SNowblowing the driveway is much nicer with a warm knit cap and muffler. 😉 Really nice!
I have my next to last dental appointment at 7 am tomorrow, and have to keep the drive clear, despite snow last night and snow today.
It’s coming down again, and I just finished. It’s going to be like that. But it’s so pretty.
Wish me luck tomorrow. This is not going to be a pleasant one.
May your recovery be swift and without incident, CJ.
And for all salads who observe Chinese New Year, Gong Hay Fat Choy!
Oh, shame on me, I forgot! — I did have homemade stir-fry last night (yum!) and beef teriyaki ramen (Yakisoba brand is pretty good) over the weekend, with fortune cookies, so, Chinese-American and Japanese-American. Heh. But I had somehow thought Chinese New Year comes in early February. Bad me. I will read up some more on Wiki.
I hope everyone’s having a good New Year.
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I’ve been rewatching the Expanse, season 1 in anticipation of the new season starting Feb. 1, and enjoying it a lot. I still need to read the first book, by the James S.A. Corey writing duo. Also started a Firefly rewatch.
I am looking forward to when I can see the recent movie, Arrival, which involves aliens and a good attempt at a real linguist. I’ve heard very good things about the movie and have it pre-ordered now.
Well, you can probably choose any day you want in the next month or two since the number of Chinese-derived calendars is more than a little boggling. Try “Chinese calendar” in Wikipedia, and good luck.
I suppose you can divide calendars into three general types. Solar calendars track the sun and are popular where exact planting dates are needed. Lunar calendars track the moon phase so holidays drift all around the solar year (and vice versa: our holidays drift around their years); examples are Hindu and Islamic. A lunisolar calendar tries to do both, often by inserting a special intercalary month (just as we had 2016 Feb 29 as an intercalary day); examples are Hebrew and Chinese–well, some of them. This is why Christmas and Hanukkah are around the same time, but the dates jump when the Hebrew calendar adds an intercalary month, which happened in roughly March/April 2016; the extra month follows Adar and is simply called Adar II.
The Christian calendar for movable feasts–Easter and related days–is similar to the Hebrew calendar except it just tries to set Easter and the movable feasts, has the additional complication of feasts being on particular days of the week, but is slightly simplified by not being a full calendar for a full year. See Wikipedia: Computus. Hint: Epact is the nominal (not actual) date of the new moon each year; this year, 2, so nominally Jan 2 giving Jan 16 as the date of the nominal first full moon, whence the “Paschal” first (nominal) full moon after Spring, the following Sunday being Easter, April 16, which anchors Lent and all the other movable feasts, earlier or later in the year. (“Intuitively obvious to the casual observer,” as my calculus professor would say–math, not teeth.)
Chinese calendars of various ages and traditions are solar, lunar, and lunisolar. Quite a barrel of monkeys.
One can only imagine the calendars of a world in a binary star system, much less a trinary system or a world with multiple visible moons or orbiting a gas giant or a super-Earth. Especially since, “In 1887, mathematicians Heinrich Bruns and Henri Poincaré showed that there is no general analytical solution for the three-body problem given by algebraic expressions and integrals. The motion of three bodies is generally non-repeating, except in special cases.” –Wikipedia, Three-body problem
But happy new year!
I fixed it for you, Ben. Use the Initials of your screen name, In Caps, and then go and change it.
@HRHSpence — Oh bother. Tried that, but it wouldn’t accept the password and log me in. Could you please reset it?
Idea: Try the Spanish word for, “I know / am familiar with,” present tense, all lowercase, no numerals. That should be long enough.
Ben, I sent a PM his way, I can’t reset passwords, I’m only an admin on one forum, but I’m pretty sure HRHSpence can do it, or one of the other admins if they read your note here.
done and done, You’re welcome BSC.
Back from the appointment. Jane and I had to get out and shovel the drive and berm at 5:30 this morning in the dark (Jane did most of it) so I could get to my dentist appointment. It was interesting—but I am now through the ooky part of the work, and now they have to figure out a bridge that will work. I came back a little woozy from the stuff they shot in to numb the area, but I’m doing fine.
Now it’s coming down again and I just called 911 to report the truck that is stuck in deep snow blocking the street in front of us. The airport was closed yesterday. The schools are closed today. We get today and tomorrow of snow, then 2 days of sunshine.
And to my great joy, How the Universe Works has a new 5th season on streaming from Amazon—which is absolutely gorgeous and has new stuff on Pluto and the extent of our solar system.
Friday all the news outlets in Portland were telling everybody, “Stay home!” Saturday’s snow was to be covered over by Sunday’s freezing rain, icing everything up. By and large, most people seemed to. Now they’re calling it, “a lost weekend”! Not without cause!
It’s s’posed to snow again Wednesday. I had to be on the other side of town at 9AM for a Moh’s surgery on my ear. I don’t think so! So first thing this morning I rescheduled.
Want to bet there’s a baby boom in Portland next August?
I always wondered why there were seven dwarves. That explains it!
Off-Topic: @joe6cnlx — Joe, would you please ask one of the admins at Shejidan to re-send me an email to reset my password, or more preferably, to do a manual reset so I can go in and change it? Thank you. I cannot login from my new computer, and I sent in a request to reset the password, but did not receive an email on either email account. Also, my PM box there is Full. I don’t recall changing my password, but have no suspicion of anything untoward, just my own imperfect brain and too much reliance on a saved password. Thanks, Joe and thanks to the admins there.l.
Ben, use the French for “I know”, no spaces……
Aha! Je réussis! (I succeed!) — I’ve logged in and changed my password. hah, there are, by the way, two verbs for “I know” in French. One is to know a thing definitely, completely. The other is to know a thing or especially a person, to be familiar with a subject or person, to be acquainted with. The French verbs match the Spanish cognate verbs, and one presumes this goes back to late-stage Latin or classicall Latin itself.
As I’d suggested the personal or subject familiarity form in Spanish, that’s what I tried first in French. But ah, it was the more concrete, final, complete form that was wanted. Now back to a password I’ll remember.
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Shejidaniin have found that the cover for Convergence has been posted on Amazon.com. My pre-order for the ebook remains in effect. They’re showing it due by May 5th.
I’m having a biopsy tomorrow. Wish me luck! Won’t have results until next week so I’ll be left on tenterhooks over the weekend.
Me, too. I’m waiting biopsy results of my own. Sending vibes of courage, patience and peace your way.
Fingers crossed for both of you on the biopsies. I’ve been there myself.
Roxanne
Wishing both you the best!
Waiting is really hard. Here’s hoping you get good news.
Ready, I hope your results are good news. I went through a needle biopsy a year ago December and was lucky enough to get the results while I was at the office. Good luck.
One would think that when someone “calls one out”, one ought to think twice about one’s response. 😉
Hang in there, CJ, oh, most favored of salads. Every step is that much closer to the end result, which we will hope will be optimal. One is glad to have been of service.
CJ, have you seen this?
http://twistedsifter.com/videos/diy-fish-tower-and-silky-smooth-jazz/
Ah, yes! Our big Ari, largest, puts her nose into the bubble and uses her tail, which hangs below, to push—taking a tour. The little ones can move it, too, but Ari can apply direct finnage.
“It was a dark and stormy night…”
I’ve always felt E Bulwer-Lytton got a bad rap. It’s definitely not true that all nights, even all stormy nights, are dark. Tuesday night around 10PM I looked out on about 3″ of fresh snow in the past few hours. If there is any human habitation about, spilling light, it’s remarkably bright, not dark! Now at 11 it’s about 4″, weatherman says 6-12 by morning.
He-He, I was scheduled for Mohs surgery on my ear tomorrow morning, some 15mi away through Portland rush-hour traffic to be there at 9AM. Now, News @ 11 says there are some cars stuck in the tunnel just west of town on the main highway. But knowing these predictions, first thing Monday morning I called and rescheduled. Next Wednesday.
It’s 9″ this morning by my front door. 😮 Both ODOT and PBOT (Portland Bureau of Transportation) are saying chains are mandatory on both state and city roads about town. This was several times what had been expected. It appears the snow has just stopped, but the meltout may not be until we get a “Pineapple Express” rain next Tuesday.
I’m in a semi-rural area. My backyard is surrounded by “field fence”, 6″ x 6″ mesh of 12ga galvanized wire. There’s 3″ of snow sitting atop each of those horizontal wires!
Stuck cars are still an issue on our cross streets: I box a bigger square, staying to the maintained roads—and the inconvenience of having our driveway get bermed by the snowplows also means we take a groomed arterial right to our driveway opening instead of having to battle up a snowy rise.
All of you, best of luck with the medical issues. My next one is the 23rd, when we see how this bridge they’re putting together does…solves all remaining issues, I hope. But Jane was complaining of toothache last night. We concur it is probably allergies, which can touch it off. I’ve been sneezing mightily on occasion, which is PROBABLY the Christmas decor: molds and dust have our number, for sure.
No toothaches here (we are going to see a new dentist in a couple of weeks; our previous dentist had a complete staff change and the new techs aren’t as gentle as the old ones). OTOH, we are having large billows of vog waft up from Madame Pele’s domain to the south, and if you are prone to allergies, between that and recent rains making everything sprout, you will be a-sneezin’.
I’ve been sneezing mightily, too, rather like both barrels of a shotgun. Not allergies per se. I suspect it means I need to change the filter in the HVAC.
Thought “vog” was a typo, and then brain engaged. Of course. Worse than smog, I would imagine.