Monthly Archives: October 2007

Oct11

Getting Organized!

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Getting Organized!

My therapist and I had a very enlightening session the other day. I discovered how my disorganization was really impacting every single aspect of my life, and how my opposition to getting organized wasn’t any of the other things I’d self-diagnosed. Oh, dear. You know what, though, it brought the urgency of getting organized into very clear focus, and I’ve been going about it all the wrong way. I realize that I need spaces that are devoted to single functions, or related functions, and all the supplies and tools needed for that function have to be arranged in a way that makes sense, is easy to see without moving things around, and be easily accessible. I’ve been trying to create NEW areas like this, and in the process I’ve not only been delayed in creating these areas, but I’ve been turning other areas I can already use in this way into realms of chaos, with stuff that doesn’t belong in them “temporarily stored.”

So, step one was the laundry room. The laundry room also has the spare fridge and freezer, my computer, and the kitchen overflow that comes from shopping at Costco and having lots of cooking toys. This is ALSO where the paper, pens, pencils, extra folders, dividers, and so on – school supplies and stationery, dontchaknow – were kept.

“My room” (wouldn’t you know, I get my own room, and it has a washer and dryer in it. Heh) is used by everyone, and as such, was yet another collection of horizontal surfaces to dump stuff on. Plus, with all the things being stored in it that other people needed to get to, there was a lot of tripping over each other. So I’ve been busting my behind the last couple of days trying to straighten things up and put stuff in order in a sensible fashion. I still have another day or two of working out the last few details, but the improvement is incredible.

The freezer/fridge area has a shelf unit to the right, and is next to the direct route between the kitchen and garage (which will be an art studio, but let’s work on finishing one thing at a time. . .) Clearly, things that the rest of the family needs to be able to get should be there. So I put a shelf on top of the freezer that the electric griddle can slide under, because that doesn’t fit in the kitchen but gets used a lot, and on top of this is all the thermoses and insulated lunch bags (and a huge box of straws behind those. Don’t ask.) The giant pack of paper towels is on top of the fridge. On the very top of the shelf, up close to the ceiling, I put the picnic/partyware. Even when the weather’s nice, I don’t need those often enough for climbing a stepladder to be an inconvenience. The shelf below has the gadgets – bread machine, ice cream maker, tomato press, etc. On the shelf below that, I put the big tupperware – the stuff I use for things I’m taking to parties and such – behind the giant plastic wrap and spare packs of napkins. My tool bag is incongruous there, but it fits. On the easiest shelf, I put all the paper supplies on a vertical divider, put the small things like paperclips and rubber bands in a divided plastic box, and put that on top of a large basket that has all the tape, pens, pencils, glues, etc, with boxes holding things together (like all the colored pencils) and easy to see what you need and pull out if what you need is in the back. Under that, recycling (and I put the twine and scissors for newspapers in the basket for newspapers!), and under that, the cat and dog food. Now, what’s on the shelves next to my computer desk are the things I need, and nobody should have to be poking around my desk looking for stuff. Manuals are together. Software is together. Scrap paper and notebooks are together. Woohoo!

I’ve organized the cabinets above the computer – pet toys in a box, pet meds and grooming in another, treats under those. All the candles are in one place (I have a bazillion tea lights because I could never find the ones I’d bought before. I might never need to buy another tea light as long as I live.) Insect stuff is right by the door at the bottom, so you can spray yourself or grab some incense before you go outside.

The cabinets over the laundry have been started. I repurposed an IKEA box of drawers, and now all my batteries are together and arranged by size, and lightbulbs are separated by base. Oh, and I even labeled the drawers. Heh. I still need to get to the cleaning supplies, the shelves above the machines, and a few other out-of-place items, but it’s looking pretty darned good. Bit by bit, one room at a time. Once I’ve tamed the clutter and have a working system, it’ll be a lot easier to keep my head from exploding. Every time I want to do something creative, or even not-so-creative, the need to straighten up the work area and find all the supplies is completely daunting. Either I straighten up and get stuff together to start. . .then run out of steam so I don’t do what I wanted to do (and this creates another dumping ground for “miscellaneous”, which perpetuates the problem) or I just don’t even go anywhere near the area (so it gets even messier, since it is at that point an established dumping ground for “miscellaneous”.)

This is going to happen, and I really want to make it work. The less clutter there is in my space, the less clutter there is in my mind. And now, finally, I’m off to shower, dress, and have lunch, because I am a taxi service and band parent for the rest of the day.

Oct10

Is Bill O’Reilly Paying Attention?

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Is Bill O’Reilly Paying Attention?

I was going to blog about this myself, but Crooks and Liars has all the links. I was reading this morning about pedophile William Devlin confessing to his attempt to kill Shawn Hornbeck, and Hornbeck convincing him not to by promising to do anything. The first thing that came into my head was O’Reilly’s assertion that Hornbeck didn’t want to escape because he had it pretty good with Devlin, a life that was more fun than the one he had with his parents. No matter how many times people called him on it, no matter how many demands were made from all corners of the media, he wouldn’t back down. He tried “explaining”, and he gave the world a “notpology” (I’m sorry you all have a problem with what I said, essentially) and now it has surfaced again, showing even more what a despicable person he is. Nobody has forgotten, and now his reprehensible statements are being re-aired, so O’R can’t possibly be ignorant of the lingering effect of having said, and defended, something so ignominious. So what will we get this time in response? I’ll betcha it won’t be anything even approaching an apology or retraction. It’ll certainly be worth waiting for, though.

Oct9

I Didn’t Want to Link,

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I Didn’t Want to Link,

but now I have to. OK, the fellow with all the crazy ideas I mentioned a few posts back is here. I was going back and forth about whether I would try some fisking, even though most of the stuff he says has been scientifically refuted in bunches of places. I figured I’d put it into a word file and let it percolate in my mind for a bit, so I went back to his site to capture it. I just want to give you a little preface, a quote from the post that first got me irked:

This confirms was I was saying in my earlier post (below), that naturalists like Dawkins who are not reigned in my religion will believe in anything.

and he brings in G. K. Chesterton to reinforce this idea:

GK Chesteron said: “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything.

Now, turn down your irony meters so they don’t explode on this one. I’m just gonna let this whole thing spew out at you all at once. . .ready?

My theories on Skyfish and UFOs
About why no one has found any skyfish carcases.
In one of the articles I linked to in my last post on Skyfish, it said that someone actually found a dead skyfish, but it quickly turned into a goo and then it quickly evaporated.
My opinion on is that skyfish are more like a jellyfish than bird, and perhaps receive all their energy from the sun, and their bodies are constituted with minimal material matter.
That would go a long way in explaining how they could flit about at 300kmph, and be so transparent as to be invisible except under exceptional conditions (e.g., slow motion video, or seen at sunset while a person is looking straight up). Another theory of mine is that they are a purely spiritual animal, or an animal with a life force but no body. Yet another theory of mine is that it would seem plausible that if God could create many animals similar to man, he could also create a whole class of animals similar to angels during the Creation Week. Perhaps most genuine UFOs are just animals on the angelic order. Most UFOs sightings are harmless, but the sinister ones would be demonic. Thus, the harmless UFO sightings are of animals on the angelic order, the sinister UFO sightings are demonic, and the good UFOs like the ones Ezekiel and other O.T. prophets saw are angelic in nature.
Posted by Yoel Natan at 11:31 AM 0 comments

I saw a rod, or skyfish, with the naked eye on about 1 Oct 2002
I was outside doing situps behind my house on the driveway, and I saw this strange orangish bird fly east not more than 40 feet up.
It flew like a cuttlefish swims, but it wasn’t going more than 20 miles per hour, I’d guess. I thought it was going fast for its mode of flying, though.
It was about 5PM or so, and the sun was getting toward the horizon, so I thought that either the strange bird was white and the sunset made it look orangish, or else it was orangish.

Not able to describe what I saw adequately since it was so strange, I told relatives that I saw a bird that was a cross between a bird and a butterfly. They reckoned I had seen a Hummingbird Moth Hawk.
I looked that up but was unconvinced to say the least:
Sphingidae
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawk_moth

Now that I think about it, I should have just made a drawing of it.
Better late than never, as the saying goes. Here’s a picture:

[picture omitted]

You can see that what I saw quite clearly is different than what other Skyfish look like from pictures and video, though these show differences, too. Thus, I assume there are myriad types of Skyfish. I’ll call mine the Figure 8 variety.

Anyway, these skybirds fly so fast that few people have been able to see them with the naked eye. They just see streaks of light, or a blur. So my specimen must have been strolling along! They do suggest having the camera in the shade while pointing it into the sunny sky, and I was in the shade looking up, so that partly explains my sighting.

The bird I saw was about a foot long and shaped like a figure eight. It undulated its “wings” or “appendages” for lack of a better term. It’s body, minus the wings, was tubular. What made me think of butterflies is they have tubular bodies and wings that are thin and lack bones, but the size and apparent weight made me thing of a bird.

So, Mr. Pot, if it’s atheists who are so easily bamboozled, how the heck do you explain your own credulity? Wowsers.

(I didn’t go out of my way to figure out how to get the picture into the blockquote. Just not worth the effort. I also cut out his links to supposed “proof” at the end. If you are really that much of a masochist, click the link. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though.)