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.

poop!

this is a conversation i had with r the other week. i bolded the best parts of the conversation, hahhahha. unfortunately the graphics don't show. so be sure to type them into your own gchat. :D

me:  the "letter" he says... 

ooooh!!!!!!

~@~

HHAHAHAHA!

 r:  what the heck...

 me:  I KNOW!!!

 r:  i want to make a poop

 me:  and it GETS BETTER!!

 r:  teach me
 me:  ~ @ ~

 r:  ~@~

 me:  but all together.

hahhahah!

 r:  amazing...

this is the best day ever
me:  wait wait wait...

V.v.V

V.v.V

 r:  omg

 me:  ISN'T THAT FUCKING AMAZING?!!!

 r:  V.v.V

crap

 me:  so if you change the smilely display it sometimes changes the ...animation of hte thing

but like, the poop is always the same

 r:  V.v.V

come on, stupid crab

 me:  crab is different only in the last one. but he's amazing cause he WALKS

 r:  V.v.V

excellent

this is great

 me:  wait!!

:(:)

PIG!

:(:)

:(:)

:(:)

and... monkey!!!

wait.. i forget that one

ooh!

:(|)

:(|)

 r:  haha

 me:  :(|)

hahah, but walking crab and the poop ARE THE BEST

 r:  poop is my fav