These are old archived entries from my journal, Ornamental Illness. I have eliminated all graphics (except those in context of an entry) to save on my bandwidth usage.


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Thursday, September 12, 2002

More Caterpillars

Stasia is another Wisconsinite who just happened to adopt a Monarch caterpillar named Herman. Unfortunately, Herman didn't make it to butterflyhood as he was killed by those evil Tachnid flies like some of mine were last year. It was sad.

Today Stan brought home "a bird turd," i.e., a very young Black Swallowtail caterpillar. (They look like bird turds when they are young to fool their enemies).

I am trying to get back into experimenting with Flash and decided to make a couple caterpillar animations just for fun.

Posted by Ann on 09/12/02@08:25 PM CST ..::Link::..

Weird Mail

Bill emailed me this interesting documentation of US Postal Experiments. Had me laughing outloud. Reminds me of the summer of '83 when Stan was working in his hometown and we would mail eachother profusely, sometimes sending strange contents (like little cut up pieces of index cards colored plaid). We were also both painting on plexiglass at the time, and Stan emailed me a painted plexiglass postcard, complete with official postage adhered (I think the correct term would be "decoupaged") onto it. I amazingly received it.

Posted by Ann on 09/12/02@09:07 AM CST ..::Link::..

Tuesday, September 10, 2002

DREAM - Tiger Swallowtails

Stan and I were at my parent's house and they were gone. We walked into their bedroom and I found two extremely large (5-6 inch wingspan) Tiger Swallowtail butterflies on the floor. I told Stan that this had happened before. Their heads were quite large, sort of like cartoon heads. Their wings were also damaged and it looked like cats had been playing with them. I then realized my cats were with us at their house. I picked up one butterfly, but then Plato, who was also there, grabbed it in his mouth. It freaked me out and then I woke up.

Posted by Ann on 09/10/02@08:18 AM CST ..::Link::..

Sunday, September 8, 2002

Summer Monarch Butterflies

Even the songs of crickets are beginning to slow down with the arrival of these late summer evenings. This year during July and August I was able to gather over 100 Monarch eggs to raise in captivity. Now that the middle of September is near there are only about 20 Monarch butterflies yet to be released. I love caring for Monarchs and I hope that this effort helps their overall population - even in the smallest way.

I'm beginning to feel kind of sad that the time of year for Monarchs is coming to a close. The caterpillars and butterflies make this time of year my favorite time of year, and as the songs of summer insects fade into cold nights I'll be looking forward to next July. [more]

Posted by Stan on 09/08/02@09:05 PM CST ..::Link::..

Stupidity and Cellphones

An interesting article called Why do cell phones make us stupid? (found via Bonni). I dunno. I'm beginning to think that the stupidity is already there, just waiting to be unleashed, and the cellphone is the catalyst. In our personal situation, and in the situation of our good friend Bill, we dumped our landlines because the service was horrendous (two different phone companies, btw), and got cellphones instead. Do we take it with us? Well, duh. (Stan and I only have one phone between us). Do we drive while talking on it? No, and although I haven't been with Bill since he got his phone (he lives 1000 miles away), I'd be willing to bet he does not use his while driving either. I've always been against driving while phoning, and now that I have a cellphone myself, I'm even more adamantly against it because I know how distracting it is. When there are two of us in the car, the non-driver answers the phone. If the call is for the driver, we pull over. If I was alone in the car and my phone rang I'd let the voicemail get it. It's so simple, I don't see why other people can't do the same. Why can't they foresee this behavior as dangerous? Why can't they see that jabbering away in Target, telling the person on the other end of the line that they're in the diaper aisle while they chomp their bubblegum simultaneously, is boorish behavior? See, if they weren't stupid, they wouldn't do it in the first place. It's not the cellphone making them stupid, it's just unleashing their unbridled stupidity.

Of course, we have the lowest cost plan, meaning we have to miser our minutes. We are especially very conservative in our use of daytime minutes because we only get 250 a month, and who knows when I'll have to use a lot of them for an emergency call to some customer service support desk. What astounds me is that these sorts of people, as mentioned in the article, are able to chew the fat in grocery stores over absolutely boring topics narrating what they're doing that minute, what product they're picking up, etc. Do these people have limitless calling plans? We looked into a lot of plans, and couldn't find any limitless ones. Do they not care that they're using up their minutes on the stupidest of conversations that I wouldn't even care to have for free without a phone? Do they even see the bill or does their husband (no, I'm not sexist, these have all been women with children) pay it all for them?

It boggles the mind.

See what it equates to is that stupid people can afford huge phone bills, which means stupid people are making a good living and getting ahead financially.

Insert snide remark against George W. Bush here.

Posted by Ann on 09/08/02@10:20 AM CST ..::Link::..

Characters

Oh, I love it! Fenia made a blog template with my Characters dingbat. I forgot how funny that dingbat is!

Posted by Ann on 09/08/02@09:25 AM CST ..::Link::..

DREAMs - Strange building at night

#1) I was in what I thought was my house. It was at night, and I got up to use the bathroom. But instead of it being a tiny little bathroom outside of our bedroom, it was a very large bathroom, maybe about 10-15 feet long, with a mirror at the end. I sat down on the toilet and then realized it was a two-way mirror, or perhaps not a mirror at all, but a window, and there was someone else in the room opposite, who was also using the bathroom. I was hiding my body with my arms because I was naked. I called Stan to come into the bathroom with me. I told him to stand in front of me so the guy on the other end, a young 20-something, tall, darkhaired white guy with a shaggy haircut, couldn't see me. Then the guy in the other room left, but was replaced by an Asian-American guy. This guy then shut a door that covered the window/mirror, so that I couldn't be seen and so that I couldn't see him. Then I realized there was another door in the bathroom, and the first guy tried to get into that one, but when he realized that my bathroom was occupied, he left. After I finished, I put my clothes on, and Stan and I walked out into the hallway to see what was going on. We realized our house was attached to a very, very large building, and that perhaps there was a party going on next door which was why so many people were using the bathroom. As we walked down the very palatial hallway, it seemed less like a private residence building and more like an institution, like a student center of a university. It was also in the middle of the night, but there were a lot of people around. We walked into a common area where there were a bunch of young women hanging up a lot of art. I then saw one of Stan's pieces in the show (which was a weird piece made out of chrome and chopped up letters from newspapers...very "un-Stan") and that it it had won an award. Then later in the dream, Stan and I were getting ready to go somewhere and I had layed out some sports clothes that had chartreuse shorts on the bed, which was now upstairs where it used to be over a year ago. When I came back to the bed, the shorts were gone, and I was frantically looking for them and trying to get ready in time (time for what?) I also think X*X* was in the dream too and that I was flirting with him AGAIN, but I forgot how.

#2) My mom called me and her line sounded static like mine was a few months ago before we got rid of our land phone. I was trying to tell her that she needed to get rid of her land phone, but she didn't understand a word I said. I tried to tell her that she needs to call me back because I can't understand her, and she didn't understand that either. I went outside to talk to her, but that didn't help because the problem was her line, not my cellphone. Most frustrating.

Posted by Ann on 09/08/02@07:57 AM CST ..::Link::..
By Ann @ 20:56 PM CST:09:20:02 ..::Link::..