102:44:29 Armstrong (on-board): I got a good spot (garbled).

102:44:31 Aldrin: 160 feet, 6 1/2 down.

102:44:33 Aldrin: 5 1/2 down, 9 forward. You're looking good.

102:44:40 Aldrin: 120 feet.

102:44:45 Aldrin: 100 feet, 3 1/2 down, 9 forward. Five percent (fuel remaining). Quantity light.

102:44:54 Aldrin: Okay. 75 feet. And it's looking good. Down a half, 6 forward.

102:45:02 Duke: 60 seconds (of fuel left before the 'Bingo' call).

102:45:08 Aldrin: 60 feet, down 2 1/2. (Pause) 2 forward. 2 forward. That's good.

102:45:17 Aldrin: 40 feet, down 2 1/2. Picking up some dust.

102:45:21 Aldrin: 30 feet, 2 1/2 down. (Garbled) shadow.

102:45:25 Aldrin: 4 forward. 4 forward. Drifting to the right a little. 20 feet, down a half.

102:45:31 Duke: 30 seconds (until the 'Bingo' call).

102:45:32 Aldrin: Drifting forward just a little bit; that's good. (Garbled) (Pause)

102:45:40 Aldrin: Contact Light.

102:45:43 Armstrong (on-board): Shutdown

102:45:44 Aldrin: Okay. Engine Stop.

102:45:45 Aldrin: ACA out of Detent.

102:45:46 Armstrong: Out of Detent. Auto.

102:45:57 Duke: We copy you down, Eagle.

102:45:58 Armstrong (on-board): Engine arm is off. (Pause) Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.

-- from The Apollo Lunar Surface Journal.

We did that once back then - why can't we do that again?

we have to close NERE with a song... and hell, what else can one sing at 2 in the morning with friends?

Sleepy boy with his tattoon

so.....my LJ posts are now going to FB, and there's more and different people reading my FB notes than LJ. i haven't explicitly discussed my hope to induce lacation on LJ for a while, which means this may be the first news of this up on FB. anywho, if talk about my boobs scares you, consider yourself warned.

a few months ago i started taking birth control pills in order to mimic (loosely, of course) pregnancy hormones so that i could sort of trick my body into jump starting lactation. this past tuesday was my last pill. the lactation induction protocol (typically mostly used for adoptive mothers) then involves pumping for the 6ish weeks before the baby's EDD, though i will still be pumping mainly after Berry gets here to help insure hope's supply.

so i hooked up my boobs to the pump for the first time on wednesday. the first few minutes i thought i may die and wondered how in the world people do this for 20 straight minutes, multiple times a day, without going crazy. on thursday i started using olive oil to help with, uh, lubrication. immediate relief. on friday we got the smaller-sized horns and more immediate relief. i think i got a very tiny almost-drop of milk on friday afternoon. then nothing the rest of the day/night. nothing much saturday morning/afternoon. today actual drops of milk fell from my boob into the bottle. nothing to sustain a baby, but i'm still amazed that anything is happening at all.

good news is that the time has begun to go quickly during pumping sessions and i'm no longer watching every.single.minute go by until the torture can stop.

we've had to explain to quinn what we're doing since for now, i'm pumping in the living room (hello neighbors!). this afternoon, while she was playing at the mall, she randomly said to me, "i have a pretend baby in my belly and i have to pump my boobies to make milk for my baby!"

As noted, rosinavs and I watched the first DVD (i.e. first four episodes) of Babylon 5 tonight. While the DVD ends on a B-episode (which is to say, it only foreshadows 3 of the series' major arcs), it ends with a fitting quote for tonight of all nights:

Is it worth it? Should we just pull back, forget the whole thing as a bad idea and take care of our own problems at home?

No. We have to stay here and there's a simple reason why. Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu and Einstein and Morobuto and Buddy Holly and Aristophenes .. and all of this .. all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars.

Happy Armstrong Day, everyone. Let's see what happens in the next forty years of Tranquility.

Frank McCourt is dead.

Go ahead, laugh at me for loving his writing, but I love what he did for teachers in Teacher Man.

rosinavs and I will be watching Babylon 5 from the first episode tonight in the TV room as soon as we can find the Guild Silk...

J. was going to drag me to his D&D game today so I would at least be around other humans for once, but I woke up with terrible tummy trouble and didn't want to be running to the bathroom all afternoon.

Instead I'm at home in a cold sweat.

So today just sucks, y'all.

so ulysses has, of late, started dashing past the human who is opening the door, and leaping through the external door, which has no screen. Yesterday, I disassembled the door, and put the glass that had been at the top into the sliding rail (the lack of glass in the sliding part being why the screens never last in that door). This means that the upper part of the door is unglassed, but there is now a solid surface where hands are more likely to want one.

A few minutes ago, I went to go outside to water the plants, and when I opened the door ulysses came running down the hallway and made his leap for freedom...and smacked straight into the glass.

And I laughed and laughed at him, I'm afraid. (he's fine. just...confused. Something *changed*. This is the cat who nags me into bed every night not because he wants to cuddle or anything, but because, after around 2am, bed is Where Stephanie is Supposed to Be. he made a second bid for freedom 5 minutes later, but our neighbour was using a leafblower, and he got to the bottom of the stairs and decided that outside is Not For Him today. )

I'm simply a better "one on one" friend than a "group" friend. It's not that I want it to be that way, it just is. I'm starting to develop some friendships here, and so invites to social events are starting to come in.

Friday night I got an invite to join a group at a local bar that plays country AND new music. I declined, so my friend asked if I just wanted to hang out and play pool. I'm bad at pool, but I sucked it up, warned her of that, and we went. And it was fine, it was a lot of fun. I gave myself permission not to be perfect and we just hung out. Win.

Yesterday another friend invited me to dinner/games night at her house. I was ok with her and her girlfriend until the other friends showed up, and then I just felt terribly awkward. It didn't help that the friends brought a big dog, and the hostess inquired about my allergies, and the dog got banished to the patio. I was nervous, had nothing to say and just felt out of place. Earlier that day on the phone, the friend had asked if I preferred being by myself to hanging out with people and I said no. I wouldn't mind spending my days with someone, just maybe not a gang of someones..

I know myself: I'm a good online communicator, and good one on one, but larger social situations are really tough for me. But here I am in a new city, how am I going to meet new people if I can only interact with those I already know??

Then I went home and had (unrelated) nightmares all night. I get so frustrated with myself, but I don't know if it's just worth accepting who I am, rather than trying to change it?

it was timne to turn off Bravo and go to bed now that I've worked out the Twitter API and got the Twisks database running, even though the two of them are not working.

I need about 5-10 daily twitter users to test something starting mid to late next week. Provided I don't break it making it usable by someone who isn't me. Mail me at thespian @ sleepingcat.

Jaxen sharing

well. you never can tell. but just based on looks, Jesse Sandlin. Isn't she *adorable*?

To say the least.

Before we go any further, let's be clear about something: I'm not saying Miami Social is so bad it's good. I'm saying it's so bad it will make you regret being born with eyes. I'm saying it's so bad that if you saw a member of the cast burst into flame on the street, you wouldn't waste your spit putting him or her out. I'm saying Osama bin Laden, if he sees it, will weep bitter tears of frustration that he went after the wrong American city.

Ouch. Serious ouch.

http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/story/1139362.html

I need something far out to do in manhattan this thursday so puckgoodfellow and I don't end up doing anything pedestrian.

to fit in my terra cotta chicken oven. I have to actually roast it on the roasty thingy. If this is my worst problem today, I'm doing well.

I've been experimenting of late of eating just one meat-based meal a day. Not because I am going back to vegetarianism (curiousity makes it *really* hard to ever return to that), but because it seems to be helping me a lot. I'm trying, as well, to make that meat meal the one I eat around 3-6 pm, which is too late to call lunch, and it also (usually) my first meal of the day (I do not enjoy eating when I wake; despite all the calls to having a wholesome breakfast, if I have anything more than dry toast in the first 2 hours after I wake I spend the day feeling queasy. I frequently wake and eat saltines when I'm ravenous, but 'real' food is not a good thing. So I wake around 10-11, eat something snacklike around 1pm if I think of it and am home, then eat an actual *meal* between 3 and 6 (later on Tuesdays, after diesel).

Anyway, eating the meat meal earlier, so I am awake for 8 or so hours after it, seems to work well; I'm sleeping better with the later meal that I eat around 11pm being lighter (if one can call what I eat at 11ish a meal; 3 nights ago it was an acorn squash, roasted and mashed, with sea salt and ginger).

I don't usually *feel* like cooking meat around 3pm, though. So I'm going to see how it works to just roast this sucker, and then spend half an hour in careful vivisection, and make a *point* of using it in grain-based meals around lunch, instead.

i really need to make myself a goat icon. lol
we are taking the little ones to get disbudded :(
and mason is going to get banded.

My arms hurt, and it feels *really* good. I was *so* stiff when I woke up this morning, but in a good way. After moving around a little, everything but the forearms has loosened up some.

I get BORED TO TEARS by most aerobic exercise. Put me in a step class or on a treadmill, and 10 minutes into it I'm ready to quit. This can be offset by some things; Heathers was on one of the movie tvs the other night, and I worked out from the scene where veronica plays croquet with Betty to the end of the movie. But for the most part, the tedium gets me well before the exercise really does.

There were parts of the warmups that I couldn't do; too bouncy. But the trainer, Abby, was really good about working with me afterward to help me with exercises that I could do, and to modify some of the exercises for me (I can actually do crunches, it seems, if someone braces my feet against the floor, flat. I can't use a wall, because I keep pushing myself away when I brace. But my abdominal muscles are very strong, and the main issue is that the flab over them makes it hard to do).

The boxing itself, though, was a revelation. I had thought that part of the issue with other classes and workouts is that they didn't seem to have a point. Now, boxing *doesn't* really have a point; I assure you I'm not about to go and start beating people up or anything. But I learned that the real issue is akin to why I can't sit down and learn a programming language from a book, but if you sit me down and say, 'we need an application that does X', I'm happy to sit down and work on it and learn the skills as I go.

I was *far* more engaged in the boxing class than I have been in other classes. I don't know what it was about the class that actually engaged me; on the surface it wasn't very different from the other classes. But I know that I did 20m of warmups and stretching, and then did a 30m intro class, and an hour long regular class, and it wasn't until 15m before the end of it that I started to feel that I was hitting my wall; I'd done a LOT of work in that time, I was sweating like mad, but I didn't *feel* it until almost the end.

(and afterwards! such a serotonin rush! I think that's what kept me awake enough through persis' dinner party :-) )