hey, for science, could you guys reblog this and put in the tags
where you live
the language you speak most often
what you call a tiny, overpriced grocery store on a street corner where you go when you just need a carton of milk or a candy bar or something
#Bristol, UK #English #The Corner Shop (even if it’s not on a corner) #Although where we live we have a crappyminisupermarket called a The Co-Op which amazingly we refer to as ‘The Co-Op’. #This is a co-op but not a nice and friendly locally run co-op but a bit national chain that happens to be run cooperatively. #Sadly our one is fairly depressing in its range. #All this for science.
I’m sure there are people in the world who are much more evenly effective in their activities. I, on the other hand, flick wildly from days where I achieve nothing (other than perhaps binge watching multiple episodes of Parks and Rec, or manage to up my dinking-on-the-internet-wasted-hours by some phenomenal amount) to days where I feel like I’ve made some pretty spiffy progress in things.
Today, for example I’ve sanded down the heavily filled door frame that goes from our hall into our kitchen. It’s heavily filled because the door has clearly been repositioned from side to side and from hall-side to kitchen-side and back, leaving the wood with multiple dints. It’s also suffered from the fact that when the house was built they trimmed the edge off the frame to fit the built in cabinet:
So I’ve had to reconstruct that edge… and also ‘blend’ it in to the new skirting (baseboards) in the kitchen.
So anyhow, after fitting a new edge to it, and putting half a ton of filler on (then sanding off 3/8ths of a ton of filler) I finally, today, got it looking enough like a doorframe…
That I could happily, finally, caulk around it then put a coat of paint on it.
At the same time I’ve put the first coat of paint on the front door, which is looking much, much better than it did before it had a coat of paint on it. Slightly irritatingly, I thought I’d run out of caulk so went off and got a new tube of it, before discovering that actually I still have 2/3rds of a tube. But I’d also forgotten that the nozzle on the old tube was cracked, and was leaking, so actually it turned out to be pretty handy. And with bonus added handyness because I took the opportunity to grab both more manure:
And more bark chip. Oh, and another clematis.
(Yes, I do need to cut the ‘lawn’).
The other clematis looked to be doing really well…and then the slugs got it. So I’ve hurled many slug pellets in the other one’s pot, and also put quite a few pellets in this one. I’d quite like to soften the corners of the garage, and make it look a bit more settled in there, which the clematis might do.
I realise buying plants when we’re moving is foolish. But hey, what can I say, it looks pretty.
Hey… are there any trans girls willing to talk to me about bottom surgery? I really want it soon… but I don’t know who to go to or what to expect… and like I’ve been doing some research… but it’s really intimidating and I feel like I’m get a lot of misinformation. I don’t know.
If my trans followers could reblog this so it can maybe reach someone who would be willing to talk to me I would really appreciate it. Thanks.
Any trans woman can ask me about bottom surgery. Mine was on the NHS in London, so doubly so if you want to know about that specifically.
I’m happy to answer any questions I can, but my surgery was well over a decade ago – so YMMV with info I can provide :)
Today we both got photographed. Our general fame and being followed by paparazzi not withstanding, this was just passport photos. But passport photos taken by an actual human-type person (which is, interestingly, way nicer than a machine doing it) and printed in a USAian style. A lovely 2″ by 2″ photo of myself and one of Kathryn is now upstairs awaiting attachment to the relevant G-325A (Biographical Data) forms.
We also finished the bits we can complete on the computer for the I-130 (Petition for Alien Relative…). There are, oddly, some bits you can’t fill in on the PDF that you have to complete by hand. We were going to print it off but irritatingly, the toner in the printer was getting a bit low and producing patchy prints (TBH it’s been like that since I got it, ‘cos it was second hand). I took it out and shook it, with the hope that it would produce some better prints… instead the printer went “Oh, it’s empty”.
Poot.
But! But I had a spare, the one from the other printer I bought second hand that was DOA (got a full refund tho’).
I grabbed that and threw it in.
It turned out it produces filthy, filthy prints with dirty streaks on them.
[ETA: I’d changed the toner and the drum simultaneously, because I’m a moron; and because they’re attached together. I’m at this very moment waiting to see if we need a new drum having come up with the idea of switching the toner between the empty one and the one with the crappy drum unit. [paper feeds out] YAHA! “Go little printer! Go little printer!” (imagine me dancing) ]
Of course, we’d planned for this low toner issue (for loose definitions of planned), with a stop on the way home from our breakfast trip to The Workhouse Cafe – stopping at Staples, who informed me that they carry absolutely no stock for Kyocera printers at all, whatsoever. Nor, it turns out, do any of the stores in Bristol carry stock for printers as old as ours, although one of them seemed convinced that if he kept me on the phone long enough I’d give in and order one to be delivered to his store, so I could drive across Bristol and collect it from him (as opposed to ordering a refill for a tenner online).
[Continued from the ETA. I could have just rewritten this post because I hadn’t actually hit publish when I realised about the whole toner/drum thing, but…. naaaah].
However… the scabby second toner cartridge appears to have improved matters at least a bit. Perhaps enough…
…And YAY! I have decimated a small forest re-printing odd pages, but also, have finally produced all of the pages required. Next comes a sign-a-thon and then it goes in the post on Monday. And then we’re poorer, but hopefully with some chance of US-land-living.
Now we just need Kathryn’s UK Citizenship* and we can flit about the world like the globetrotters we are.
* And my US Nursing registration**.
** And for flitting, ideally a lot more money ;)
Why NASA Called The Northwest Indian College Space Center
It started out as a joke. The students at Northwest Indian College on the Lummi Reservation near Bellingham were launching little rockets made from recycled water bottles as a way to do some hands-on science. Computer science teacher Gary Brandt says calling it a “space center” was just something one of the students came up with. “And he said, ‘I called us the Northwest Indian College Space Center,‘” Brandt said. “I was kind of dumbfounded, basically. And I said, ‘OK, let’s do that. That’s kind of grandiose. Let’s really play it up.’” The joke was funny because this was just a tiny, two-year college, with no engineering program. Getting into space was the last thing on the minds of these students; they were just trying to escape poverty. Next thing they knew, NASA was calling them up. It was beyond their wildest dreams. Christian Cultee, a student there, grew up nearby. “My uncle runs a fish hatchery up here,” Cultee said. “My biggest fear here, my whole life, was just kind of being trapped here on the reservation.” Another student, Amy Irons, managed to get off the reservation in Kitsap County where she lived and worked as a line cook for 10 years. “I did have the passion to be a chef one day,” she said. “As soon as that faded I was just burned out and just working for the check.” At Northwest Indian College, they stumbled into another passion – launching pressurized water-bottle rockets for fun. Every time someone launched a rocket, students gathered to watch. They read online about more advanced rocketry programs in other schools, but those programs were really expensive. One day, teacher Gary Brandt broke down and bought three rocket kits anyway. Not long after their first real rocket launch, Brandt got a phone call – from NASA. “She introduced herself and said, ‘I didn’t know you were big enough to have a space center,’” he said. “And I, of course, choked and chortled and told her the story of what happened. And she said, ‘Be that as it may, you are doing what we want, and that’s to get underrepresented students involved in science, technology, engineering and math programs.’” NASA would give them $5,000 a year for three years. It was enough to get them to take themselves seriously. The students began entering competitions. Each year, NASA organized a different challenge. Such as, reach a specific altitude and take scientific readings from the atmosphere. Or use a robot to collect a soil sample, put the sample in a rocket, and prepare the rocket for launch – all with no help from humans. Big schools like MIT and Vanderbilt University came to the competitions with fancy equipment: digital scales, specialized aluminum parts and fancy servo motors. Northwest Indian College used discarded computer parts, bubble levels and mouse traps. Irons said they worked with what they had. “It comes down to sometimes, ‘Oh, do you have a paperclip, I need to put a paperclip in here to make sure this is secure,’” she said. “And so, honestly, it’s just whatever you have that works, you need to use it.” And it did work. That resourcefulness, borne out of poverty, has helped the Northwest Indian College Space Center outperform some schools with far greater resources. That gumption is what caught NASA’s attention. Mamta Nagaraja, an engineer with the space agency, said these students have qualities NASA would love to have on a team. “Being able to have somebody on the team who is resourceful will give you that perspective,” she said. “‘Well, we could do it this way, and we don’t really need to buy that product because it’d be quite easy to reuse this product that we have from this past mission and it’s not being used currently, it’s just sitting in a box.’” Cultee has interned with NASA for the last two years. And he’s returning next year. He’s not thinking about working in his uncle’s fish hatchery anymore. “The internship that I’m getting this summer will have to do with software development and communicating with satellites,” he said. Amy Irons wants to be a marine biologist. But she’ll bring her rocketry skills to that profession. Irons: “I’m hoping to get into underwater rovers and use underwater rovers to explore the sub-tidal areas. Which I would use for data collection.” Now people are starting to take the space program at the Northwest Indian College seriously. But for Brandt, the biggest reward is seeing his students take themselves seriously. “It’s just an amazing feeling for me to see the look of competence,” he said. “The look of self-esteem. And when I see them talking with these big engineering graduate-level students from Vanderbilt and these things on an absolutely equal basis – you can see how it makes me feel.” Other tribal colleges are catching rocket fever too. This weekend, they’ll compete in the fifth annual First Nations Launch, a competition just for tribal teams.
this is the best damn thing, it totally is
“You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.”
and this is what the western news doesn’t show. Educated and Covered Muslim women are unimaginable for them.
