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The Topic of the Day is: Saturday, July 21, 2007 | |
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Warning: This Post May Contain Shopping, Star Gazing, and Guinea Pigs. Yesterday was great, despite the fact that I did not actually get much done on The Paper. I went shopping with Amanda from work. I don't really go shopping because it's not really my way of entertaining myself; I usually only go to the store to buy things I need. But Friday was definitely shopping--looking for something general and willing to spend money. First we went to Animart, because I needed a traveling cage for Kaylee, since the one our family has has been usurped as a living cage by my sister. While we were there, we teased the kitties with my necklace and I ogled some 4 year old male guinea pigs--they were large, poofy, sleepy, and very cute. The cage was too expensive but oh well; I had to make do some how. Then we went to the mall. We started in Sears, but found nothing of interest there. Then we ended up in Deb. Deb is very pretty but it's just a little *too* bold for me; I like my symbols on my clothes just a bit smaller or more subdued. However, I did, for some reason, buy a dress. um... A prom dress. I'm not yet really sure why, except it was $25, fit me really well, and actually looked good on my frame. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever worn--sky blue with a lighter blue panel crossing it, and glitter (the glitter is a problem. I'm now covered with it. Oh well). It's enough of a prom dress that I couldn't really wear it to a dance club or anything, but I feel like I might wear it to Geek.kon and cosplay as a goddess or somesuch. We next went to Lane Bryant, where I finally got some girl-cut shirts. I also picked up a pair of shorts from JCPenny's and exercise shorts from dicks. I have already had two exciting discussions about image with Louise and Amanda. It's very hard to explain my opinion on girly clothing (the dress aside); in part, I cannot ignore how much of what we define as "looks good" is influenced by society; on the other hand, there's nothing that can be done to change that. Louise pointed out that there's nothing wrong with feeling good about looking good to yourself and having other people pay you compliments, which is an excellent point that I tend to forget. Amanda pointed out that a lot of looking good to yourself is feeling good in your clothes, and that girl-cut stuff tends to fit better. My typical boxy tshirt and jeans combo mostly fits but has some problems, which I think girl-cut stuff fixes. Ugh. It's complicated. Anyway, we went back to my apartment, dropped off my stuff, and grabbed The Telescope. It's a Mead 114 mm, very nice, except for comments to come later in the form of "it doesn't work" (I am going to try to fix it). Then we went to the physics building and met our summer student Eric, Siddharth, Peter and his son. My telescope lost a screw which is apparently not standard size (I couldn't fit the nut onto anything up in the lab, how disappointing!) but we improvised on that. We all piled into the department van and drove out to the observatory that's half an hour out of town. They tested the pole that Siddharth and Lauren, our other summer student, had constructed, and it worked, so Siddharth set up his camera to take sky pictures and I set up my telescope. We had some interesting challenges (the mount is not very sturdy, and we had to tighten some screws so it didn't slide about in declination, and the big elevation screw is lose but we couldn't fix that) but eventually we triumphed, located the moon, and discovered that the optics were off. We couldn't get the moon to focus. Eric says that = optics, something on the inside, so it might be able to be fixed by someone in Astro or it might be able to be returned, a fact I would find more comforting if I could find the receipt. So much for looking at Venus and Jupiter! :( Anyway, Amanda had binoculars and we could see some of Jupiter's moons through them, and then we all saw a fair number of shooting stars, so we settled back and watched the sky. It wasn't perfect out there but it was pretty darn good and we ended up seeing the Milky Way, and even some of the dark dust patches. Eric pointed out tons of constellations (I have a much better map of them in my head now), and Siddharth took a picture of the milky way with long exposure that turned out great. We tracked a lot of satellites (they look like stars and they're up in the dome of the sky but they are moving; very hard to find but fun) and actually saw one pass DIRECTLY THROUGH a star (and by that I mean over it.... do you know how improbable that is? a pinpoint star and a pinpoint satellite, CROSSING? the odds are astronomical--ahahahaha). There were a lot more shooting stars also, which was pretty freaking neat. We only stayed out until ~11:30 but it was still an awesome time. In theory we might go again tonight; if the car is clean enough. I'll have to see. |
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My Other Writing Sites | |
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Webcomics | |
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Stories I'm currently working on. | |
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***Tbook1 (Time and Chaos, needs a new name, needs to be edited) ***Book of Sun (Just needs to be edited. Tis a Nano novel) ***Book of Whispers part 1 (Does not jive at all with part 2; needs to be rewritten to fit and to have less suckage) ***Book of Whispers part 2 (Needs some rehaul editing, needs some loose ends tied up, needs to fit) ***Book of Whispers part 3 (Needs to be finished... then needs to die o.o Not sure if I need a third part in the series) ***Dium's Story (Needs a point, progress, anything... needs to be integrated into Tbook1, since that is what it is a part of, mainly) ***Trio Story with Jackie and Louise (Maybe we should get together and work on this, guys) ***Demon Story (This is working out pretty good so far. I like the plot, it's a bit convoluted, and the characters are interesting) ***New Witch Story (It's only 30 pages long, dang) ***Dragon's Voices (This has SO much potential! wee!) | |
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1 Comments:
Usurped? I don't think so. And what do you mean, if the car is clean enough? I thought you gave me an ultimatum. Mean-y. :(
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