The Night Sky

Currently, I live in a house. This means that taking my dog for a walk is not an absolute necessity -- all dogly activities can be done in the backyard. Until recently, I lived in a 3rd floor apartment. There was no getting around the need to take the pup out, at the very least once a day (if one or both of us happened to be terribly ill) or twice a day (if it was a strangely busy day). Usually, though, we were outside walking at least 3 times a day.

Eight years of these dog walks, along with my general interest in the night sky, has led to me having some basic sketchy knowledge of the night sky. I get excited in October, because Orion starts showing up at night. Orion's where I started... following his shoulders upward toward Taurus; following his belt downward toward Sirius....

I know I've checked HubbleSite before. But, obviously, it's been quite a long time since I have. The site's incredible now! Lots of gorgeous photos, lots of info. There's a video series called Tonight's Sky that'll show you special things to look for each month. November's not up yet, but October is. (Okay, the narrator's voice is... excessive. But it's still fun.) Oops. I lied. November is there.

NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and it's high time I mentioned it. The goal, should you choose to go for it, is to write a 50,000 word novel during the 30 days of November. Writing daily, that's 1666 words a day.

I discovered NaNoWriMo two years ago, on about November 5th. I made some effort at fiction, but it didn't last long. It was uncomfortable and certainly absolutely horrible writing. So... I decided to just write. No fiction, no plot, no story. Just me and my thoughts. I had fun with it. It seemed like I did a heck of a lot of writing, but I think it was about 25,000 words, which is rather short of the 'official' NaNoWriMo goal.

The fellow who founded the thing, Chris Baty, has a book (and more than that) entitled "No Plot? No Problem!" Check out the NaNoWriMo site if you're at all interested in writing anything. Maybe sign up. Maybe give it a shot. There's lots of encouragement available, and lots of fun.

Expert Village

I had thought of offering a link to Expert Village because I can get lost on that site, and it seems they have lessons on virtually anything you're interested in. So, I fired up ye ol' browser and headed that way. 15 minutes later, I realize I've gotten lost on there again, this time watching a guy give lessons on playing the didgeridoo.

I've made some attempts at improving my knitting in that I had only really used straight knitting (no purling, no increases or decreases)... which meant I could only make square or rectangular items. Not very impressive and not very exciting. "Continental knitting," where you hold the yarn around your left hand fingers while knitting was what I figured I ought to do as a leftie. But I was seriously trying to complicate it. Looked up knitting on Expert Village, and the way this woman does continental knitting makes it simpler than I had thought.

Zoo trip

I went to the zoo today with family folk. As we got to the panda area, I found myself telling the story of the YouTube video of the sneezing baby panda. Obviously, a story about it can't do it justice. The vid becomes all the more fun when you watch actresses in nun habits reenact the panda sneeze. AND, as one funny video leads to another... here's a monkey with a mirror. And the final video I was trying to describe whilst we were at the zoo is an elephant playing soccer.

Two fun music videos

I can't explain why I enjoy this so much; it's from a guy who does a video blog on YouTube and there's something about this song that has me going back to it now and then. Guy's name is Tommy Wallach, song is Elodie.

This other one - Jason Webley's Eleven Saints - had been posted by Neil Gaiman on his blog/journal. On my first listen, I thought, "Alright, this is cool." The second listen, however, started this addiction process.... Free MP3 of the song is there too.

Wow. My last post was 5 years ago! I'm surprised blogger didn't decide to boot me for lack of use.

I've been doing a lot with Facebook of late, but thought I'd try to get back to some blogging since you don't have to sign up to read this (you do have to sign up and make an account to see all the Facebook stuff). So. Here's hoping I do some more posting than in the last 5 years :)

If you don't do Facebook, you might have missed the addition of a new nephew! So here's a pic of Eli for you.