haircut

it's been about two years since my last haircut, and you know that means! i should've waited longer this time but t was getting her hair cut at the salon we went to last time so i decided to tag along. next time i know, two years minimum waiting time. also, i'm actually really sad cause the length i got it cut at is my favorite length: just about mid-boob.

the cut is definitely a little shorter than i was expecting (rip says the photo looks longer than irl), but as the stylist was about to cut it, i was worried it might not be long enough, so i told her take as much as she could. of course, she still needed a few inches to work with during styling, so my ponytail came in only a little bit over 10". eeck! which is why this time instead of donating to locks of love (10" minimum) i'll be giving it to pantene's beautiful lengths program (8" minimum).

anyway, i hope i get some sort of acknowledgement of my hair being put to good use. last time, locks of love mailed me a postcard with a really creepy photo a few weeks after i sent in my hair, lol.

spoiled

why are american kids so spoiled?

i definitely think we coddle our kids. i've tutored a few kids over the years and have seen what some parents let their kids get away with... sheesh! also, since i do the steering stuff at long beach i'm constantly emailing teams. a lot of these are high school or college teams, and they are generally pretty SHIT at responding to emails. it's not like they're not online, they just don't respond to emails because they don't think it's important. that's a ridiculous attitude!

i definitely think it's "our" fault tho. i remember back in the day when we were a high school or college team, we were on top of things! we were self-taught. we coached ourselves, set up our own practices, figured out our own finances, got to practices / races on our own, turned in paperwork without needing reminders... all of the high school teams now all have an adult coach / team manager. why is that? we did it ourselves, why can't they?

"...my husband and I gave them a new job: unloading the grocery bags from the car. One evening when I came home from the store, it was raining. Carrying two or three bags, the youngest, Aaron, who is thirteen, tried to jump over a puddle. There was a loud crash. After I’d retrieved what food could be salvaged from a Molotov cocktail of broken glass and mango juice, I decided that Aaron needed another, more vigorous lesson in responsibility. Now, in addition to unloading groceries, he would also have the task of taking out the garbage. On one of his first forays, he neglected to close the lid on the pail tightly enough, and it attracted a bear. The next morning, as I was gathering up the used tissues, ant-filled raisin boxes, and slimy Saran Wrap scattered across the yard, I decided that I didn’t have time to let my kids help out around the house."

...did you notice anything wrong with this? she cleaned up after he messed up. your kid is 13; he can pick up broken glass without bleeding to death. and if he does get hurt, it probably won't be badly, so it's not a big deal. (it's good though that they didn't take away the unloading task) aaron wasn't careful when doing his chores, but if he doesn't have to deal with the consequences, he'll never learn to be more careful. why should he care if bears get into the garbage? mom will clean it up anyway.

i'm not saying that you should make your kids grow up as fast as possible (tho it seems they can handle it), but you shouldn't coddle them. teach them to be independent. supervise, but don't do it yourself. let them figure it out first before telling them what to do. your kid is smarter and more capable than you think.

sunspots & silhouettes

july 4th's astronomy picture of the day.

posting

posts here are going to get a little further apart. i've run out of things to write about.

owls

stacey o'brien - wesley the owl: the remarkable love story of an owl and his girl

"...owls mate for life, and when an owl's mate dies, he doesn't necessarily go out and find another partner. Instead, he might turn his head to face the tree on which he's sitting and stare fixedly in a deep depression until he dies. Such profound grief is indicative of how passionately owls can feel and how devoted they are to their mates." (3)

"The evidence that all species of animals with a brain have emotions is overwhelming... People who work with reptiles are well aware of the risk of depression in captive snakes and lizards of all kinds. Turtles and tortoises re especially prone to it. If a snake gets depressed, his life is immediately in danger, as he will stop eating. I once rescued a snake that had to be tube fed for a year before he began to eat on his own again, after having an owner who did not provide proper stimulation for him. Snakes will also stop eating if they have a traumatic event with a mouse. Reptiles are cold blooded, meaning that they cannot control their own body temperature and are dependent upon their environment to provide a hear source. If they cannot raise their temperature, their metabolism becomes so sluggish that they cannot defend themselves against even a mouse. Careless snake owners have been known to toss a mouse in with the snake and not supervise. If the snake is cold, the mouse can eat the snake alive and the snake can't respond. If the snake survives such an episode, it will have such a fear of mice that it will no longer eat. It can take up to a year of tube feeding before the snake against the courage to face another mouse...

"Lack of stimulation affects brain growth... The difference between a rat with a wide variety of toys and one with no toys can be seen with the naked eye during an animal autopsy (a necropsy). The rat with the toys will have a brain just packed with ridges and wrinkles, which indicated more neural connections, while the rat with no toys will have a relatively smooth cortex because he lacked the stimulation needed to devlop neuronal (nerve cell) connections in the brain..." (47-48)

7 minutes of terror

video explaining some of the challenges of getting to mars. (btw, the music is fantastic!)


july 31st's astronomy "picture" of the day.

lose lose

farm-raised or wild fish

i feel like you just can't win anymore. sure, farm-raised is worse in nutrition and the farms can be terrible for the environment. but wild fish is definitely bad for the environment, and since there's tons of illegal dumping and random pollution in the seas, you can't know what chemicals are in your fish.and  people don't catch fish sustainably, you wouldn't be able to run a large business if you did, probably not even a medium sized one.

i have kind of a weird thing with organic. i don't care too much about the chemicals i'm ingesting (i hate bugs!!). i am much more concerned about how the chemicals we put into our foods are affecting the environment. it's polluting everything!

the best way to be "safe" is to grow your own food. but how many of us do? at my home we grow a few things: basil, peppers, loquats, jujubees, oranges, and we get lemons from our neighbor. but we produce very little of any of this stuff, any my mom still has to buy all of the above from the store. and that's the thing too. even if you do grow your own stuff, you probably don't grow enough of it. and if you did grow enough to feed yourself every meal, you probably aren't getting a good variety of nutrients and minerals and stuff. ...the problem continues.

i think growing stuff is great. i intend to have a little garden later. but i wish life was just easier, with clear good and bad ways to get food.

everybody knows

Elizabeth & The Catapult - Everybody Knows

everybody knows that the dice are loaded
everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
everybody knows that the war is over
everybody knows that the good guys lost

everybody knows the fight was fixed
the poor stay poor and the rich get rich
that’s how it goes
everybody knows

’cause everybody knows that the boat is leaking
everybody knows that the captain lied
everybody’s got this broken feeling
like their daddy or their dog just died

everybody’s talking to their pockets
everybody wants a box of chocolates
and a long stem rose
everybody knows

’cause everybody knows, everybody knows
that’s how it goes
everybody knows
(2x)

everybody knows it’s now or never
everybody knows that it’s me or you
everybody knows that you live forever
when you’ve done a line or two

everybody knows the deal is rotten
old black joe’s still pickin’ cotton
for your ribbons and your bows
everybody knows

’cause everybody knows that you’re in trouble
everybody knows what you’ve been through
from the bleeding cross of calgary
to the beach in malibu

everybody knows you’re coming apart
take one last look at the sacred heart
before it blows
everybody knows

’cause everybody knows, everybody knows
that’s how it goes
everybody knows
(3x)

looking up

 june 18th's astronomy picture of the day

long beach '12

this past weekend was our annual long beach dragon boat tournament. and while normally it's a lot of hard work, it's still a ton of fun. this year, tho... i'm undecided. we're always short volunteers, and since we had an excess of paddlers for socow i decided to marshal saturday rather than paddle. i'd already brought socow co-captain song in with me to handle our corporate team boston sci so i was expecting to mostly marshal and maybe call the occasional race. turns out ripple effect (space dragons' sister team) needed me to paddle their women's boat, so i did get a 500m in with them.

friday set up

sunday i also arrived super early (mostly to give kim a ride), and found out that alex (who does a ton at marshaling) had really bad food poisoning the night before and was not going to come that day. !!! so i decided to give up my morning 500m socow race and help marshal until the uci volunteers showed up (they were supposed to come at noon). 

marshaling. ;)

things were supposed to be fine. but my co-captain was running late so i had to get boston sci together myself for heat 60. which would've been easy enough, except that i was also supposed to paddle heat 57. ...i asked rip to help me and there was some drama there and just... the situation managed to work itself out, as things usually do. but rip ended up talking to me for the rest of the day (actually, it's thursday night now and he's still not talking to me. anyway...).

lucy took photos of me!

later the uci volunteers were a bit late, but eventually i did manage to make it back to the socow tent and have a late lunch and paddle our 200m with them too. for the whole weekend, i probably spent a total of 1.5 hours with the team.

boston sci with song on the bow

at sunday's banquet i felt like i was trying to play catch-up, but still unable to keep up. now everyone's pictures are up on fb and i'm in hardly any at all. i dunno, i just feel really sad. i got into paddling because of the social aspect of it. which i'm now totally missing out on. i don't regret volunteering because lord knows we need as much help as we can get. and i in particular am useful because i paddle so i catch things non-paddlers have a harder time with. i also know nearly all the steerspeople so i can find you a steer last minute and i can also get steers' attention faster cause i know most of their names. and i can drum. but still...

socow 2012

sunday night after banquet i (and two socow'ers) went to club ripples to meet up with space and ripplefx. we got there pretty late tho, and after like 30minutes both teams went home. i did go out with the two socow'ers to another bar tho, and we had fun getting to know each other better.

korean bbq for dinner. rudy (far right) is a vegetarian, lol.

i think it's all harder because of the fight with rip. this is the 2nd time this month he's gotten mad at me to the point of not talking. we normally fight this "badly" only once or twice a year, and for 2012 this is our 3rd time, and it's only july!

anyway, i'm unsure of what's going to happen with rip, or with lb next year. i think i'm going to try to stick with the same plan: volunteer saturday, paddle sunday. i think it would've been better (for me anyway) if i had managed to stick to that but things come up... i know i personally have mixed feelings about lb this year, but honestly, it was a great tourney. we were only a few minutes behind (until that one boat huli'ed and didn't come back to the shore for nearly an hour), didn't have too many serious accidents, alex ended up coming, we got more volunteers sunday afternoon, and all the teams i'm involved with had fun. some even came away with medals (5 of the 6 space teams placed into div 1a, and space red was first in the 500m and 200m.). i just need to focus more and pay attention to those closest to me, rather than get distracted with the association stuff. it's hard tho, cause i feel very responsible about certain things, and generally when i know i can help, i do. anyway, here's to 2012, and here's hoping that it's even better next year.