Ravelry, Anyone?
I got my invite for Ravelry today. Is anyone else on there yet?
I’m theresab. I can’t wait to get some free time to inventory my yarn and needles.
(I am such a geek!)
Archive for June, 2007
Poems of Arab Andalusia
Ah, one of my favorite books of poems (this ed. translated by Cola Franzen). When I was in college, I had checked a book out of the library that had a lot of the poems in Arabic, Spanish, and English. It was fantastic.
Anyway I’m reading this hoping to find something suitable for a wedding, but alas they’re all about battles, or lost loves, or drinking.
Today, I liked this poem:
SPLIT MY HEART
How I wish I could split my heart
with a knife
put you inside
then close up my chest
so that you would be in my heart
and not in another’s
until the resurrection
and the day of judgment.
There you would stay while I lived
and after my death
you would remain buried deep in my heart
in the darkness of the tomb.
-Ibn Hazm (994-1063, Cordoba)
It reminds me of Dead Can Dance’s “I am stretched on your grave”.
Someday
Someday, I am going to buy my parents and my brother and myself copies of this print.
The genus of that tree (and others in Africa) is the same as my last name. “The genus name Boscia honours a French professor of agriculture, Louis A.G. Bosc (1777-1850).”
As far as my own history goes, it’s a bit of a mystery. My ancestors are Albanian-Italians from the Avellino province of Italy. We’ve got some pretty rabid internet groups devoted to our common ancestry and roots in Greci.
My Arabic professor in college thought that we probably emigrated to Italy during the Ottoman invasion in the 1400s, and “Boscia” is an Italianization of the Turkish/Arabic title “pasha”. Who knows? I should try to convince an SCA herald to try to find a date for it. So far we’ve got it back to about 1740 in Italy, with Carlo Boscia, my great(x5)-grandfather.
I always thought it was related to woods or forest because it’s similar to the Spanish word “Bosque” – which is apparently actually Germanic in origin (“bosque= forest, woods: from Catalan of Provençal of Old French bosc, from Germanic (*)busk- “brush, underbrush, thicket” (source of Old High German busc).”)
And then of course there’s the pronunciation – my family says Bahshah. Other Boscias say Bohshah or Bohskah or Bohskeeya or Bahskeeya. There aren’t a lot of Boscias in the world but those that are directly related agree on how their family says their name.
The Boshahs may be proper – there’s a MLB player named Mike Scioscia and his last name is Shohshah.
Currently, Boscia is also a line of Japanese skin care products (they’re pretty good).
Look what you started, Mau!
fixed! 2 gold stars for me
First of all, my biggest beef with this WP layout was that paragraphs weren’t spaced.
I finally fixed that! I rd CSS gud.
Also, thanks to my friend (I was trying to think of a better term, and that led me to the book Sisters, Long Ago which I LOVED as a kid [ANCIENT EGYPT!!!!], but anyway) cavalaxis emailed me that her comment was spam-filtered! I took care of that, so people should be able to comment on the wordpress blog properly.
Haven’t seen a way to fix what she was really emailing me about, which was:
Sorry, but your comment has been flagged by the spam filter running on this blog: this might be an error, in which case all apologies. Your comment will be presented to the blog admin who will be able to restore it immediately. You may want to contact the blog admin via e-mail to notify him.
The nerve. And I can’t find the way to change that! Must.. hunt.. through.. php.. files!
ugh
So as usual I think about all sorts of things to blog about, but then never actually write them down.. but work is slow and I just checked my RSS feeds, and CRAFT magazine posted another pattern from burdastyle.com and OH MY GOD I think I’ve hated every single thing I’ve seen posted.
First of all, they all look terrible in my eyes and require a lot of gathering and just drape about some stick-figure’s body like a freakin’ burka. I’m not a huge person – I am properly shaped, just with some added padding – but I seriously doubt that I could wear any of the designs on that website without some pretty significant alteration. Curves, people! Curves!
Okay, I take that back. I’d wear this coat, but in red. And without the shoulder things. And smaller pockets (or maybe ones that aren’t placed directly on my ample hips?), yes, let’s add huge square pockets on the outside of the coat at the widest part of our bodies, hmmm?
hmmph.
Stayin’ alive..
We are so lucky, and most people here are congratulating their ingenuity (such as it was) with still being alive. They are celebrating the massacre at our gates, the lives taken, and taken again (you would be surprised how stubborn Target employee zombies can be. I wish they’d shown such diligence when alive).
No, folks, sorry. We got lucky, and that’s all there is to it. So many others tried and died, and we got lucky.
That’s all there is now. Count on yourself and your loved ones, and leave everyone else behind. Stay away from the rest of humanity. Close your curtains, shut your blinds, and do not interact with people. Do not draw attention to yourself.
Live quietly within your secure bubble and hold out as long as you can.
No one knows how this started or when it might return – and after these past 24 hours, we’re going to have a lot more dead to deal with if it does happen again.
Live and learn, and don’t count on luck.
I am going to bed. I am dreading waking up to this again tomorrow, but the alternative is worse.
Perhaps I’ll get lucky and wake with the sun rather than with the dead.
Still holding..
I don’t think I have the words to describe what I’ve been doing today.
We have people stationed at the two locked side gates, which have so far been holding. Everyone has been doing what they can to not draw attention to those areas, and we also have patrols going around the perimeter watching for any that have made it over the fence. So far, none.
The majority of our time has been spent at the front gate – three lanes, completely open.
Early on in the day I convinced people with large vehicles to park them in the driveway, blocking the roads. We have the cars five deep, but they’re not touching so the creatures can come between the cars and some have crawled under them.
We are so poorly armed for this – landscaping tools, water hoses, some sports equipment. So far, through sheer luck, determination, and numbers, we’ve made it so far.
Most of us have, anyway.
One of the security guards came to relieve me from my post. I’m covered in I-don’t-want-to-know-what.
There came a point when fury just overcame me, and my memory went blank. So much of this day has been a blur.
I’ve always been one of those Worst Case Scenario people, who enters a new place and checks for good hiding spots and exits, just in case. Who knew that it might come in handy one day?
I go back on duty in a half hour. They’ve taken over the Target across the street, and are pushing their injured around in shopping carts in a cruel mockery of our material world.
I’m going to go sit in the jacuzzi for a while. Maybe they won’t be able to find me if I hide underwater with my snorkel – worth a try when they break through our barricade, right? Anything would be better than ending up like them.
good news!!
I heard from Alan! He made it to work! He and his fellow geeks are holed up in Imageworks, which is luckily a fairly secure site. They figured out how to cut power to the doors, so everyone is locked in.
They have water, soda, popcorn, and vending machines for food, and hundreds of dead computers and monitors they can use as ammunition.
Alan is considering building a ballista out of cubicle parts. He also sent me this, which is useful considering our situation.
As for me, I am staying home. My office is next to one of the largest cemeteries in SoCal, and near to another one. I have no desire to see Zombie John Candy and Zombie Bing Crosby. But oh my god, Bela Lugosi is buried there. I think I could die happy if I got a picture of Zombie Bela Lugosi!
Oh, the irony.
jesus, what a day
Bella was pacing this morning, starting at 5am. I should’ve known something was up. I finally got up at 6 to walk her.. everything seemed normal, if a little quiet (although I’m not up at 6am normally, so how would I know, really?) until I walked over to the side of the neighborhood by La Cienega Blvd – the part where it’s still sorta like a freeway.
There was just a mass of cars. I could hear groaning, I saw some hands, grasping, reaching out of car windshields. Bella didn’t want to approach the gate, and whined when I drew closer.
Oh my god. Her whine drew their attention. I saw figures rise up from among the wreckage and turn our direction.
I have never been so happy to live in a community with 14′ high walls topped with spiky bars, and closed off with locked and secured iron gates. There is just one open entrance and exit, and thousands of people in here. I hoped we could hold them off, working together.
I ran back home, closed all the windows and the shades, and got back into bed with Alan. I think I was hoping I was still dreaming.
Unfortunately it was all too real.
I woke up again hours later, and Alan was gone. I think he went to work, not knowing what was going on outside. That, I suppose, is the problem with living in a quiet neighborhood.
I should’ve woken him. I don’t know where he is now.
So. Much. Food.
Alan and I went to the tasting at the wedding location on Saturday.
Oh. My. God.
As I told my friend, I rated the food on a scale from “yum” to “OMFG”. Most dishes ranked in the “delish-OMG” range… which is to say, that was some of the best food I have tasted in my entire life.
We are not at all concerned about which dishes to serve at the wedding, as anything we offer is going to be so utterly fabulous as to render everyone silent when they eat.
Now I am looking forward to the wedding moreso than the honeymoon!
