To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

Oh for the love of god, we're going to get three to five more inches of snow tonight. I am TIRED of this, do you hear me, weather gods?

On the other hand, since the assembly is in recess right now, I don't have to work, and thus don't have to go out in it. I suppose if we have to get snowed on, better now than later. Hear that, weather gods?

Speaking of snow and ice, I found this collection of photos of backyard ice rinks in the Boston area. I...did not know it was possible to build one's own ice rink! I mean, intellectually I know that ponds freeze over up there, and people skate outdoors, but it never occurred to me that you could, like, flood a basketball court, or a flat place in your yard, and have it stay that way long enough to make the work viable.

wintercreek, I got your postcard from Hawaii! Hee, I love the idea of Maggie and Joel vacationing there, and Fleischman wanting to indebt himself to Hawaii until she reminds him of tsunamis. Thank you!

Is the cultural obsession in this country with a white Christmas entirely the result of that song? To be honest, I have never quite understood it. Perhaps it's a northern thing. At any rate, we're supposedly going to have snow on Christmas for the first time in seventeen years, and only the seventh time since people began keeping records in the 1860s, or so the National Weather Service excitedly informs me every time I visit weather.com. I will report back on whether the snow is in fact anything special.

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In much more interesting news, holy crap, my camera can take THIS PICTURE:

( starry night )

It can also take a bunch of other pictures:

( like so )

I went to the downtown library today, and I found to my delight that they had several books on "space tourism" shelved in the travel section (right next to Antarctica) as if Mars and the moon were just another country you could go to, like Russia or Japan.

What an age we live in.

Universe, I give up. Have I done something to piss you off? First my dog dies, then my computer refuses to boot. (Probably it's the logic board.) Please tell me there is not a third bad thing waiting to happen this week. I don't think I can take it.

To counteract the suck, here's a joke I saw the other day:

A farmer is in his field loading rocks onto the rock boat to dump on the stone wall.

Passerby: Where did all the rocks come from?
Farmer: Glacier brought 'em.
Passerby: Where did the glacier go?
Farmer: Back for more rocks.

*snerk*

It'll probably be a week before my laptop is fixed. My dad had my ancient former laptop lying around, so I've got internet access, but it's slow and painful, so I probably won't be around much. Maybe I'll get some reading done. I've got a pile of books from my last couple visits to McKay...

You were such a good dog.

ETA: Note to self: Going to I Has a Hotdog! today is a really bad idea. Don't do it again.

Things I Love: Coming across a typo in a library book, and finding that someone has penciled in the correction. Awwwww.

I usually take a lot of pictures on trips, but I was in "too lazy to even pull out the camera" mode on this last one, so there were only about thirty. Of them, ten turned out acceptably.

NYC: Flowers, ships, rain, and fire escapes.

In other news, yesterday I finally, finally, FINALLY had success at finding shoes after months of searching high and low. I try to have two pairs of sandals (one brown, one black) and either two pairs of boots or one pair of boots and one of winter shoes (same color schema), all of which look nice with business casual stuff and yet are still comfortable enough to walk around in and preferably hike up any mountains that need hiking. Unfortunately, ALL of my shoes basically decided to die at the same time. I had my brown sandals (starting to come apart) and an extra pair of brown winter shoes that are less than comfortable, and that was it. I'm going to get the sandals stitched back together and the hole in the bottom of my brown boots patched up, but that still left the problem of black versions of each of them.

Let me preface this by saying that I loathe shoe shopping. ( Boring whining. But there is a picture at the end. )

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I saw this meme somewhere, and though I know I've done it for other fandoms, I don't think I've done it for B5.

One True Pairing Ship: Ivanova/Garibaldi. Oh, ship of my heart. They might well be my OTP of OTPs, actually; I've certainly written more about them than any other pairing in recent memory. Individually, each of them make me go OMGYES (admittedly, Ivanova more than Garibaldi, but he's no slouch), and together it's like an OMGYES explosion of flirty, playful, snarky, cynical awesome.
Canon Ship: Ivanova/Marcus. I think if it had ever been requited, I wouldn't be nearly as interested, and of course I can't see any other way for it to end than the way it did. But its epic tragedy is certainly very appealing.
If this happens I'll stab my eyes out with a spork Ship: Bester/Garibaldi. I get the whole hatesex thing, but I just don't see Garibaldi doing anything besides murdering him.
You are one sick bastard Ship: Vir/Lennier/Na'Toth (hehehehehehe) (But you know it would be hilarious awesome!)
I dabble a little Ship: Ivanova/Delenn and Ivanova/Talia
It's like a car crash Ship: Delenn/Lennier. I love it so much more than the canon, but we all know it could only end in tears.
Tickles my fancy but not sold just yet Ship: G'Kar/Londo
Makes no canon sense but why the Hell not Ship: Sinclair/Talia and G'Kar/Catherine Sakai
Everyone else loves it but I just don't feel it Ship: Sheridan/Delenn. I think I've gone on enough about that already.

I am entirely unpacked. Hurrah! As promised, here are photos of the Great Bookcase Weedout of 2010.

This is what I was up against: ( large image under the cut )

There was a double row of books on each of the shelves. The narrow white bookcase you'll see later was piled even deeper.

In order to rearrange and figure out what I wanted to sell to the used bookstore, I had to take everything down. Because I am a fool, I decided to start this process at 6:30 at night. Once I started, I had to finish, because, well: ( large images under the cut )

The two boxes quickly filled up with used bookstore fodder. By 10:30, I had finally finished. Behold: ( large images under the cut )

Of course, it helped that we moved one of the bookcases I brought back into the dining room, and I got to take it over entirely: ( large image under the cut )

My anthologies and such wound up on yet another bookcase in the den, which I haven't taken a picture of because it's kind of hidden behind a chair, and I figure this is self-indulgent enough.

Anyway. Yaaaay, it's done! Now I just have to hope that my cunning plan of using the two sets of bookends as a kind of barometer of Hey, You Need to Sell Some Books will work out for me. Once they get within a couple inches of the edge, it's time to chuck the ones I don't want anymore? We'll see.

I occasionally watch an episode of Warehouse 13 for the geeky in-jokes and other lols, but never manage to really get into it--it's just a little too cheesy, and Joanne Kelley has annoyed me since Slings & Arrows. But the latest episode definitely delivered on the geek glee, because they had to chase down a super hero, visit a comic book shop (where the owner used "frakking" in a sentence), and interact with guest characters played by Sean Maher and Jewel Staite (Simon and Kaylee from Firefly). They played a couple who realize they love each other over the course of the episode. I was never much of a Simon/Kaylee shipper, but I have to admit that this was cute.

In other news, pretty much the entire top of my index finger from nail to second knuckle is peeling off. It is truly disgusting. But the new skin underneath looks reasonably healthy, anyway.

Back to deep cleaning my apartment in preparation for moving. Today: windows, of which I have a lot. They are also ninety years old and I'm pretty sure some of the dirt has been there for almost that long, but I'm going to try to get them clean anyway.

It is pollen season down here. A representative photo of my car:

( Beneath the cut )

And a close-up:

( Also beneath the cut )

It rained last weekend, so this is about five days' worth of buildup. The past two years, I've seen all the multitudinous trees in my neighborhood bloom, and thought, "Ah, so many trees! How I love living here!"

And then the oak and pine trees start this, and I think, "Ah, so many trees! How I hate living here!"

(Okay, the pollen isn't too bad, since this year I wised up and started taking a daily dose of generic Claritin/loratadine back at the end of February in order to let it build up in my body. I am snot free for the first April in my life and it is glorious. And even on the car, the only real annoyance is having to use my wipers/wiper fluid to clean a swath off the windshield before I go anywhere, which eventually gums up the wipers until I get the worst of it off with a paper towel. Still, trees, you could stop this any day now...)