Hart
The current laws don't work. I don't agree with Ms. Hart, but I also don't agree with the "feminists" she mentions. There are many lines, and many of them are blurry and in different places in different situations and at different times. Something more adaptable is needed.

"Web 2.0". two_pi_r applies the term only as a derogatory for webpages that are bathed in annoying javascript. To me, annoying javascript is annoying javascript; "Web 2.0" is about convergence of technologies and data sources and often does not include any javascript or necessarily even webpages. Here's what Tim O'Reilly has to say about it: What is Web 2.0? (I know the article isn't very recent, but it's been on my mind lately.)

Since it was mentioned in someone's journal, I felt I should make it clear that there will be a movie night on Friday. I'm not sure what I'll make yet.

amnesiack picked me up and we went to an early lunch at a vegan, community run "greasy spoon" type diner. I had a really good nutloaf sandwich and bowl of minestrone. After lunch, we went to his house and sat around for a while. We caught up on lots of stuff. It's really nice to be able to talk to someone you trust that is totally objective and outside of your immediate situations. Thanks.

After hanging around, I took a bus downtown and transferred to a bus to the airport. I'm past security having a nice sitdown dinner at Anthony's. Dungeness Crab Cocktail and Mahi Mahi Tacos FTW.

DB and Reid are putting me up for the night. They have a longer but less wide couch than petfish. Tomorrow I'm going to help Reid replace one of his headlights and then go to lunch with amnesiack.

I went to sleep last night on petfish's couch at about 0200 PST. My body likes waking up at 0800 MST regardless of how tired it is. 5 hours of sleep may be enough for the peak work days of a con, but it's not enough for a vacation. Grrr.

Last night there was a big party in a UW auditorium with 3 big screens playing various games on Xbox 360, Wii and PS2. There was also some good Mario Kart DS action. Pizza and cake was had by all, and everyone seemed to have a good time. I got online from my MacBook and uploaded the photos I took yesterday. The laptop they got for retrocareer is awesome. They also bought her a new WoW account and installed all of the recent patches (and expansion?).

There was some wander-shopping in downtown and chinatown in the afternoon with retrocareer, her friend Ian and omg_teh_funnay.

The morning included a bus trip up from Seatac (the town, not the airport) and some sitting on a peir taking some photos (also uploaded).

I only got ~5 hours of sleep that night too.
omg_teh_funnay put me up at his apartment near the airport after meeting me at said airport and hanging out at Denny's for a while.

Today is ...adventure? during the daylight hours followed by some fish shopping and much homemade sushi with most of the crowd from last night's party. I'll also be making a batch of habanero slarg as part of tonight's dinner.

I'm off to visit some of my PAX Enforcer friends. I plan to make various posts during my travel. If I haven't posted again by Friday afternoon, something has gone wrong (the internet is fuxxored, I have been physically incapacitated in some way, I am being held by the government without charge, etc.).

Even though I will be gone, two_pi_r and lalabob11 are hosing a movie night tomorrow. I don't know what the food or movie will be.

These comparisons seem obvious to me, but they aren't in the press as often as they should be:

Another Vietnam? Defenders of President Bush's Iraq war policy have long shrugged off such comparisons. But as the war heads toward the four-year mark and a newly empowered Democratic Congress takes aim at presidential spending for more troops, the comparisons are becoming more frequent.

Generals are saying the Iraq War is making us less secure. Whee:

Nearly four years in Iraq have hammered US army and marines into a skilled counter-insurgency force but has left it unready for war against a conventionally armed foe, US generals warn.

Is Bill Richardson the new Al Gore?
Richardson's my favorite prospective candidate right now, but there's lots of time for things to change.

Turkey at movie night tonight. It's got pine nuts and garlic in it. :)

More about the Electoral College:
Math Against Tyranny

The same logic that governs our electoral system, he saw, also applies to many sports--which Americans do, intuitively, understand. In baseball's World Series, for example, the team that scores the most runs overall is like a candidate who gets the most votes. But to become champion, that team must win the most games. In 1960, during a World Series as nail-bitingly close as that year's presidential battle between Kennedy and Nixon, the New York Yankees, with the awesome slugging combination of Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Bill Moose Skowron, scored more than twice as many total runs as the Pittsburgh Pirates, 55 to 27. Yet the Yankees lost the series, four games to three. Even Natapoff, who grew up in the shadow of Yankee Stadium, conceded that Pittsburgh deserved to win. Nobody walked away saying it was unfair, he says.

Natapoff's argument is all about that analogy. Pittsburgh may have won the Series that year, but they clearly weren't the best team that year. I, at least, don't want the candidate that wins the Series, I want the best candidate.

car_help
This community just got started. Pass the link around so people know about it and maybe we can all help each other with car troubles.

Most are offensive, but some are really funny:
http://www.thingsmyboyfriendsays.com/

Last Saturday, I drove the jeep to Albuquerque with lalabob11. We didn't drive on I-25 at all. We took dirt roads all the way from Socorro to US-60 between the Blue Springs and Mountainair and then up various back highways until we got to the cement factory on I-40. It took us 7 hours to get up there, but was fun, and that was the point. It'll be a much more fun drive in the summer, with the top down.

On Sunday, houdini_cs and niap_si_efil came over and we did some maintenance stuff to houdini_cs's WRX, installed his front strut brace and also put the air compressor in my Jeep. Now I can air-down and air-up my tires out in the middle of nowhere if I need to. :)

I've taken the first step to deal with my sleep apnea: I have an appointment with my GP tomorrow afternoon so I can get a referral to have a sleep study done. Wheee.

I pretty much back this position:
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/news2/2007/01/time_to_remove-print.html

"They helped us load our van," Kutz said. Investigators used a fake identity to access a surplus Web site operated by a Pentagon contractor and bought still more, including a dozen microcircuits used on F-14 fighters.

The undercover buyers received phone calls from the Defense Department asking why they had no Social Security number or credit history, but they deflected the questions by presenting a phony utility bill and claiming to be an identity theft victim.

Elementary teacher Derek Porter witnessed 15 different car collision on icy roads outside his Portland apartment Tuesday morning and caught several on home video.

niap_si_efil posted this the other day:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/040405fa_fact?040405fa_fact
It's a really interesting article about average human heights over time and why the U.S. height average isn't going up.

This service looks neat, but is only available in the Seattle area right now. There might be something similar out here in NM, but probably not in Socorro.

Webcomics: Lunchbox Funnies

I've met this cat:
http://www.stuffonmycat.com/index.php?itemid=2904
It's milkmandan's cat Aleph.

greyvorfeed is awesome.
In related news, Pentagon memo predicts 10,000 or more American soldiers could die in Iraq by 2008

My friend retrocareer also goes by the handle "mygiantrobot". In a few weeks, she is going up to WA to visit a bunch of our common friends. A couple of them made and sent her this freakin' awesome poster:
( My Giant Weekend Poster )

Random interesting things:

Parking in two spaces

I had seen the opposite as regards kittens a few years ago, but I'd never seen this before:
Think of the Puppies

http://www.skygod.com/asstd/abc.html

http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds_dying.jpg

There is a movie night tomorrow and there will be one next week too. Tomorrow I'm going to make a hot vegetable salad thing and turn the leftover squash into something. I think I'll make a big turkey next week.

I forgot to post earlier about Movie Night tomorrow. I don't know what the movie will be, but I'm probably going to make some manner of roast squash.

Tree with tribble-fish
Originally uploaded by jarrodlombardo.

Our tree. :D

There will be a movie night tomorrow (Dec 22), but not one next Friday (Dec 29th). We will be watching Terry Pratchett's Hogfather tomorrow, assuming I can get it to play on my DVD player.

"Christmas makes things sadder and strengthens the cheap plastic crap industry. It's supposed to be about Jesus, and if it truly was, I'm sure I'd have a problem with that too."

Of all the tragic aspects of this national disaster, this is worst: The people who have been catastrophically wrong about everything are still in charge. And a year from now, when things are even worse in Iraq, we can be sure the neoconservatives will still be demanding that yet more American soldiers die so that Kagan and his ilk can continue to live out their increasingly destructive geopolitical fantasies.

Bush's actions don't border on criminal. They are criminal. He's a lunatic with keys to the greatest nuclear arsenal in the world, a madman with heavy artillery, a nutcase with military might.

The study, examining how sexual behavior before marriage has changed over time, was based on interviews conducted with more than 38,000 people — about 33,000 of them women — in 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 for the federal National Survey of Family Growth. According to Finer's analysis, 99 percent of the respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage.

"What If All the Ice Melts?" Myths and Realities

Fork Art

Furries, cute-junkies and potheads will like this safe-for-work animation:
http://www.machwolf.net/flash/puppies.swf

There will be a movie night tomorrow. I'm not going to make dinner, but I will obtain some manner of food for general consumption.
( Very Silly 12 Days Meme )



flemco and takhisis, the authors of Two Lumps, put up a crazy Christmas tree.

The cuteness is almost overpowering:
http://www.silentkimbly.com/

I often disagree with the phrase: "That which does not kill you makes you stronger." Regardless, it seems to apply to the relationship lalabob11 and I have.

Tomorrow there is a movie night. I'm going to be making a baked pasta dish and also mashed sweet potatoes (assuming I can get enough of them). Today is lalabob11's birthday and last Saturday was radiatorcliffs' birthday, so come bearing good wishes for them tomorrow.

Next week there may or may not be a movie night. I don't know yet; it depends on our plans as regard the Midwinter Feast that Saturday.

Since I'm going up to see the Thomas Dolby and BT show on Friday, and two_pi_r is probably going up to the 2600 meeting, there won't be a movie night this week. Next week there will be a lalabob11's Birthday party movie night.

JPL movie night is a second Thanksgiving dinner. Lots of leftovers. Come, eat, hang out, watch movies, play games.

10th Annual Festival of the Crayons.
Originally uploaded by jarrodlombardo.

royal_spice came down to Socorro Saturday night and we went to the Festival of the Cranes on Sunday. I didn't really get any good photos of cranes, but I got lots of snow geese. Photos from the Festival of the Cranes

I also uploaded the panoramas from last week's North Baldy Trip.

There is a party at the frame shop on Friday that lalabob11 and I are going to go to, so there won't be a movie night this week. Next week is doubtful due to Thursday being Thanksgiving, but I don't know for sure.

We should get home from the party sometime between 2200 and 2400, and people are welcome to stop by once we're home. Albuquerque people in town for Rocky Horror are welcome to stay at our house.

Friday night, JPL went upt to Casa Imbri and played games and generally had a good time with the various Albuquerque people we know. We spent the night there.

Saturday morning, I went on a bike ride with aisa0, ravendisplayed and royal_spice. After the ride, I spent the rest of the day with royal_spice.

We went mattress browsing (I need a new one). After getting the info from ~6 stores, we went to the new Williams-Sonoma in the Uptown Center. The area was a madhouse of way too many snooty people. We didn't buy anything and got out of there pretty quickly.

We then got some coconut milk tea with lychee jelly before going to a coffeeshop for yarrowkat's poetry reading. I generally liked the poems I heard, but poems (and lyrics) aren't usually my thing. For many of her poems, I didn't really hear the words as much as I heard the sounds and cadence (there was nothing wrong with her speech or the sound system, it was just the weird way my mind was working). My unusual way of experiencing the reading was good, even though I'm sure there was lots of meaning in the poems that I missed.

Finally was dinner with a bunch of Albuquerque people at the Taj Mahal. A total of roughly 15 people came. We ended up having the big downstairs room to ourselves, so we were able to be loud and raucous to a greater degree than if we had been seated in the main dining area upstairs. I believe everyone had a good time and enjoyed the food.

After dinner, we stopped back at Casas Imbri and Spice to pick up items we had left there that we needed to take home. We still ended up forgetting the 2 pillows I brought up to stay the night at Casa Imbri (if you guys could get my pillows to royal_spice some time this week that would be excellent, because I know I'll be seeing her this coming weekend, but I don't know that I'll be seing you that soon). The ride back to Socorro was uneventful.

Unrelated to the rest of this post, this is awesome in a broken sort of way (sfw):
http://community.livejournal.com/webcest/433555.html

I posted that there would be no movie night tonight last week, but here's a reminder. There will be movie night at JPL next week, but not tonight because JPL is going up to Albuquerque for the Casa Imbri Gaming Night.

As usual, I'll be making a big Thanksgiving dinner at king_luddite's house. If you are going to come, it would be best if you could bring something. If you are planning on coming, reply to thanksgiving@jarrod.spum.us me so I have a rough count. Also tell me what you'll be making and bringing.

Dinner will start around 5:30, but people can show up a few hours earlier if they want. If you need directions to the house, send me an email or call me or call John.

If you know anyone with no place to go for Thanksgiving, tell me and I'll invite them too. Feel free to bring friends, just let me know how many are in your group. If you are coming in a group, it would really be best if you brought a food item, since it would be better to have too much food than too little.

Look at my Thanksgiving webpage to see who's coming and what they're bringing:
http://www.clanspum.net/~jarrod/showfile.php?file=thanksgiving.txt

The movie night this Friday will feature red chile. I'm making carne adovada and a very similar but vegan dish with black eyed peas instead of pork. This afternoon I became inspired with an idea for a great side dish, but now I can't remember what it is.

There is a movie night tonight. The plan is to make fried green tomatoes and corndogs.

There will be a movie night next week too.

November 10th, there won't be a movie night because there is something at Casa Imbri that evening (I can't recall what it is right now, but JPL wanted to go up for it).

In my last post I appear to have been wrong about when Rocky Horror is. I didn't know for sure. Anyway, there will probably be a movie night October 27th and also on November 3rd. People coming down (for RHPS or otherwise) are welcome to stay at the house, as usual.

I meant to post this on Tuesday, but forgot:
All of my photos from NDK are up. There aren't very many.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jarrodlombardo/tags/nandesukanx/
baronj with a sign, Director Amanda looking Frida Kahloish, and a guy in a banana costume are in there, among some others.

It turns out the Indian Cooking class has been cancelled for a month because too few people registered. I'm trying to get my registration transferred to next month.

8500 Bottle Rockets with 1 fuse:
http://ebaumsworld.com/2006/08/bottlerockets.html

October 13th:
JPL has traveled too much of late, and we're all in need of some rest. Also, I have stuff I need to do in Socorro early Saturday morning. So, we won't be going up to pwned_kisa's party (sorry), but we won't be hosting a movie night either. I'll be here, and people can come over, but I won't be making food or generally making a big deal of anything.

October 20th:
It's 49ers weekend. There will be a movie night. I am making a South Carolina pulled pork barbecue and slaw. I'll probably also make corn and have a bunch of cheap beer to go along with it. Everyone should come.

October 27th:
There will be a movie night. Since I think this weekend is Rocky Horror weekend, I assume extra Albuquerque people we know will be around. They are welcome to stay here Friday and/or Saturday as needed.

November looks good for movie nights except for Thanksgiving weekend. I don't know of anything going on in November other than Thanksgiving, so I plan on movie nights on November Fridays. There will probably not be a movie night Thanksgiving weekend, but there will be the big Thanksgiving dinner at king_luddite's house. I'll post and email more details soon.

I took a few big sections out of this one to make it "for public consumption". Comments are open, as is usual.

The questions overlap, so I'm going to have a sort of overlapped answer. I don't fully know what I want from life. As regards work, I hope to keep making enough money such that I don't need to worry about money too much. I'd like to do work more enjoyable/fulfilling than the programming I'm doing now. There are other jobs in the computer field that appeal more, but I'm not really qualified for them yet. What I'm doing now can be used as a stepping stone though. I'd kind of like to eventually get an SJD and become a judge somewhere, but I don't want to go back to school for any graduate degrees until I have a much larger savings base than I currently have and deciding to go to school for another 7-10 years isn't a decision I'm ready to make right now. I'd also like to be able to make convention organization a paying job somehow, but there are location issues with that (it would be much easier if I lived in a major metro area, and NM doesn't have any of those).

The immediate plan is for me to stay at PMC and save money as well I can (I need to budget better, but even with my lax budgeting, I'm saving a sizable portion of every paycheck, 15%-40%) until near Lauren's graduation. The plan then is for me to find a better job, hopefully in the western WA area, and we would move to that job after she graduates. We don't have enough information at this time to really plan more specifically. We'll see where we are in another ~year and have more things roughly figured out.

Of the parts of the country I've visited or lived, I like the Pacific north west the best. I really dislike the climate here in NM. The dryness and altitude work together to make my lungs strain with a near continuous low level amount of pain (I'm able to ignore it most of the time, except for especially dry days, but it's still annoying). I sleep waaay better in a more humid, lower altitude place. Washington appeals to me for the general prettiness in addition to the climate reasons. The Seattle area appeals to me more specifically because I already have a bunch of friends there, through PAX and other things. Depending on where political things go, I might like to leave the country on a long-term basis. I'm not really worldly enough to go anywhere but Canada in the soon, but I think I'd have time to get ready for many places if it came to that.

I have vague plans and goals, but nothing is really very long term. I want to be happy. I want my loved ones to be happy. I don't want to hurt others to do that. I deal with situations as they come and try to make them fit the goals, though I don't just stand by and wait/hope for fortune to come to me without effort.

This one is pretty edited, but the content is there. If you know who I'm talking about, please don't use full names in any comments you may write. To watch for this, comments will be screened, but then opened if they don't use names.

It makes the most sense to tell this in chronological order, so I will. I was waaay awkward back in middle and high school. I had very few friends and none of them were close. I was very intimidated by nearly all girls. I wasn't able to ask someone out until 10th grade and I didn't go on a date until 12th. My first date was with a somewhat skanky, hick, nerd girl that I met in court (I was pleading down a speeding ticket and she was another girl's alibi for a trespassing charge). We only went out once, and we kissed at the end, but it wasn't memorable (I can't even recall her name). I ended up going on one other date during high school. We went to a bunch of yard sales in the afternoon and then saw a community theatre version of Jesus Christ Superstar in the evening. We were friends before and after, and our one date was technically cheating because she didn't tell her steady boy about it, but I didn't feel guilty about it because he was a jerk.

My first weekend at college, I met a girl, B, and her annoying roommate T (that I thought was her brother at the time). We didn't see each other much the first semester. Our second semester, we had Calc II together and quickly became good friends and started dating a few weeks later. T is gone for Air Force training and B has a new roommate while he's gone. I then find out that B and T are not siblings; they are married. She says that she married him only to get in-state tuition and that she's talking to lawyers so she can divorce him. I'm young and stupid, so I believe her. T is gone for about 18 months and she and I date during most of this time. Toward the end of his being gone, she tells me she tells me that she's going to stay with T because he's going to kill himself if she leaves him. We break up. T threatens my life on multiple occasions, but never follows through with any of the threats. We generally avoid each other forever. B and I never become friends again. I later find out that nearly the whole time she was with me, she was cheating with another guy. T finds out about this other guy, but never threatens him, and becomes somewhat friendly. I don't know what went on there. I had some bad feelings for the other guy for a while, but we're cool now. I wouldn't have had bad feelings for him or B if they had been honest with me. I might not have liked it, but I think I would have dealt with it better. I can't know for sure.

About a year goes by and then I date another girl for a few months. At the end, she tells me that we were just friends the whole time and that I am now too clingy to even be her friend. She dumps me. I may have misinterpreted some things, but we were doing lots of things new couples do together, like going out on dates as often as we could and spending all of our free time together.

A few months later, I met J. We went out once just before summer break. She was going to be out of town for the summer, so nothing much happened then. When she got back for the fall semester, we spent a bunch of time together the few days before classes started. The first day of classes, we both just kind of realized that we were dating. We were pretty happy together for the first ~10 months. There was a girl in Texas I was friends with and there was potential for more. I was going to be in her part of Texas pretty soon. I asked J if it would be OK if I had sex with this other girl if it came up. She was really offended that I asked. I told her that I wasn't going to cheat on her or lie to her and that I'd always ask about things first. Since she wasn't OK with it, I said I wouldn't do anything with the girl and I didn't when I saw her a few weeks later.

We generally aggravated each other often. I was losing interest and she felt stronger for me than I did for her. These things came together along with a particularly bad fight to cause us to break up after ~21 months. I was in Alaska doing an internship at UAF the summer after we broke up. We talked on the phone often and reformed our friendship. She dated another guy that summer, but the relationship was falling apart by the time I got back in the fall. As a friend, I comforted her during the last throes of her relationship and for a while after. Since she was at my house often, it had sparked the interest of one of my friends. He asked me if I thought she might be interested in him. I said I didn't know if she would be, but that he would be really good for her. They started dating a few days later and have been happily together for about 2 years now.

While I was comforting J after her break, I was hitting on a girl I knew from the Anime club. We spent a good amount of time together when we could. We both had very busy schedules that didn't overlap much, so this wasn't a large amount of time. She didn't realise I was interested in her in a more than friends way and I didn't realize she was a closet lesbian. At the end of that semester, we had a very blunt conversation and realized where we were with things. We stayed friends but didn't see each other nearly as much as before. By the following spring break (2005), she was online-dating a girl and the girl was going to come and visit during her spring break, a different week than ours. M (the visiting girlfriend) and I met and became fast friends.

Also in that fall I met Lauren, but only barely. I was sort of friends with Pi, but didn't know him well. I met A through LJ. She was going to be transferring from somewhere in MA to NMT in January and was trying to meet some people before she got here. Coincidence shown on things, and she was to be Lauren's dorm roommate that spring. I went over the day she was moving in to help her move her stuff. I ended up spending the day with Lauren and Pi before A got there. A ended up upgrading her room a few days later and Lauren was roommate free for the semester. Nothing ever developed with A and I, but that's a good thing because after getting to know her some, I found out that we aren't very compatible. Lauren and I became very close friends, and after some discussion with Pi, started dating, on very restricted terms, at the end of the semester. That semester, I also renewed my friendships with the Casa Imbri crowd, after being distant for a few years prior. Only after entering into our vee did we learn the word polyamory and that there were many poly people we already knew in the area that would be supportive. Lauren and I became closer during the summer and the restrictions slowly fell away as both Pi and Lauren became more comfortable with being poly. I got a blood clot behind my left knee in August, and I needed Lauren's comfort to get through my trying time. I needed someone to stay with me constantly in case the clot broke free and I needed to be rushed to the ER, so Lauren was allowed to sleep over. Things were calm after the first few days and the chance of an embolism was significantly lower. I hope to never again be in a position where having an embolism has a high likelihood. If I ever end up in some sort of similar situation, I hope I have similarly supportive people. Pretty much all of the restrictions fell away shortly after. Lauren, Pi and I still have our vee and things are generally working.

That September, I saw M at an anime convention in Denver, but nothing more than friends happened because I hadn't yet told her that I was crushing on her.

In December, I moved out of my old house, Pi and Lauren moved out of the dorm and we all moved into our current house. I met S shortly before then. S and I grated on each other very much. We later became friends and, for a while, lovers. We just stopped having sex and seeing each other often at some point. I'm not sure where our relationship is now, because we give each other mixed signals constantly and I don't really know what I want and I have even less of an idea of what she wants. She and I need to talk about it at some point.

In March, I emailed M (she lives far away), explaining my attraction. She said she was interested in me too and whenever next we saw each other in person, "It would be quite interesting and I'd be up for it ^_^". We used to talk online often, but then she disappeared for a while. She had a bunch of issues crash on her and needed to retreat from most of her friends for a while. She's getting better and we've been talking some of late, so things are looking up. She's hopefully going to come out to NM sometime in the coming winter or spring.

You know the next relationship history part because it's you. We have fun, and we'll see where it goes.

The above is not 100% complete because there are a few times when I went out with someone once or similar not-yet-a-relationship things that have been left out. They aren't terribly important to this narrative, so I didn't write about them.

kiwi's steps to successful polyamory, found through royal_spice's linking.

This is a cool, simple game about eating things to grow larger and evolve:
Flow

It being the beginning of October, I feel it's close enough to start talking about Thanksgiving. There will be a big feast at king_luddite's house as usual. I will make 2 big turkeys as usual. Dark matter dressing (\madscientist{each pound of which weighs over ten thousand pounds}) will be served. There will be a website up listing what foods people are bringing. It being my favorite holiday, I really like it if as many of the people I care about that can come do come. Keep it in your minds. More details will come later.

There is no Movie Night tomorrow as JPL will be at baronj's party.

There may not be a movie night next week as I will be in Denver and lalabob11 and two_pi_r may not want to host one.

I found this article in a roundabout way from royal_spice:
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/monkeysphere.html
I'm surprised I didn't hear about it before. It makes sense overall.

Also, I'm feeling a lot better than I was a few days ago. Life is generally pretty good right now. The only real negative is the tedium of my job.

Another answer is below. I've only answered three questions so far, but I might have another one done tomorrow.

I don't consider myself to be very spiritual. Until I was 4 or 5 years old (I'm the oldest of three: me 1980; brother Adam, 1982; sister Danielle, 1987) my family was Easter and Christmas only Polish Catholic. My parents (I believe due to urging of my slightly more religious relatives, but I don't know) then decided that we should go to church every Sunday. We went every Sunday for a bunch of years. I made my First Communion when I was in 2nd grade (I was 8). My brother did his 3 years later. We kept going to church every Sunday, but I never liked it. The Christian mythos always felt somehow wrong to me and I hated waking up early on Sunday. When I was ~13 I started refusing to go some Sundays. My parents were somewhat annoyed at first, but they started becoming more lenient over time because they weren't getting much benefit from church either. At about this time, the priest and my peers at church started pressuring me to get confirmed. My family kept going regularly for another 2 years, through my sister's First Communion. By then I had come to realize that I wasn't sure if I believed if there were spirits or gods at all, but that I definitely didn't believe in the Abrahamic God. At my sister's communion, when an aunt asked me why I hadn't gotten my confirmation yet, I told her I wasn't going to because I didn't believe in God. She was offended and I've felt strain on my relationship with her since. My family's churchgoing slowed after Danielle's communion until it completely ceased. My family members are now all in the agnostic-atheist gradient somewhere.

Over the next ~8 years I created and tore down many systems of belief of my own invention with little outside research. For a while I believed in various afterlives and methods of reincarnation. Spirituality was of little importance to me during that time (and still). I eventually decided that the human mind (and life in general) is a powerful yet intangible thing, but there is no spirit world or gods I believe in. I came to believe that people should generally be nice to each other for the common good and that being laid back, calm, and silly lead to a
happier self and tend to make those around you happier. Also I believe that people can do whatever they want, but should strive to not force or coerce anyone into doing things.

In my later college years (I was in college from 1998-2005), I took nearly all of the philosophy courses offered at NMT. I read the Tao Te Ching and realized that I was a Taoist (roughly) and had been for a while. I studied other Taoist works after that. I also read and was effected by John Stuart Mill and Bishop Berkeley and parts of their philosophies.

Bringing it all together, I'm a sort of a non-religious Taoist with utilitarian tendencies that usually doesn't trust other people's experiences above my own. From Chuang Tzu especially I learned the value of being silly for personal enjoyment and enriching the lives of those around me. I tend to simply "go with the flow" with lots of things.

I don't terribly like that last paragraph, but I don't know how to rewrite it and still respond in a reasonable amount of time.

I'm in the process of doing a back and forth "question game" with two people that I want to know better. In the game, one person asks any question and the other has to answer it honestly. Once answered, they get to ask a question back. I'm going to post my answers (but not the questions) as they happen. The answers might be slightly edited for posting. I've already answered a few questions, so there will be some in quick succession and then they will be posted at a slower pace.

In 10th grade (~1996) I read the first 6 books of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series (there were only 6 at the time; now there are 11 or 12 and the series should be complete at 13 of 14 books; I haven't read the most recent one yet). The books got me interested in fantasy novels for the first time in my life and I could strongly identify with parts of some of the characters (something that rarely happens for me with novels and other stories). I most closely identified with the character Mat Cauthon had become after his trip to Rhuidean. He became a more capable leader while retaining much of his childish behavior and general irresponsibility. I don't like the irresponsible part, but being a capable leader while able to act childish appeals to me. You can read more about Mat by going to the wikipedia page on him (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mat_Cauthon), but to really understand the character, you'd have to read the novels. (I should go back and do that; there's lots I've forgotten.)

The series puts an icon at the beginning of each chapter. The dice icon appears at the beginning of chapters focusing on Mat. It was about 2000 or 2001 when I thought it would be cool to get a tattoo of the dice. I scanned in the icon and blew it up. At my mother's urging, I modified the dice somewhat so more sides were showing while still keeping the sixes up. I like the variation that resulted. I knew lots of people with tattoos in NJ, but no one in NM that had gotten one here. My best friend in NJ (D'Arcey, togglehead) has a bunch, so I asked him to set up an appointment with someone he trusted during one of my visits to NJ. Scheduling an appointment during one of my visits was tough so I didn't get an appointment until August 2003. I had gotten sunburned snorkeling in St. Thomas (part of a cruise I went on with my family) a few days before my appointment. The skin peeled before the appointment, so the tattooist thought the tattoo would be fine. D'Arcey was the only person there with me when it was done.

Lauren and I had, for the past ~2 hours, one of the most important discussions I've ever had. It was the culmination of a fight we have been having, on and off for the past ~month that had very strong likelyhood of breaking apart our relationship. Everything was just now resolved very happily and our relationship is probably now at its strongest point. I had never before cried from being so happy. It's great!

This Friday, tomorrow, there will not be a movie night here at JPL because there's the Casa Imbri 3.0 housewarming in Albuquerque.

Next Friday, September 22nd, there will be a movie night at JPL.

Friday, September 29th, there will not be a movie night at JPL because of the Flatwarming Party at Forward Observation Post November-One-Three (baronj has a silly name for his abode, don't you think?) in Albuquerque and then king_luddite's gaming night the following evening.

Movie nights should return to normal weekly scheduling for October.

If you are interested in the three parties listed above (the ones not at my house), you should contact their respective hosts about attending. I do not wish to invite anyone to someone else's party out of place. Everyone who reads this (and hasn't been specifically banned) is welcome to attend JPL Movie Nights.

lalabob11 and I are on the way to Albuquerque for her to do some work for one of her jobs. If anyone wants to meet us somewhere for dinner or other stuff this evening, let me know. She should be done with her work stuff by 5 p. m. at the latest.

Update: She had 2 stores to survey. Her boss said they'd each take about an hour. The first has taken about 3 hours so far (it's about 1630 now). I have no idea for the second. It might be quite late. Though if Albuquerque people do want to meet with us, ping me and I'll get back to you.

Update: We went to Hurricane's between stores. She'll probably be beat when she's done, so we may go straight back to Socorro after the store.