Category: thoughts

Sick boy. Gilbert woke up around 2AM and threw up. And threw up, and threw up. He hasn't kept anything down since. Sean tended to him all night and went to work too, because he's amazing. Gilbert is now on the 5 ml/5 min plan.
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It me.
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And the little girls watch Daniel Tiger.
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Bede is making a storyboard.
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Meanwhile, Gilbert watches Youtubes of people playing video games.
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Super Smash Bros sister deathmatch is funny.
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Dunbar outlines several levels of friendships and relationships in his work. According to his model, each person can maintain about five people in their support group of closest friends, about 15 people in a sympathy group who are close enough to confide in, about 50 close friends, about 150 casual friends and about 500 acquaintances.

Sounds about right. However, I have several friends in the second and third circles above who are online friends only, and I think our relationships are deep enough that they are truly close friends. I think this article is from the Obvious Dept. to some extent.

http://www.techworm.net/2016/01/study-finds-not-facebook-friends-real.html

Blue eyed baby.
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This is what it's like in restaurants with Clementine. She is very happy as long as you don't make her sit still.
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All the best course designers do yoga while they work. #supermariomaker
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I didn't really want to sing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" for fifteen minutes, while holding these ridiculous toy cats, but who could resist that face and piping voice? #playwithmemama #onlylittleonce
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I had some idea there was a difference, but the specifics were unknown to me. Spoiler: H-bombs are much, much bigger. How have we survived this long? Good grief.

http://futurism.com/images/the-difference-between-a-hydrogen-bomb-and-an-atom-bomb/

Birthday kid with birthday presents. There are 4000 stickers in there, I'm told. I didn't count em.
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At the top of the slide! Everything is awesome! At the bottom of the slide! Aaaaugh! Repeat to end of row. She was delighted to slide every time and then she got to the bottom and collapsed in a heap of woe. Then back up to the top and whee!
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Vacuum packed Clementine!
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Sprinkles! #cupcakes
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Fauci said the researchers he oversees will be getting DNA samples for the Zika virus soon if they don’t already have them. The NIH has been focused for some time on developing vaccines for mosquito-borne viruses that are similar to Zika, like the chikungunya, dengue and West Nile viruses.

“When you are developing diagnostics or vaccines or even interventions for [viruses] that are similar, you can translate the technologies that you’ve developed to hasten the end game goal of what you want for a virus like Zika,” Fauci said.

The Zika skeeters (Aedes family) can and do live in Oklahoma. I’m not terribly worried about it though, because we live very far away from other humans out here at Post Oak Exsilium, and as far as I know humans are the only ones who get Zika. I’m more concerned with West Nile virus, which birds get, and then mosquitoes bite them. (But both of them pale compared to tick-borne disease. Ehrlychiosis killed our dog, right here in our front yard, and I have been on high alert for ticks ever since.)

There’s dengue, and chikungunya, and yellow fever too. Goodness, it never stops! I don’t know much about these diseases though. If you catch it once, can you catch it again, as badly? Does it linger inside and strike later, like chicken pox, or, more rarely, wild measles? If it’s a once-and-done deal, then it’s a sudden problem because none of the people have ever been exposed, I bet. In Africa, girls have caught it as children long before they reach childbearing age, so no birth defect spike. But in Brazil, they just got the virus with the World Cup a couple years ago. Virgin population.

I’ll probably have more armchair virologist posts soon. I find stuff like this fascinating. But now it’s time to get ready to party!

http://time.com/4188973/zika-virus-vaccine-nih/

Gloria's birthday cupcakes await their frosting! Also random table books.
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In the boots.
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“Is Donald going to be the nominee? I don’t know. It’s sure looking that way now,” Nolte said. “Anyone here (at Davos) who is in the mainstream says there is no way he could possibly get the nomination. When I hear that, it probably means it is going to happen.”

May you live in interesting times. In related news, I don’t want to vote for any of them, either party. Hmph. Although, I do have a fondness for crazy Bernie Sanders. He seems the least false and the most earnest of them all. Not that I even know enough about his ideas to agree or disagree. He’s just so likeable.

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0UZ2MD

But something is awry; the room is bare. “I’ve been hacked,” Sheila explains. Someone has overtaken her account, stolen all of her virtual goods. In response, we flood the room with heart emojis in speech bubbles. A hacked account is as close to a broken heart as we can fathom…

Sheila, I presume, understands this wholly, and for the first time, she sheds her Habbo skin. She admits she has been crying over the loss. She confides in us her fears: “It’s bad enough I have no friends in real life,” she says. “Now, I’m going to be Habbo-poor and lose all of my friends on here.” Our biggest fear in real life is mimicked in the Hotel: Sheila is an outcast.

Then, the magic happens. The room slowly fills up with new furniture—those fountains, while expensive, replaced. Our own money, well spent, is invested back into our friend. Like kindergarteners sharing their favorite toys, we build Sheila back up. “Thank you” is all she can muster. This, we decide, is friendship.

It reminds me of Ready Player One.

http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/staff-editorials/15548/growing-up-in-the-habbo-hotel/

When faced with starvation, the body fights back. The first day without food is a lot like the overnight fast between dinner one night and breakfast the next morning. Energy levels are low but pick up with a morning meal.

Within days, faced with nothing to eat, the body begins feeding on itself.

People are starving in Syria because they are being starved. There is no shortage of food for these people. Both the government and the people fighting against the government are preventing available food from reaching the area.

Lord, have mercy!

http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/01/20/463710330/what-happens-to-the-body-and-mind-when-starvation-sets-in

Mmmm! Baked butt crack! #likeanadult!
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Today is Gloria’s birthday! She is eight! Her party is tomorrow, at Unpluggits, an indoor playground and craft activities joint here. It’s a lot of fun.

The playground:

The crafts area:

I think I can get some action shots tomorrow of the wee Glees and friends in action.

They have painting on paper for free, and paid painting for wooden and ceramic toys and sculptures. They also have free air hockey, foosball, play dough, and a toddler treehouse. And, the already reasonable admission is free for adults and kids 11 and up with the rest of the fam!

So fun. ANyway. Today I gotta bake cupcakes!

http://www.unpluggits.com/

Now to get the blowtorch!
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Before, you had to tamper with your files to find the character people believe to be Gaster or evidence associated with him. Now there’s apparently an extremely slight chance that his room will appear at a specific point in the game sans tampering. So basically, if all of this is true/intentional, Gaster (or whoever this character is) is canon now. Perhaps it was always intended to be that way, or perhaps this is Fox’s way of throwing a bone to an extremely specific, tirelessly ardent part of  Undertale’s fandom.

Haha, that’s funny. Like there are parts of Undertale fandom that aren’t tirelessly ardent! Or you know, that might just be me living with Faith, the obsessed autistic girl.

(Also “sans” and “bone.” ISWYDT.)

http://steamed.kotaku.com/players-uncover-new-secrets-buried-in-undertales-first-1754156048

For me, the bacon is the most interesting part on the plate when it comes to proper English breakfast.

The only problem is that the British have got bacon all backwards. They don’t traditionally use the familiar bacon cut we know and love in the U.S., and there is a ton of conflicting information out there on the subject.

Vocabulary was my first problem: their bacon is “grilled,” which actually means broiled; they refer to pieces of bacon as “rashers,” but only if it’s a certain type of bacon; the cut that actually looks like American bacon is called “streaky,” and whether you choose rashers or streaky says things not only about your tastes, but your economic standing. It’s even the subject of a nursery rhyme involving someone named Jack Sprat.

Well. I had no idea! Streaky bacon please.

http://www.thepauperedchef.com/2010/04/a-guide-to-bacon-styles-and-how-to-make-proper-british-rashers.html

This showed up in about five places on my Facebook feed. I can feel the next ten pounds I’ll gain already.

http://tastykitchen.com/recipes/desserts/one-pan-dark-chocolate-chunk-skillet-cookie/

from The Odd Portrait, available here: http://www.theoddportrait.com/product/mermaid-skeleton-earrings/

Gilbert got an episode of Curious George started for Dorothy. "Snow monkey one!" she said, hopping. Gilbert, the Oklahoma boy, was skeptical about so much snow possibly falling overnight. I explained "lake effect snow" and showed him some photos. He's now a believer. (And wants to move to Chicago or Buffalo.) #lakeeffect #snowmonkey
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