Winter Solstice

Someone emailed this poem to me yesterday - So although it is now a day late, I thought I would share it.

The Shortest Day

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

Police whack giant snow penis...

...that has to be a contender for headline of the year! See the story here. (found via fark.com)

And now the follow-up letter-to-the-editor responses:

"May God damn this newspaper for running the photo of the snow penis online."

If the site asks you for a password, and you are annoyed, you should consider using the firefox plugin - BugMeNot, if you aren't already. Best.Extension.EVER!

W00t! and Not So W00t!

First the good news: PA court says Intelligent Design is bad, m'kay? And there are lots of great exerpts from the judicial opinion on http://pharyngula.org/ including:

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

Hee hee!

But not so W00t: The House approved an ANWR drilling thingy.

Llama..llama...llama..duck

OK, well Carrie and I were looking at JibJab and found the year in review song. You should check it out. BUT we came across this much more interesting song in their Oddities section. Check it out and see what you think. FYI: let it loop a few times. Enjoy.

Link: http://www.jibjab.com/Oddities/OddityRedir.aspx?oddid=75

See you all at new years.

Kev

How the Fat Man gets down the pipe..

.. In case you were wondering.

EcoVillage at Ithaca

Interesting- I never heard about this before.
____

Just outside Ithaca, New York, more than 160 people have formed aunique, close-knit community. It's called an "ecovillage." Sixtyhouseholds share common grounds, organic gardens, and open space. Andthey share a common goal: leaving a smaller footprint on the planet.

http://www.ecovillage.ithaca.ny.us/

Wool

Following up from our previous post about learning how to spin and weave wool, someone my parents know was gracious to give us a loom and spinning wheel and a whole bunch of equipment. So I made my first plaid, shown below. I also wrote a program to design my own plaids, its at my website, and there are some samples below.

It's thiiis cold.

Pics of the lake yesterday morning versus this morning. This is the earliest that Otisco has frozen since we've lived on the lake. And these fellas are bumming:

Here's a bit of good news

If it gets upheld, anyway.

http://www.cbc.ca/toronto/story/to_water20051213.html

OH, I hope I have done this right....first time blogger, here. Ok, so here are some shots of our place. We didn't pick the colors, so the kitchen color (affectionaly known as either "cheese puff orange" or macaroni and cheese) wasn't Kevin's idea, although it could have been. We love our landlord, as Kevins mentioned earlier. He is letting us borrow a bunch of his furnishings.
The apartment still has the lingering smell of paint, but maybe if I start drawing, this could be used to my artistic advantage :)
I had another job interview today. This one was with the NYS Senate as one of their photographer. Kevin is still hoping to hear from someone (HELLLLOOOO out there! insert echo here)! Well, all are welcome to visit. We like to entertain!

Views of glass

This is downright boring when compared to Steve's kick ass lab. I didn't have to clear off 3 inches of papers, but I've only been at this desk for about 4 months - which also explains the lack of cool stuff. We're supposed to be moving to a new building early next year, so I haven't invested much in making my desk homey. I'm very jealous of Chris's fish tank.

This is the view from my desk and then a nicer pict of the building we stare at. Unfortunetly the building is empty, so I don't have any good voyueristic stories to tell.

A better picture of my office. 3 inches of papers has been removed from the desk just for this picture.

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The joy of cube farms and cubinals...

At my place of employment, they like to cram as much of the cattle into as little space as possible... These are actually some of the bigger cubes... Fortunately, we have more than adequate lab space, for the 5% of my time actually spent in the lab. At least we have a view of Krispy Kreme donuts from our lab... one of my co-workers likes to go on donut runs when the "Hot and Fresh" sign lights up.

Theme Week

Lets have a theme this week and compare pictures from our offices/labs/campus, or window views.
Chris is lucky to have a little wetland outside his office window- even if it is filled with Phragmites. I can only hear the sound of traffic on 690 all day and see the cars go flying by. Not so peaceful. This is the view out the window by my desk (that's my desk).

We're here

Hello everyone,
After moving into our own apartment, Carrie and I are finally able to join you guys. We tried to get on at our parent's houses but 1) they are far too slow (logans) and 2) they would not accept the cookies (riordans). But here we are. So Carrie and I have an apartment in a wonderful residental neighborhood just a few miles away from downtown Albany. The apartment needed a little work so rather than sitting at home waiting, we came and are painting a few rooms and windows. We have been at it for 4 days and will hopefully finish today. Then we can at least continue to move our stuff around. The apartmen tis great and the landlord, who lives downstairs, to about our age and fun...although he is quite a talker. I will send some pictures soon. We are very happy to be in our pwn place and have one location to call home. The job search continues. Carrie has a lead on a job/intership as a photographer with the state legislature. It goes until June and then teh possibility for a permanent positions. I have an interview on Thursday as a math teacher (spring semester only) at a very well known all-girls boarding school. I have to learn how to teach a AP statistics class before my interview. I also have some applications with the DEC (which would be great) and a few other engineering firms. It will be nice when we have a typical daily schedule. Well I have to go paint. Talk to you later.

Kevin

Woodstove Junkies

Maple and Wyatt have taken up regular stations next to the woodstove. There seems to be a daily competition going over who gets the spot on the pillow. There was a rare moment when they experimented with the idea of "sharing" (until Maple rolls over and nudges Wyatt off...)

And its gonna stay

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Winter has finally come to CNY...

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