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raincitygirl's journal
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Heaven and Hell on Earth (every LJ needs a pretentious title)  Is anybody in the greater Washington DC area looking for two cats? They are firm friends and should be adopted together, to a house with no other pets. This entry was originally posted at http://raincitygirl.dreamwidth.org/34691.h My internet connection has been decidedly sluggish for the past 24 hours. If it goes on much longer, I will be forced to call Shaw. Which I really don't want to do on a Saturday night. On the bright side, I have falafels, and it's not raining. I am watching a Brazilian movie called "Romeo and Juliet Get Married", about a lifelong Corinthians fan who falls in love with the daughter of the Palmeiras fan club president. At the moment Romeu is on his first date with Julieta, and lying like a rug about being a Palmeiras fan to avoid getting dumped. Methinks her dad is going to be seriously pissed off when the truth inevitably comes out (it's a rom-com, obviously the truth will come out eventually). However, his fury will doubtless be assuaged a little by the fact that the Corinthians fan in question is an opthalmologist. Did I spell that right? It looks wrong. A doctor for a son-in-law is a coup even if he supports the wrong local football team. I remain puzzled by the fact that Julieta looks to be in her late twenties but still lives with her parents. Maybe Sao Paulo is a very expensive city or something. I'd look it up on Wikipedia, but I already expended enough energy establishing that Corinthians and Palmeiras are both football teams based in Sao Paulo. The movie assumes people know that. It's slightly weird watching a movie in Portugese (it has English subtitles) because it sounds a lot like Spanish, only...not. That shouldn't be a surprise, since it's an ENTIRELY different language, but it's a jolt anyway. Thus far the movie's amusing without being laugh-out-loud funny. I am reading The Poisonous Seed, by Linda Stratmann, which is very good. Someone on Livejournal or Dreamwidth recced it, but I can't remember who in order to thank them. A pharmacist's daughter in Victorian Bayswater turns detective in order to clear her father's name of a crime he didn't commit. Haven't finished it yet, but it's ticking along nicely so far. This entry was originally posted at http://raincitygirl.dreamwidth.org/34352.h How does Twitter make money? Do they have ads or something? I know nothing about Twitter or tweeting (except that it seems to attract even more weirdness than LJ/DW), I'm just mildly curious. In other news, something fantastic happened. We had warm, sunny weather the whole weekend, and it waited until Monday morning to start raining. This is the exact opposite of what happened the previous weekend, where it rained and rained and rained (and on a 3 day weekend, no less) after having been warm and sunny all the previous work week. I'm not sure I can cope with the weather being all cooperative. I'm so accustomed to the exact opposite that I'm a little spooked. This entry was originally posted at http://raincitygirl.dreamwidth.org/34278.h I linked yesterday to an article about Facebook's IPO and potential malfeasance (the SEC is investigating them). Well, here's a different take on it. The writer suggests lax regulations are the cause. In which case they might want to tighten up the regulations. Just a thought, and probably a naive one. Of course they don't want to tighten them up. Then somebody important might go to prison. Mind you, I know zip about finance. If I'm getting things wrong, please feel free to tell me. It's 3:51 am, I've been awake since 1:30 am, and doubt I'll get back to sleep before I have to go to work tomorrow. On the bright side, I haven't thrown up in at least 36 hours. Oh, and Blenz Coffee is now selling gluten-free muffins. I had a blueberry one yesterday, and it stayed down. Which is good, because it was delicious. This entry was originally posted at http://raincitygirl.dreamwidth.org/33894.h Just getting over a stomach flu. it was all very Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire at my place for a day or two. But I am mostly recovered now, so no need for hugs or anything. Really fascinating article about Facebook's IPO and potential malfeasance (the SEC is investigating them) by Mark Zuckerberg and other prominent people in the company. So, I wonder how many billions in cash the early investors made last week and salted away in other non-Facebook related investments? Enough to pay for a bunch of very expensive lawyers? This entry was originally posted at http://raincitygirl.dreamwidth.org/33785.h Cutting for spoilers for the 2012 Champions League Final: ( Read more... ) This entry was originally posted at http://raincitygirl.dreamwidth.org/33377.h Happy birthday to ![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small} ancarett and almightychrissy!!! May you both have a fabulous day.This entry was originally posted at http://raincitygirl.dreamwidth.org/33172.h Haven't been around much online lately, just dropping by to observe that Vancouver really is a hockey town. This was brought home to me by my thus-far fruitless attempts to procure a Whitecaps FC jersey of the correct size* for a friend's child's upcoming birthday. Yes, I know the Whitecaps suck, and if Major League Soccer operated on a promotion/relegation model, their asses would be toast by now. But what the kid wants, the kid gets. Apparently he's the only person in the Greater Vancouver area who didn't get the memo that he lives in a hockey town. Please note that this post is not a plea for assistance. I will shortly fire up Google and figure it out. I just feel like bitching about the fact that it's not quite as simple as I'd assumed. In fact, with the time I've wasted writing this post, I probably could've sorted it out by now. But lo, the lure of bitching on the internet is greater than the lure of solving problems. * Obviously when I say "the correct size", what I really mean is "the size bigger than the size he currently wears" but that should go without saying when shopping for children's clothing. The little bastards grow like crazy. This entry was originally posted at http://raincitygirl.dreamwidth.org/33010.h Warning: Eurocentric point of view follows: I’ve been reading Frank McLynn’s biography of Napoleon on and off for the last little while. It’s a BIG book, or would be if I had it in physical rather than e-book form, so I’ve been reading bits and pieces at a time. We’ve now reached 1813, at which point the disastrous invasion of Russia has already failed, and he’s living on borrowed time. Should I spoiler cut? I don’t want to spoil anybody for the eventual fate of a historical personage. Um, I may spend too much time on the internet if I’m seriously considering adding spoiler cuts for Napoleon. Anyway, if you didn’t already know, things end badly for him (there, I’ve spoiled you). It’s been a very long time since I’ve studied the Napoleonic Wars. In fact, I’m not sure I ever studied the Napoleonic Wars, at least never in depth. In high school we focused on the War of 1812-1814 (a mere sideshow as far as the Europeans were concerned, but a huge moment for Canada. As my social studies teacher never tired of reminding me, Canadian troops penetrated as far south as Washington DC and burned down the White House. They then had to retreat in haste to avoid compromising their supply lines, but still, considered a great moment). And in university my nineteenth century history courses mostly didn’t start until 1815. Which is not to say that I was totally ignorant on the subject, but there was stuff that was new to me. In particular, just how much of a JERK Napoleon was. Not that I had an especially high opinion of the guy before I read this bio, but I really don’t now. What’s especially striking, though, is what a massive effect railroads, telegraph lines and steamships would have on, well, everything. Bear in mind that the last history book I read was about the British Empire in the nineteenth century. This bio is mostly about wars, because Napoleon spent most of his adult life at war with one country or another (often with many at the same time). And really, the technology of how to make war hadn’t changed *that* much in the past few thousand years. If you wanted to transport troops on land, you could go as fast as a man could walk or ride a horse. By sea, you could go as fast as a ship could sail, and were dependent on the winds. La Grande Armee was considered radically high-tech at the time because on clear days they used a semaphore system to communicate. But it would all change radically within just a few decades, and all forms of transport and communications would change with it. I realize these are not original thoughts, and that many historians consider the 19th century to contain a bigger technological leap than the 20th century precisely because of the innovations I mentioned (railways beat out spacecraft in terms of changing the world). But it’s the first time I really got what they meant. The contrast between the Europe of 1815 at the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the Europe of the Great Exhibition in 1851 is HUGE. Basic things like how people travelled, how they sent their mail and transported their goods, how they sent urgent messages, all completely up-ended in less than forty years. This entry was originally posted at http://raincitygirl.dreamwidth.org/32225.h Happy belated birthday |
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