Today I put the jeans on left leg first. Now everything is just a little off, not quite pear-shaped, just off. I knew it was wrong when I did it.

Or I stayed up 40 hours straight before trying to finish Absolution Gap (A. Reynolds) and I’m still trying to work out branes and foamy universe theories. That will require a nap and a different sort of foam. Like a stout. And maybe a bagel.

My two-year old spider plant finally, finally put out a new leader. Oh, and the redwood tree put on a good 18in. so it is now, including the pot, taller than me. It’s sort of like those people who think a baby crocodile is a cute pet until it grows big enough to eat them. There’s a point when having a redwood tree in your living room is simply no longer feasible. But, the branches are now sturdy enough to hang small ornaments on, so there’s Christmas solved.

It’s no secret that I enjoy the Iain M. Banks Culture novels. Certain folks, aware of this fact, recommended the Alastair Reynolds trilogy as the next great space opera fun. I’ll be honest, Revelation Space kind of annoyed me for a good chunk of the book. But I made it through the first fifty pages (generally my cutoff for crap). Then io9 had a post about the best eco-scifi books that included Century Rain. Since I always do what the internet tells me to do (just kidding mom), I read that next. First, it is not a tale of environmental disaster in any meaningful way. Yes, the Earth was destroyed but that is not a particularly unusual occurrence in a scifi book. So, boo, io9 – Century Rain is really more of a mystery love story in a space war kind of book. The environmental disaster is tangential to the plot (and no one was really trying to fix the problem).

Even though I didn’t really like Century Rain so much (hardboiled French PIs just don’t do anything for me) by the time that I had finished it, the end of Revelation Space was starting to bug me. It was unresolved. So now I have to see it through; all 1400 pages of the last two books of the trilogy. There are times when I curse my somewhat obsessive need to read everything an author wrote (unless the first one was crap, of course). There better be plenty of splodey space battles.

So yesterday we got our first bit of snow for the year (third earliest accumulation in 60yrs. yippee) at about 2 inches. By the time I got around to looking, there was maybe an inch of snow underneath about an inch of ash leaves. Couldn’t see the deck, the patio, the garden or the driveway for all of the leaves. Over 300 gallons after about three hours of raking. But that’s not really the point here (although, yes, I would really like a cookie).

No the point is related to something that happened while raking. This group of girls with little white buckets were trolling the neighborhood asking for donations. Their first time through, I was in the backyard and I didn’t get the pleasure of shutting the door in their faces. I don’t know about you, but I don’t find a group of heavily made-up blondes from a baptist church that charitable. The next time through, I was in the front, still raking. They did not stop to ask for a donation. And I’m standing there thinking “What is this, discriminatory solicitation?” Like it’s only okay to try to guilt people out of money (presumably to help others that probably don’t look like you) from people that look like you? That does not speak well for any sense of community or equality or acceptance. Nor does it give me any confidence at all in whatever charitable act they were trying to perform—if you are that biased to start, then how can you truly provide anything to someone in a way that maintains their dignity? “Give a man a fish; teach a man to fish” is something that sometimes gets lost. It takes more effort and someone has to show up; you can’t just drop a can in a bag to get that boost of self-worth for being charitable.

To be fair, I didn’t expect much from these girls. I still have trouble reconciling this overwhelming desire to chase the latest trends in style and entertainment with any great understanding of the other (i.e. those that are different from you and yet are not inherently evil just because of it). My kindergarten and my mom always used to tell us that “everybody’s different; everybody’s fine” and, since I tend to take things fairly literally sometimes, I still believe that and try to live with that in mind. Although if you are stupid and mean, you are not fine but that’s more of a character flaw as opposed to some culturally defined race thing.

Anyway, most of the leaves are raked so at least something good came of the afternoon.

I was seriously considering just logging in to Netflix to see which movies I have at home instead of walking ten feet to look at the actual dvds. Oy.

Here’s a pattern for knitting your very own lego minifig. And in true lego style, you can pop off its head (such a satisfying pop for some reason).

The New York Times is running a piece about the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain (with a slideshow of awesome).

If the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain exists partly to subvert expectations, then the first expectation it subverts is that it is going to be very, very bad.

“Relief is one of the major emotions of our audience,” declared Dave Suich, an orchestra member.

It’s good stuff.

They took hammers to the lego house. My minifigs are rolling over in their plastic bin right now. If you really need to see multi-colored destruction, there’s a gallery here.

I am conflicted about the iTunes/I.M. Banks deal that offers Transition as a free podcast in little, abridged chunks a couple of times a week. It’s even read by the man himself. But it’s abridged. And an audio book. And it’s abridged. Mostly, though, I find his books to be pretty dense in a holy-crap-the-plot-just-went-where kind of way. I’d be afraid that a twice-weekly installment would leave me with too much time between to forget all of the relevant wackiness. And this one is supposed to be complex and wacky. Besides, I still have to finish Century Rain (Reynolds).

But really worth the wait. The completed lego house:

The finished house

The bedroom

And you can see more images here. I find it quite sad that someone would take a chainsaw to it (if no one buys it tomorrow, it will be demolished). I mean, it’s not the most aesthetically pleasing thing, but to just destroy it, and to destroy it in a way that means all of the pieces are trashed, that’s just wrong. Unless it was glued together, why wouldn’t you try to at least recycle the pieces? It could make a whole lot of kids happy. At least do something with the cat and the chicks. Yeesh.