hopefulnebula | Recent Entries

So, we were flipping back and forth between the (embarrassment of an) Avs game and the USA-Finland women's game, and I noticed something.

In the NHL, the term for when a team has two players in the penalty box at the same time and the opposing team has none is a "5-on-3."

Despite the fact that the other game was women's hockey, the term the other game used was "2-man advantage."

I'm not sure what to make of that.

(Also, the spellcheck on Deepest Sender - which I can't turn off - doesn't acknowledge "women's" as a word. WTF.)

Day 29 → Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days

Get a job. Rebuild my savings. Go see a few Avs games. (Hopefully playoff ones will be included, but after the last couple games I'm nervous.) Empty (and refill) my yarn stash. Spend a lot of time with the kiddos. Read a lot. Exercise more. Organize my tags on Dreamwidth, and then finish the job on LJ.

Day 30 → Whatever tickles your fancy

Hrm. There's something that tickles my fancy right now, but if I talk about it, I'll ruin it before it happens. If it happens. So if it does happen, you'll know when it does.

Current Mood: hopeful

Found via

yvi several hours earlier than I would otherwise have found it:

MMR "doctor" "failed to act in interests of children"

Dr Andrew Wakefield, the expert at the centre of the MMR controversy, "failed in his duties as a responsible consultant" and showed a "callous disregard" for the suffering of children involved in his research, the General Medical Council (GMC) has ruled.

Wakefield also acted dishonestly and was misleading and irresponsible in the way he described research that was later published in the Lancet medical journal, the GMC said. He had gone against the interests of children in his care, and his conduct brought the medical profession "into disrepute" after he took blood samples from youngsters at his son's birthday party in return for payments of £5.

All I have to say, I said in my comment on

yvi's post, so I'll reprint that here.

OK, you can't see me right now, so you'll have to imagine it, but I just threw my hands up in the air and went "woo hoo." And wiggled around in my chair a bit.

(You may have gathered that vaccines are a pet topic of mine.)

Wakefield is to actual medicine what L. Ron Hubbard is to religion (not that I'm a fan of organized religion in general, but his "church" isn't even that.). He's a hack who started a movement that is actively harmful to both its adherents and its non-adherents.

Oh, and both groups resort to harassment, libel, slander, and frivolous lawsuits to shut people who actually know what they're talking about up.

Current Mood: optimistic

Yes, I skipped four days of this again. Deal with it. (Also, I'm lumping Day 28 in with today's post, for reasons that should be obvious.)

Also, I have a very liberal interpretation of "in great detail."

Day 24 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Cat whiskers. (Oh, wait, that's my neck, not my fancy.)

I have a new bike! My sister got one for her birthday, and since we were at the store, my mom went ahead and spoiled the surprise. (It continues the grand tradition of me picking out Mom's gifts to me. Honestly, I'm not that hard to shop for. Get me a cute pair of socks or a Tattered Cover gift card, or just a nice dinner out, and I'm happy. But I needed the bike anyway.)

Day 25 → Your day, in great detail
Well, the 25th and today were remarkably similar. Woke up out of spoons, dragged myself out of bed and into clothes, did stuff around the house that needed doing.

Day 26 → Your week, in great detail
Let's see. There was my sister's birthday party - that kid knows how to draw out a celebration, as long as she's the subject of it.

Day 27 → This month, in great detail
Started and finished my sister's birthday scarf. Started on a new antidepressant after my body decided last month that the old one wasn't fooling it anymore. (I'm doing better now, really.) Got new glasses, twice - the optician messed up on one of the measurements, so while the prescription was accurate, the first attempt gave me migraines and I couldn't walk in it without feeling like I was going in circles. Which was actually worse than the pair I'd had all last year - at least those I could walk straight in.) Celebrated No-More-Teenagers-In-The-Family Day. Did a mostly pointless meme.

Oh, and the cat stopped being afraid of the dogs and started exhibiting proper feline disdain for them. I'm so proud of her.

Day 28 → This year, in great detail
It's not the 28th yet, but you see the entry for the 27th? Yeah, that covers 2010 so far, too.

And it would be stupid to cut the remaining days, so:
Day 29 → Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 → Whatever tickles your fancy

So,

mbif won my hat auction at

help_haiti. I actually finished her first hat a little while ago (I was on a roll).

skywhisperer came in second, and since she donated anyway and asked very nicely and I need to get rid of all this extra yarn, she'll be getting a hat too. (Plus, I'd forgotten how much I love working with wool. With acrylics, you're either working with something that feels like fiberglass, or you're working with stuff so full of fabric softener that you can't keep it in your hands. Wool is fun.)

Day 20 → A hobby of yours
Would it be redundant at this point to say "crochet?"

Day 21 → A recipe
Ummmm... I can give you the number to the best local pizza place.

Seriously, though, I'm a sucker for peanut butter balls. They're super simple to make, too. Mix equal parts peanut butter, honey and powdered milk (though you may need extra milk, depending on the consistency). Form them into balls. Freeze them if you want - it's great when it's like 105 out.

Day 22 → A website
Here's my Subeta referrer link. I'm a minimod there. If you like it, do sign up and let me know. I help moderate the Help forum, so I might be a bit biased, but I enjoy it there.

Day 23 → A YouTube video
And I'm going to use this space to showcase the runners-up for the "song that makes you cry" day. Neither of them actually make me cry, but they make me all shivery and parts of them just make me go "wow."

( My squee got long. I cut because I love. )

( The remaining days )

Current Music: Fauré - Agnus Dei/Lux Aeterna

Hats for Haiti! The auction closes at noon Eastern time tomorrow, so if you're reading this as I'm writing it, you have just over 10 hours.

Also, there are less than fifteen minutes until there are no more teenagers in the family. At least until my favorite six-year-old becomes my favorite thirteen-year-old. (And that'll be an occasion for sitting back and laughing, too, because we'll still be able to send her back to her parents at the end of the day.)

Day 19 → A talent of yours
I am, evidently, a pretty good singer. I haven't gotten into any advanced choirs in about 10 years, but I'm thinking it's more of "I'm not good at auditions and I don't want to spend all my time practicing" than it is anything else.

( The remaining days )

Day 17 → An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
Do crocheted hats count?

OK, now that the link's posted, I'll be serious.

I've always been a fan of statues and abstract art. There's always going to be a special place in my memory for this one kinetic statue at Children's Hospital in Denver. It's one of those with metal balls rolling down a track, and going into cups and funnels, and bouncing off rubber blocks, and it's awesome and Google Images and YouTube aren't returning anything relevant. But my sister swears up and down that Children's kept it after it moved, so there's gonna be a whole new generation of kids fascinated by the thing.

Day 18 → Whatever tickles your fancy

The fact that this is today's xkcd, when Tianna and I spent most of dinner yesterday ~~(OK, Saturday. Shaddup.)~~ discussing conspiracy theories and theorists.

( The remaining days )

Current Mood: exhausted

Holy crap, was today ever fun. Exhausting, but fun. Also, the Avs game was awesome.

Also, hats.

Day 16 → A song that makes you cry (or nearly)

Most recently? Promise not to laugh?

"For Good" from Wicked.

( The remaining days )

So far there are three bids on my hats. Two of them are from people on my LJ friends list. So, thank you! :D :D D (I promise not to spam the link much more than I already have...)

Also, I am NEVER going six months without letting my sister work on my shoulders again. She fixed them (and if any Denver-area types need a certified massage therapist, I'll give you referral info), but she had to go deep enough that they're all bruised now. (That's a good "ow," though.)

Day 15 → A fan-fic
Well, I'll use this space to squee about my Yuletide bounty.

Seriously. Ten fics. Ten of them. Which means I'm going to find three new fandoms to request next year (HDM is going to be my perennial, I've decided). They're in Eureka, Futurama, His Dark Materials and Quantum Leap, and every one of them is awesome.

(Ten!)

(TEN!)

( The remaining days )

We interrupt my pointless memesheepage to bring you something actually important!

OK, lots of you (online and off) have admired the hat in my "recent" picture. And I have yarn that I need to use up, like, yesterday.

So, I put two similar potential hats up for auction in

help_haiti.

Go! Bid! Help people who need it!

All right, let's just pretend I didn't forget yesterday.

Day 13 → A fictional book

Presumably "fictional" means "a book that doesn't actually exist (yet)." Therefore, I have to choose a book that only exists within another fictional book, and nominate Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. (It's the subject in a chapter of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, cited in Douglas Adams' The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

It can, as the Guide points out, "tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it." But it's such a difficult read that "most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later editions of the book all the pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs."

Day 14 → A non-fictional book

Again, assuming this means "a book that actually exists," I'm going to have to go with my Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide.

( The remaining days )

I've had a general mishmash of Dr. Horrible songs stuck in my head all week long, and just when I think I've kicked the earworm, iTunes pulls up "My Freeze Ray." Which is the song that started it.

IT'S TAUNTING ME, PEOPLE. HELP.

Anyway, on to 30 Days.

Day 12 → Whatever tickles your fancy

Today, my fancy is tickled by the fact that the Pale Blue Dot photo is almost twenty years old. (My fancy is not tickled by the fact that I seem to be unable to close HTML tags properly. Fixed it. Sorry if I broke your reading page in the meantime.)

Also, because it would be redundant to make the video a separate entry for day 23, I bring my favorite YouTubed version of the speech.

( Transcript, via Wikipedia )

( The remaining days )

The Avs are playing Calgary right now. Listening to the game because Comcast puts all the porn channels in HD (have to skip past them to get to the rest of the HD content) but not Altitude2. Anyway, the Avs had damn well better win in regulation tonight.

Day 11 → A photo of you taken recently

Hosted by imgur.com

2007 is recent, right?

( The remaining days )

(Today's choice of icon brought to you by the fact that I could barely keep Athena out of my tomato soup tonight.)

Day 10 → A photo of you taken over ten years ago
You want an old photo? You've got one.

( One more of little!Nebby, plus a couple more oldies with Snooker and my dad )

( The remaining days )

This morning I got a 4AM wake-up call from my friendly neighborhood coyotes. It was, evidently, howlin' time.

It was awesome and wonderful (despite the fact that they woke me up at 4 in the morning) until the friendly neighborhood dogs decided to join in.

I've posted all my coyote pics under my Local Wildlife tag, so there's no point in being redundant.

Therefore, KITTENS!

Day 09 → A photo you took

( The remaining days )

Why yes, I *am* asleep in bed like I should be right now. Why do you ask?

Day 08 → A photo that makes you angry/sad

See that? That's poliovirus. This is 2010, last time I checked, and there have been effective polio vaccines available for cheap for well over fifty years now. How has it not gone the way of smallpox?

And polio's just the first one I thought of. Since June 2007, 53,129 people have contracted vaccine-preventable diseases, and 458 of them have died. That's in the United States alone. Worldwide, the percentage is much higher. (I was planning on posting a picture from one of McCarthy's rallies. Then I decided against giving her the positive attention.)

Many of these people - especially in more developed countries - are children too young to vaccinate, or people with weakened immune systems. Ask Dana McCaffery's parents.

There are also diseases that don't even need vaccines to prevent. Clean water + good hygiene = no cholera, for instance.

To end this rant positively, I'm going to link you to GiveVaccines.org. Even if you only spend ten seconds answering questions, you'll help more than just the people you vaccinate.

( The remaining days )

I don't have much to say about today - packed some boxes, carried some stuff up from the basement.

Day 07 → A photo that makes you happy

Well, there's always this. Never fails to make me smile (and want to lick the screen.)

But, in terms of pictures I can embed without stealing bandwidth or otherwise getting into trouble (and in terms of photos that aren't Photoshopped to hell):

Two lynxes cuddling in a tree

( The remaining days )

Day 06 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Today? Warmth. And the fact that I got to spend the early part of the afternoon with

exor674.

Not so much the inch and change of ice on the walk outside the bus stop.

( The remaining days )

Current Mood: cold

Day 05 → Your favorite quote

Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

( The remaining days )

You know your subconscious is just screwing with you when you dream about insomnia. I'm certain now it was a dream, but still.

Day 04 → Your favorite book

The His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. Anybody who didn't guess I'd answer this probably doesn't know me well enough. :p

( The remaining days )

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Nebby

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Nebby, Nebba, Nebburino, Nebburina, Nebburinula, THE HOPESTER, yeah

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Last two days of boring you with a meme.

Captain Obvious strikes again.

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No, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth.

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:D

Help Haiti and get an awesome hat out of the deal!

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Day 12: Fancy-tickling

Define "recently."

30 Days, part 10

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February 2010

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