I am not a gardener. My lawn and the landscaped portions adjacent to my house are somewhat patchy. I don't care about the quality of the lawn--it's a yard, dogs and kids play in it, wild animals pass through, etc.--but I would like it to be mostly green (except for the bare paths where the dogs most like to run). Much of my planting, in the landscaped areas, has been ground cover. I keep hoping something will take. I had a bit of success around one side of the house, a couple years ago. But last year's pachysandra hasn't done anything.

It's partially due to location: one completely pachysandra-free area is coincidentally directly below the porch ledge. Kiko and at least one of the neighborhood kids will routinely jump down, so it's unsurprising that the ground cover and baby shrub I planted there have given up to ghost. But I'd thought pachysandra was a bit more invasive...perhaps I do need to upgrade to ivy, or something else that people lament is unkillable.

On the plus side, the little Japanese maple's leaves have unfurled. I am quite fond of it and it seems to have done well, i.e. not died.

Home alone tonight. I have snorgled the dogs, fed the cat, and done a couple loads of laundry. I've been working on a knitting pattern and watching movies starring people who came to prominence because they are freaks of nature: Blood Diamond and Predator. And am I being unfair, or do the big tough crack commando dudes get rattled very quickly by pretty standard psychological terror tactics? I mean, yeah, I'd be seriously rattled by even an unskinned corpse, but I don't blow stuff up for a living. It just doesn't seem professional.

I don't actually like turkey all that much. But the Spousal Unit brines the bird so it comes out nice and juicy. I am thankful to be married to someone who, in additional to being generally sweet and wonderful, can cook.

Going to bed and hoping for good Prop 8 results when I wake up.

So I read Jed's post about getting "Re: Your Brains" stuck in his head, paused a few seconds, and then mentally cackled upon confirming the song was not stuck in my head. Then I read Neil Gaiman's post about "Creepy Doll," paused a few seconds, and then mentally went goddammit. It'll leave eventually.

Oh, wait a second, there goes "Re: Your Brains."

Hm. If I just keep concentrating on the music in my head, and writing a pointless post about same, it will keep me from checking Daily Kos again...

In many ways, the summer is a dead period. Years of school primed me to consider it a down period, the time when nothing happened because we were all waiting for the next thing that was about to start. A freelancing friend confirms the August doldrums phenomenon. My day job is similar, perhaps worse when factoring in the vacation schedules of Europeans.

On the "dog days of summer" theme, Charlie spent a nerve-wracking (and expensive) weekend in the animal hospital. That counts neither as an ending nor a beginning, merely an uncomfortable blip after which life returned to normal.

We traveled a lot (I've blown through my vacation for this year). I started karate in May. But summer is a traditional time for vacations. As an activity karate smacks somehow of nonserious play, though starting something feels very autumnal. We took care of some important business last month. I count that as a beginning, too; but it was also a continuation of earlier actions, and is an ongoing thing.

Really, I'm a grown up now. As I am not involved in the agriculture or retail industries, I question the grip seasons still have upon my life and perceptions.

For anyone who has a) noticed, b) cared, and c) also reads this LJ: yes, my regular website's been down. At some point it's moving over to a new server, at which point it will be back up. If I was a diligent little wired person, I'd've made sure this happened faster; but I am sure the world will find a way to muddle through.

February didn't extend into March. This is a good thing. I dislike February. It always seems like things go wrong and life turns awful. This February wasn't much of a wringer, but I still view the month with superstition and distaste. I suppose it is a vicious cycle, as I am more likely to be aware of unpleasantness when I am looking for it. But now it is almost April, and it feels like March; so anything that goes wrong cannot, in good conscience, be blamed on February.

For reasons which are compelling, but not relevant to the current discussion, I need to produce a scrapbook. The process has been somewhat interesting and surprisingly stressful.

I am not a scrapbooker. I don't even keep photo albums, much less decorate them with little fiddly bits. My forays into the world of crafts have lately been limited to knitting projects (I feel like I'm staving off carpal tunnel, allecto and nightengalesknd can make use of Hogwarts scarves, and who doesn't need a stuffed Dalek?) and it's been ages since I've sketched or painted. (Funny how hobbies atrophy and disappear. I spent much of high school with India ink stains on my fingers.)

I am not a scrapbooker, but I do have some experience with Photoshop and other graphic design toys, so I decided I would do the scrapbooking digitally. That makes reproduction more straightforward, most of the photos only exist digitally anyway, and there's no need to worry about little fiddly bits. I know somebody who's a consultant for Creative Memories, which made it easy to decide whose product to buy. The software's more robust than I was expecting at that price point, and I sincerely hope not to encounter printing hassles. (I've dealt with enough of those to last me another ten or twenty years.)

Because I am not a scrapbooker, I do not have a good sense of what makes a good scrapbook. The goal of this project is producing a scrapbook which is recognizably a scrapbook, but which does not make me want to hang my head in shame. I intend to accomplish the former by relying upon templates and consulting the finished product of others. The latter is accomplished by choosing pleasing color palettes and avoiding many of the cheesy text tricks, the digital equivalent of little fiddly bits.

I decided to write my text beforehand, so it might be dropped in; I figured I would caption pictures on the fly. Sunday night I futzed a bit with the software, then spent two hours laying out two pages. I threw out my sketchy mental design and almost all the existing text for that section. I'm not in love with what I have, but I think it looks like a scrapbook. I have another eighteen pages or so to fill.

I feel very certain that I am not a scrapbooker by nature. I am not comfortable with visual storytelling. Rather, I am comfortable watching visual storytelling unfold. I'm having a hell of a time creating it from scratch. I keep falling back on the idea that I do have the original text, because it's easier for me to think of the scrapbook as an adaptation of the script.

I feel like the scrapbook is kicking my ass.

Oh, look. A meme:

The list is based on an exercise developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. The exercise developers ask that if you participate in this blog game, you acknowledge their copyright.

If you post this in your blog, please leave a comment on this post. To participate in this blog game, copy and paste the above list into your blog, and bold the items that are true for you. If you don’t have a blog, feel free to post your responses in the comments.

Father went to college
Father finished college
Mother went to college
Mother finished college
Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor
Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
Were read children’s books by a parent
Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively
Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs
Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
Went to a private high school
Went to summer camp
Had a private tutor before you turned 18
Family vacations involved staying at hotels
Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
There was original art in your house when you were a child
Had a phone in your room before you turned 18
You and your family lived in a single family house
Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left
You had your own room as a child
Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
Had your own TV in your room in High School
Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
Went on a cruise with your family
Went on more than one cruise with your family
Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up
You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family

As has been pointed out elsewhere, reading this list leads to wincing (but not for the reasons intended), and prompts more analysis of the method than the subject it attempts to address. (Seriously, "blog game"?)

My personal favorite is the question about original art. Throughout my childhood--until after I'd graduated from college, I think--a painting of a barn occupied one wall of my parents' living room. It was completely unremarkable art, no doubt cheap, but definitely original. I remember the texture of the paint. I suspect my acknowledgment that the painting's nothing special probably says more about my current social class than the fact that it was hanging on the wall.

(Via Paul Jessup)

The other day I saw a post about AnthologyBuilder, a new site that lets you roll your own anthology. (It's still in beta, but the full release is coming soon.) I've added three of my stories to the system, so we'll see what happens.

I really like this sort of idea because short fiction was a staple of my childhood reading. My mom had a ton of SF anthologies. I really cannot rave enough about The Best Science Fiction of the Year #6, sitting on my bookshelf missing the back cover and bearing various other signs of abuse, which has "The Phantom of Kansas" and "The Bicentennial Man" and "Meathouse Man" and so forth. We had a steady stream of Greenberg-packaged anthologies and a lot of Asimov-branded volumes. I didn't get around to reading all of The Dying Earth until a year ago, but Mazirian--and, by extension, the concept of protagonists readers aren't supposed to like or root for--wormed his way into my gray matter during elementary school. In the past decade, I have greatly enjoyed the flexibility of the web. I can root around archives and keep track of authors' work in something approaching real time.

Which is to say, I think making short fiction accessible is a Good Idea™, and technology employed in service to a Good Idea™ is also a Good Idea™.

Very pretty. I am looking forward to playing with the dogs. Poor Kiko has been deprived of snowballs too long.

"Last Words" is now online in the second issue of The Back Alley, a new hardboiled/noir webzine.

Today I drove past the roadkill collection truck. It was on the shoulder of the road, a dead deer being levered into the bed, which was already piled high with other deer corpses.

This is the first time I remember seeing roadkill patrol, though I see other highway cleanup crews with some frequency. I always feel sorry for the deer. (And happy not to've hit one.)

I don't usually waste spend a lot of time reading friends' friends lists, unless I'm specifically trolling for LJ accounts I should add to one journal or another. But I happened to be reading jedibl's friends list, and came across this post about a bid to unify Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Taiwanese characters. This sort of blows my mind.

First off, I am a product of the US public school system and lack significant linguistic aptitude. That means I remember a bit of Spanish from Sesame Street, and fifteen years ago could scrape together some conversational French and read some literature and scholarly work in the language. I could probably still navigate Paris, but many of the Parisians would probably switch to English, as it would be better than my French.

Secondly, I have never studied a language with an unfamiliar alphabet. The weird alphabet tricks in German strikes me as, well, weird and unnecessary. (And don't get me started about German keyboards. Really.) Before my freshman year of college, I debated taking Japanese. Now, I kind of wish I had, though I'm certain it would have ended in tears.

Thirdly, I know English-speakers who have attempted to learn, say, Greek or Japanese or Russian, and others who have successfully done so. I know there was a big learning curve. I also know that the learning curve for reading Simplified Chinese, after having grown up with Traditional, is reasonably steep.

Fourthly, I can tell the difference between Japanese, Korean, Simplified, and Traditional characters. I don't know what they mean, but show me a press release and I can tell which country code the file uses just based on the text. (No, that's not a particularly impressive skill. But if I can tell the difference, I can imagine how much more pronounced it is for someone who can actually read it.)

All of which makes me wonder if a unified character alphabet could ever be more than an academic effort, or if it could actually take (and what sort of commitment that would require). I suppose the history of Simplified might be a semi-useful comparison, aside from the fairly significant political aspect; then again, I don't have a good grasp of the scope of this endeavor versus Simplified.

It also prompts me to reflect upon my own relationship with my alphabet. I don't think about it consciously. Reading's almost a right-brain thing. I can't not read something. If it's in a different language, my brain will automatically attempt to parse it as English. After that, it starts looking for Romance language patterns. The human brain is a vast and strange place. I wish I had created more neural pathways when I was a kid, and taken better care of the ones I did make. I know it's never too late to learn...but it gets so much harder.

We overbought the Halloween candy. Okay, I overbought the Halloween candy, but the Spousal Unit is the one who opened all of it. I brought the leftovers to work on Friday, in a big canvas Totoro bag that occasioned some comment. Now the candy is almost gone, aside from a few Heath bars and a Snickers I have stashed for this afternoon.

The good thing is that the candy's almost all gone.

The bad thing is that I had a lot to do with it, consuming a fair bit over the past few days.

The amazing thing is that I didn't eat more or see an uptick in my weight. Maybe the gym is working. Or maybe my body has learned to metabolize chocolate with supernatural efficiency. That would be nice. If I could pick a lame ass super power, I might go with something like that.

At work the other day, I learned of the existence of Espoo, Finland. Being an ignorant American, I had not been aware of the city. Being easily amused, and a fan of Babylon 5, I immediately decided it was a fabulous name.

As it turns out, Espoo is the second largest city in Finland, located on the southern coast. Espoo is referred to as "Finland's only highway with city privileges"--a reminder that the BAMA Sprawl is not the only sprawl. Those city privileges were only granted in 1972, after a spurt of mid-century industrialization and population explosion. The Swedish-speaking population is now dwarfed by the Finnish-speakers, many of whom work in the capital. Among other things, it is the home of Nokia (which, in addition to being the 800 pound gorilla of Finland's economy, is often rated as Finland's best employer).



Espoo is also the site of unsolved murders. The Lake Bodom multiple homicide occurred in 1960. Four teenagers were attacked with a knife; three died.

In recent years the survivor was accused of the killings, but acquitted. The prosecution theorized the killings were a crime of passion, spurred by jealousy: one of the victims was the accused's girlfriend, and she had been attacked more viciously than the others.

Another theory places the blame upon Hans Assmann, a Nazi who reformed after falling in love with a Jewish girl. Assmann allegedly worked as an East German agent, was treated in a local hospital on the night of the murders, and confessed to the killings shortly before his death. The man who treated him, and subsequently wrote a book about the murders, claimed that Assmann's supposed alibi and elimination as a suspect were part of a diplomatic cover up.

In 1972, a man confessed to the murders in a suicide note. In 1960, he sold lemonade to campers, including the victims, and apparently disliked them. However, the police were not satisfied with the confession, as the alibi of "home in bed with his wife" was considered compelling in this instance.

Adolescent jealousy, international intrigue, crotchety misanthropes: any theory is the stuff of horror movies.

(Image: Jpk, Otaniemi, Espoo, Finland, from a hot air balloon)

I went over to AskWiki and asked it "Who is Megan Powell?" because I am simultaneously an ego-maniac and suffer from an identity crisis. I learned that:

Powell Motor Company (PMC) was a company based in the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It was best known for its line of motor scooters that peaked in popularity in the late 1940s. In the 1950s Powell manufactured pickup trucks and station wagons,and focused again on trail bikes & mini-bikes during the the 1960s.

"Last Words," an entirely zombie free Iyapo story, will be published in an upcoming issue of The Back Alley.

Our Heroine's behavior is rather perplexing, as she does not have anything in particular to say at this time. Her actions are best viewed in the context of housekeeping. If this journal is to consist of utterly meaningless, infrequent posts, then she prefers to remove some of the ancient chaff. If by some chance this journal is used more frequently, then she likewise deems it best to remove the old posts announcing her intention not to post here, and instead periodically advertise the changing location of her main blog. Which happens to be http://www.meganpowell.net/blog, syndicated on LJ at meganpowell.