Tag: random

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1. I already have a change of NaNoWriMo plans. The story for week #3 will not be Whalesong, as previously written into the schedule, but rather There Is No Such Place As Canada. It’s a story about oppression, specifically the oppression of Canadians. It should be a riot. Week four, then, is a wildcard, in which I write any story whose plot comes to me in time, but the current candidates are either Whalesong or The Blasphemous, the Cruel, and the Weak.

2. So evidently there’s some kind of election coming up? Based on the coverage, it appears that the candidates are a notorious international anarcho-terrorist and a rapacious, black-hearted banker who wears funny underwear. Plus there are third-party candidates, who are hilarious. So I’m encouraging everyone to do their part for democracy and not vote.

3. Jim Hines has a good NaNo pep talk. So do lots of other people, for that matter. See, NaNoWriMo would be a good thing you could do instead of voting next Tuesday. I have your best interests in mind.

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This time with actual Buddhism!

Japanese Buddhist monks were not allowed to eat any meat other than birds, but liked rabbit meat so much they came up with the contrived “explanation” that rabbits are actually birds, and that their ears are unusable wings. The rationale was that while moving, ther rabbits touched ground only with two feet at a time.

Source.

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Spring is finally (finally!) here, meaning that it’s both light enough and dry enough to bike to work again. Here in the Pacific NW I don’t worry about the cold, I just worry about the fine, insidious drizzle that will soak you and sap your will to live if you try to bike through it. But that’s all over now! Mostly! It hailed like hell’s frozen fury this afternoon and was still dripping when I had to ride home, but I took the bus most of the way and was able to tolerate the wet for the last few miles from the bus stop to my house.

In the morning I rode my bike to work the long way, with no bus–fifteen miles, down from my house to the trail along Lake Washington, connecting to the Sammamish River Trail, eight miles along the Sammamish River, and finally leaving the river to climb the hills into Redmond where I work. It’s a long, pleasant ride, mostly through parkland and river valley, past farms and woods and the occasional townhouse monstrosity. Today gave me an abundance of wildlife: two great herons, a plethora of ducks of different species, Canadian geese, a rabbit, a multitude of multicolored snails on the path, the usual assortment of crows, sparrows, robins, and songbirds, and rarest of all, a peregrine falcon carrying a branch for her nest! The peregrine falcon has been one of my favorite birds since elementary school, when I chose to do a report about them and fell in love. For a while, when people asked me what my favorite sport was, I said “falconry”, which tells you volumes about what kind of kid I was. You have to admit, they’re really beautiful birds:

Peregrine Falcon

But I’ve rarely gotten to see one in the wild, so this was a great treat.

(Made up for the grueling uphill in the last two miles to work. Almost murdered me, that hill did.)