transformation unfolding

Monday, I spent about 7 hours rearranging furniture in my living room, only to realize that nothing worked right, so I put it all back the way it had been before I started moving stuff around. The day was a total write-off. I think the only productive things I did was sweep the living room and feed myself and the baby. Maybe change a diaper or two. Nikos kicked ass, though, doing lots of dishes, giving Fire Child a bath, making food, doing laundry, etc. So glad for balance.

Tuesday made up for the suck of the previous day. Everything that could have gone right, did, and it was all so well-timed!

While Fire Child was with misslynx, we made it out to Laywine's (a pen store in an expensive part of town) where I purchased a hand-blown glass dip pen and three colours of ink for use on a project that has stalled for far too long. I initially went to the store to find a rollerball pen that I could use a converter cartridge which would allow me to use bottled inks, instead of blue or black. I needed a fine or extra-fine tip. What they had was a single pen made of ugly red plastic that took a mini-converter. It had a medium tip. I was unsatisfied. I spied the glass dip pens and asked to test one of those. The tip was perfect and the one I chose felt super good in my hand. Total, total win. I would have felt so weird working on this project using a red plastic pen. Ew. Handblown glass dip pen? Stellar. The inks I got were fantastic, too. Fiesta Red and Chocolat from Private Reserve and the house brand's Pine Green. oh. so. very. nice.

From Laywine's, we went to the post office that had my shoes I had ordered. They were delivered on the 24th, the day after we had left town. I was hoping that I'd have had them for my trip. They're slip-ons from KEEN, helpful for airport security. They fit perfectly once I had a chance to try them on. And they look sooooo goood! Very happy to have stylish black shoes that are also hella comfortable and practical. They're perfect!

Currently, I'm attempting to stave off a cold/flu. I have a heaviness in my throat that will likely turn into a sore throat, as well as a headache. Both the boys have something that involves snot. SNOT BUBBLES ARE NOT CUTE.

And that's the image I will leave you with. ;)

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A couple of days ago, in McNamara terminal in Detroit, Fire Child and I were on a quest to find a banana. A couple of movators away from our gate, I heard a voice behind me ask, "How long did it take you to grow your locs?" I turn around, and it's a black woman, about my age, with locs herself. We have a satisfying but too-quick conversation about dreads as we move along the conveyor belts. She's an airline attendant and is on her way to catch her next flight. While we talk, she asks if she can touch my hair. I'm floored because doesn't this usually work the other way around? I oblige and we continue talking. I spy bananas and she needs to continue on, so we part ways. It was the first, real, good conversation I'd had with a black woman about just hair.

There've been a couple of other black women who've become friendly acquaintances who also have dreads, but neither of them has asked to touch my hair. Experiencing that once was a sort of a privilege for me, but I can easily see how I could feel like a circus side-show attraction if it happened with any sort of frequency.

The banana, by the way, was $1.26 and I paid for it with my credit card because I had no American money on me and they wouldn't accept Canadian cash or Canadian debit cards. As soon as the boy ate it, he wanted another one and then threw a fit because I wouldn't go all the way back to the kiosk to get him another $1.26 banana. We had a plane to board.

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Oh so little time left between now and airline/family/airline doom. I'll be so happy once this stupid trip is over.

Fire Child is starting to ask about the airplane that we'll be going on. I went through the whole process with him earlier today, including waistband search. it's so difficult to try to figure out how to approach *why* we're being searched. I don't want to bring up bombs and a) scare or worry him or b) give him yet another thing to fixate on in an unhealthy manner, like him constantly telling us, when he's angry, that he wants to break us or (occasionally) kill us [gotta love those crazy 3yo tantrums]. One more thing the gravity of which he has no clue.

I've been telling him that we're being searched so that the security people know that we're not bringing anything on the airplane that shouldn't be there or is unsafe. I'm purposefully leaving it very nebulous.

And if any TSA agent calls the search a "game" to my son, I will correct that mistake right away. Security is no game. Luring my son into touchy-feely with a stranger who "wants to play a game" = OH HELL NO.

And what's this I keep hearing about getting an additional search AFTER the flight? Is this correct?

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I just finished watching yet another episode of the BBC's Planet Earth, narrated by David Attenborough. All my internal monologue sounds like him now.

I got a Lamy AL-star, as recommended by neeuqdrazil. Gunmetal grey aluminum body with extra-fine nib.

Perhaps it is because I am utterly unfamiliar with real fountain pens and my only experience is those cheap-ass nibs for dip pens that are so sharp they scratch the paper, I was anticipating a sharp, fine tip. I have been schooled otherwise. Indeed, even the extra fine nib is less fine than I was expecting and that's with regular paper. With the super absorbent cotton paper I'll be writing on, the extra-fine nib looks more oblique.

The ink has posed similar problems with this cotton paper. We chose archival ink for this project and it is now apparent that this was utterly the wrong ink. It is watery, so with the nib being less fine than I expected, the paper being more absorbent, and the ink so watery, the letters look fat and unappealing. I'm picky about these things.

Additionally, the archival ink goes on blue and dries black. On regular paper. On super absorbent paper, it goes on blue and dries... blue. And after 14 hours or so, it becomes... dark blue. Given that I was wavering between black and brown, blue is very much in the opposite direction that I was hoping for.

Of course, being archival ink, it was more expensive. It only comes in this colour and none of the other inks are archival, which means they will fade over the years.

Whatevs.

Do you have any idea how funny that sounds with a David Attenborough accent?

We'll be going back for a few more inks, sooner rather than later. Havana, Black Cherry, and some jewel-toned green. And perhaps I'll be looking at rollerballs that take converters, so I can get a finer tip for the precision that I prefer (I write primarily with rollerballs already) without the waste of disposable plastic pens that only allow for a single colour per pen. We'll see where this takes me.

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I would finally like to get a fountain pen with a refillable ink cartridge.

Does anyone have any recommendations, as far as brand?

Does anyone have any recommendations for buying vintage pens?

I swear I got advice about this a year or so ago, but I can't find that post or those responses...

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http://listverse.com/2010/11/04/10…

Gödel’s incompleteness theorems

It is not strictly science, but rather a very interesting set of mathematical theorems about logic and the philosophy that is definitely relevant to science as a whole. Proven in 1931 by Kurt Gödel, these theories say that with any given set of logical rules, except for the most simple, there will always be statements that are undecidable, meaning that they cannot be proven or disproven due to the inevitable self-referential nature of any logical systems that is even remotely complicated. This is thought to indicate that there is no grand mathematical system capable of proving or disproving all statements. An undecidable statement can be thought of as a mathematical form of a statement like “I always lie.” Because the statement makes reference to the language being used to describe it, it cannot be known whether the statement is true or not. However, an undecidable statement does not need to be explicitly self-referential to be undecidable. The main conclusion of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems is that all logical systems will have statements that cannot be proven or disproven; therefore, all logical systems must be “incomplete.”

The philosophical implications of these theorems are widespread. The set suggests that in physics, a “theory of everything” may be impossible, as no set of rules can explain every possible event or outcome. It also indicates that logically, “proof” is a weaker concept than “true”; such a concept is unsettling for scientists because it means there will always be things that, despite being true, cannot be proven to be true. [my emphasis] Since this set of theorems also applies to computers, it also means that our own minds are incomplete and that there are some ideas we can never know, including whether our own minds are consistent (i.e. our reasoning contains no incorrect contradictions). This is because the second of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems states that no consistent system can prove its own consistency, meaning that no sane mind can prove its own sanity. Also, since that same law states that any system able to prove its consistency to itself must be inconsistent, any mind that believes it can prove its own sanity is, therefore, insane.

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Trying to discern how big a train package would need to be to fit three Thomas trains in it, I asked how big Fire Child thought those trains were. He held up his hands to an appropriate size.

optimystik: So it has to be three times that size. How big do you think it needs to be?

Fire Child (with exuberant decisiveness): 12! 12 degrees huge! It needs to be 12 degrees huge!

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Watch it somewhere where you can cry freely because, my goodness, is this ever moving.



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When people say, "I'm sorry things are so sucky/crappy/shitty/difficult right now." I feel ok. Consoled.

But when people say, "I'm sorry things are so difficult for you right now," I feel worse. Likewise with, "I'm sorry you're having such a hard time with things."

Why? Because it makes me feel like I'm the problem and not my situation. Makes me feel patronized. It's a verbal pat on the head that says, "There, there. You'll figure out how to be a functional person like the rest of us one of these days. Until then, we'll just pity you from over here. Which is far, far away from the shit you've gotten yourself into. Wow. Don't YOU ever suck! We really thought you'd fare better, but we guessed wrongly. It must suck so hard to be you."

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I got into an exchange with a guy about homeopathy today on a friend's facebook. it didn't occur to me to check to see if I knew him until just a bit ago. I do, and I'm surprised by the tenor of the exchange. I would have expected something far more incendiary than what I got. Makes me wonder if he's feeling ok/going soft/etc.

huh.

Addendum: he responded in good form (for him). It's all good now.

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