I sing bass in a church choir that goes by the unlikely name of Mixed Choir Twinkle.
We are currently on the road. We sang one gig today, and we've got another one tomorrow in a different city. Today's concert went very well, despite a few minor mistakes on my part.
BCii is actually "having fun." This is unusual.
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On an unrelated note, I have a bunch of MOCs awaiting final touches and/or photo sessions. What is it with me, huh? Get with the program, BCii.
So I spent another mostly-solitary Saturday at the residence. Started building a Bionicle epic in my mind. Far-future clashes between Matoran factions, Toa vs. Toa across the solar system, fate of everything in the balance, deep world-view issues, yadda yadda. I amuse myself in strange ways.
I also sketched a Matoran of my own design. Showed it to my manga-hating dorm-mate whose main interests are parties and movies, he was genuinely impressed. Apparently, I can draw.
Wait, does this entry
Internet connection has become too slow to bother with. Strongly suspect chat bot incident. Will wipe hard drive and reinstall OSes when have energy. Will be offline for indeterminate period, likely matter of days. Have fun, me.
Update: This appears to have been a false alarm. Internet is inexplicably now back to normal.
[originally published Dec 19 2009, 12:33 AM]
New display name, avatar and sig.
In other news, I returned from my trip to Helsinki about 24 hours ago. It was a blast. B) Went to a lovely Christmas party with some "New Age" types, which included a group meditation. Reconnected with a dear adventuring friend from the Seattle, WA area, spent the night at his place. Went to the local Laestadian church/hangout, chatted with my ex-gf's sister there. Went to a friend-of-a-friend's place to mingle
Saturday evening:
I go for a walk along the shore of Lake Pieksäjärvi, the local ocean, just to relax and get a bit of exercise after working six hours selling insurance on the phone. I have an intuitive gut feeling, the kind that never lies: I'm going to meet somebody new, and the meeting will be somehow significant. Well, with my iPod for company, I walk the lakeshore trails this way and come back the other way, almost to the end. I sit down on a bench right on the shore, with the waves lap
Have you ever spent the night in an unusual place without originally meaning to?
How about in your car in a nowhere town far from home? In your car in front of your house? On a foul airport bench at London-Heathrow? On a sofa in the basement of your school?
I have.
And then there are the places you let people convince you to stay, or that you thought were a good idea. Like sleeping alone in a little two-pole tent while everyone else stays in the camper, and waking up with a terrible ne
Two decades is a long time to do anything. I've been building with Lego bricks for two decades and two years. I've never had a "dark age." It's always been part of my life. I've fully enjoyed every minute that I've spent creating MOCs and I have no regrets over the time and money I've spent on the hobby. I only wish there could have been another life somewhere to just go all out and bring to fruition all the awesome Lego projects I ever wanted to do. Alas, this is not that life. In this life, I
Hello, everyone. It's October 31st, and you know what that means: tomorrow starts the studded snow tire season here in still-recovering-from-the-last-ice-age Finland. Today it's still, by law, technically too early to drive on them. Well, tell that to the snow demons! We got a good three-inch snowfall today. Nothing like a premature snowstorm to strike sweet savory fear in the hearts of motorists -- just in time for Halloween! WõõõÕÕÕõõõõõõ my ticker be racin'!
Ah, to be six years old, pray
This is a poem for Easter by Les Visible.
I Do Believe
In that essential stillness...
that quiet endless hour
preceding every dawn
of every day...
God breathes into the world of sleep
whatever power might be taken
to reach
that waking moment
in the warm falling rain of his grace...
In every year,
whenever the wheel has turned
into the place where it must turn again
or stop...
for want of hope
or lack of faith...
God breathe
Also, reworked Nidhiki is hawt.
Pics coming. You'll see what I mean.
Also also: New project is new and involves copious amounts of System.
BIONICLE ROCK CONCERT.
There's something about the Great Wilds of the North that strikes some deeply compelling chords in my soul. Through books like Gary Paulsen's Hatchet, Farley Mowat's Lost in the Barrens and People of the Deer, and Michio Hoshino's Grizzly, I have been able to vicariously experience some of the unforgiving beauty of those remote lands.
When I was a boy, one of my brothers and I went with my dad, one of his brothers, and their dad on a hunting trip to Thutade Lake in northern British Columbia.
So I revamped Toa Nikila and I thought, "You know what? This isn't Nikila. This is Deirdre." And so... here we are. Hooray for overcast-but-not-freezing-like-heck weather so I can finally take pictures outside!
Ta-da! Surprised? Yup, I entered the contest. Just squeezed in among the last few stragglers before the deadline. And I shouldn't have, really.
Really. I'm kicking myself for entering this contest. Because it ate up hours upon hours of precious time that I could have spent either sleeping or doing something useful. So here, feast your eyes on the latest spectacular product of my miserable, foolish existence!
Hello! I am picking up a vibration in the Ether... Aha! My audience is now vag
I got some surprise mail today, forwarded from my previous address (did I mention I moved recently?) in a generic Posti forwarding envelope. Inside was an A6-sized envelope with a German postmark. The flap bore the following legend in a schoolgirl-like hand:
Geram [sic] scouts (Nixe, Theresa, Tweety, Minnie, Weda, Quassel)
This, of course, harks back to my three-part series, "A Most Unusual Encounter," way back in July. Anyway, here's the contents of the letter:
There's not much in it t
I invited the exchange students over for dinner on Saturday. David was back in Ireland for a bit, so Anssi, a non-student living in residence, took his place. The other two, as you know, are Alena from Czech and Fabian from Alaska.
I set a reminder on my cell phone for 5:30 pm, in plenty of time to prepare for dinner at 7. Unfortunately, I fell asleep reading Dan Brown's Deception Point and woke up to my dinner guests knocking at the door. Talk about a power nap.
I was supposed to be makin
An update on a previous entry.
This article sums up the Report. In brief: the government (proudly self-styled Canada's New Government) hasn't lifted a finger to address climate change and it needs to get its act together posthaste.
The report poses three simple questions: Is Canada on track to meet its emission reduction obligations? Is Canada ready to adapt to the impact of climate change? Is the government organized and managing well? The disturbing answer to all three is "No."
On the
Mean people suck.
Also predatory con artists - I've fallen victim to two of them in the past week. They're both business directory companies that contacted me by phone, one posing as an official registry, the other as Google. Typical hard-sell telemarketing tactics, but on a whole new level for me. Not knowing what I was dealing with, I didn't stand a chance. The first one sent me a bill for 157 euros, and I'm expecting a bill for something like 300 euros from the fake Google. I'm so fighting
From Fringe Knowledge for Beginners, a most interesting little book. It contains much that might seem pretty "out there" for the average person, but also some very practical, down-to-earth, mainstream-compatible advice. The chapter on emotional balance has such a broad scope of general relevance (for anyone interested in such a thing) that it's worth sharing here in its entirety.
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The phone company disconnected my phone, so for now, Internet is my only com-link to the world. The trouble is that my computer seems to be on its deathbed, due to some nasty, deep-level virus that commandeers over 90% of the processor, masquerading as "System idle process." Normal background processes are all shunted aside and denied memory space in favour of this metastatic monstrosity. Even now, Firefox is running entirely without images. That includes all toolbar and tab icons, down to the l
I reread Beliwa: Toa of Demons' Crossroads epic today, up to chapter 7, which is as far as it had gotten when I printed it out some months ago. It's a curious mix of Terry Pratchett, gothic vampire lit, and BZ-Koro madness. It's apparently been a smash hit, so with mass appeal and my personal plug, it is an official must-read.
As for what I've been writing lately, I've divided my time between rewriting my S&T contest entry from scratch and realizing a story idea I first had way back in 20
Sunday evening:
It's six-thirty p.m. The market square is all but deserted, save for a few idle humans, out enjoying the evening air. An anxious-looking, twenty-something male strides across the quiet flagstone expanse, eyeing the perimeters for any sign of a particular group of individuals. No sign for the moment, but he stays alert for any sudden arrivals. He stakes out a strategic bench and settles in to wait and watch. Minutes tick by. A brazen city crow passes by within a metre of the yo
I mentioned personal issues in a recent entry. I've now updated regarding those at another place that I can't link to but that shouldn't be hard to find.
*deep breaths*
And now off I go to continue what I was doing: baking a triple batch of my Special Delicious Cake recipe. :3
1. My dear cousin had her baby last week. They said it's a healthy boy, dark-haired like his father. I am making a cake for them at this very moment.
2. I spent the weekend at a relative's summer cabin. He's a cool guy, and the place is really something. I helped him saw some lumber on Saturday, but mostly I just settled in, relaxed, and enjoyed the the idyll of the river-pond. I will most likely be spending many of my weekends there this summer (and why not weekdays too, schedules permittin
