Welcome to Ginny's Teahouse

So I don't mind at all that the mail person left the package (of yarn!) in front of my door today. I really don't. What I find perplexing is that it was waiting for me as I was on my way home from the post office to pick up the package (of pre-yarn!) that the mail person wouldn't leave in front of my door the other day (Sunday!). The one I had to get from the post office was smaller, lighter and less valuable. No, before you ask, it didn't require a signature or payment. It's the inconsistency.

In happier news, I have lots of yarn and pre-yarn! Mineallmine!

I have just placed what is becoming my annual Elann order. Two sweaters' worth of yarmz will be heading my way as soon as they pack 'em up and ship 'em out! (You may say something silly like "only two sweaters a year?" but rest assured, I have many many yarn sources.)

It's also becoming pretty much a tradition to say in January that I'm going to knit from stash this year. I start out well, with only a small slip-up or two in the first nine months or so. (There are exceptions: anything for a gift or whatever I need to complement a stash yarn for a project is just fine.) The real problems start as the weather cools and I get needing warm fuzzy comfort. Yeah, in the last three months of 2011, I bought yarn for three cardigans. I did get one of them finished, and the other two are right up there in the queue. But you see how it is.

The new plan is one I found someone else doing: for every amount of yarn from stash I knit, I can buy half that much in new stash. Theoretically, the stash will always reduce. Theoretically. (Also, there's quite a lot of stash to reduce.)

Also also, I "supported" Laughing Rat's "closing my Etsy store for now" sale by buying some spinning slivers. La! (I learned today that worsted spinning [what I do] uses slivers, not roving; roving is for woolen spinning, and the fibres go in every which direction. Who knew? Now I do.)

I've been fighting it. It's winning.

Would demanding that people send cute things even work anymore? Let's try it.

Never mind. It got rambly, and there was an ode to tea, and then there was a question, and my head hurts, and I'M ON VACATION AND STILL SICK AND THIS SUCKS!

Just remember: nouns are nouns and verbs are verbs, and they work so very well together, and sure you can verb a noun, but that weirds language. (In other words, no, happiness is a noun, not a verb. You can say Epictetus said it was a verb, but the only reference I can find to that is a "reinterpreted by" on Twitter, and that ain't contemporary, and that sure as shootin' doesn't give your bullshit meme of wrongness any legitimacy. And that sucks, because I was in the middle of reading a post about being kind to your body with food, a thing I need to work on, and that ambushed me, and there was a 15-minute interruption for a rant that got deleted for being rambly and off-topic and …)

My head hurts. *whine* (At least I don't seem to be feverish. Maybe.)

Wait, there was another thing! When you're defining something, you should define it using an equivalent grammatical unit. IOW, nouns should be defined by nouns and noun phrases, verbs should be defined by verbs and verb phrases. So to say "True happiness is a verb. It is the ongoing, dynamic performance of worthy deeds" is to be not only wrongsauce, it is to define a noun you're claiming isn't a noun by a noun phrase, thus undermining your argument doubly. *nodnod*

[Also, I didn't proofread this because did I mention my head hurts? So maybe there's a grammatical error easter egg for the finding.]

I'm pretty sure a circle of hell is a long line for customs in a carpeted space—if not, it should be. WTF, Pearson?

Now, to try to make it to a reasonable (local) hour without constantly doing the time conversion in my head. Yeah, good luck with that, self.

In happier news, I'm unpacked and have tea. *pleased*

I'm currently in the lounge at the island airport. I'm supposed to be in the air or possibly on the ground in Ottawa on the stopover. And there's the problem. I don't even want to go to Ottawa. There's storms there? I'm sorry to hear that; I hope the damage isn't too bad. Could I get a direct flight?

*whine*

This is your cue to distract me from my interminable wait in an increasingly crowded lounge with ever more people milling about.

I'm still not over the G20 bullshit—not that I thought I was, but it appears that some people are already and able and want to discuss it lightly or as some kind of bullshit object lesson. I really am not. No, I don't want to discuss it. I want a full inquiry at the highest levels (never gonna get it, but that don't make me want it less), but I don't want to follow that inquiry closely.

This gets at a bit of the tip of the iceberg of my feelings on the subject. (Trigger warning for discussion of violence and the G20.) (link via La Ysabête.)

So, I … um … might'vegotasmartphone. It runs Android, and I'm looking for a Twitter client. Recommendations?

Any other apps y'all think I should use? Show your work.

ETA: I'm the diametric opposite of a power user. I don't use lists or multiple accounts. I read regularly but reply and update infrequently. I like pretty (hellooooo, Nambu, why are you Mac-only?). Also, I think there are enough non-Air-reliant clients out there that I can say non-Air only. (Yeah, information I should've put out there at the beginning. Sorry!)

Tomorrow is Blogging Against Disablism Day. For its eve, I submit a short roundup of uses of "crazy", "insane", and "lunacy" as code. Crazy doesn't mean "incomprehensible and illogical". It is not an intensifier. It doesn't even mean "violently dangerous". It is an indication of a psychiatric diagnosis, and it should be used with care--very great care.

The percentage of violent crimes committed by people with a psychiatric diagnosis is in the single digits. A person with a psychiatric diagnosis is far more vulnerable to violent crime than a neurotypical person.

This story is a little heartbreaking. Khadr was captured as a child soldier and treated like anything but. Reading the story, all I can think of is that bullshit narrative, "Just give them what they want, and they'll let you go." In fact, they kept him precisely because he was giving them what they want. :(

On the other hand, change the characters in this story, and you've got an exciting adventure tale of a successful military operation to rescue a bunch of comrades right out from under the nose of their incompetent and corrupt jailers--a story that would be a best seller.

Our world is deeply fucked up.