This is as not-oblique as I get right now.

[mrissa]

Hey, anybody see any funny-shaped clouds?

Comments

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

Sleipnir:

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

(This is me assuming you would rather look at Sleipnir than be pestered).

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Dude, you win at the cloud question.

Methinks that one is backed like a whale . . . .

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have often wondered if Sleipnir had a Tölt or just the normal gaits.

[redbird]

No, but I saw a nice picture of a Labrador retriever nursing three abandoned tiger cubs. And that has nothing to do with much, but I thought it might appeal to you.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Indeed. What color Lab?

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

That one looks kind of like a bunny.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Or a pair of scissors about to stab the next cloud. Your call.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

i'm thinking about you.

i don't suppose marilyn manson would be helpful. i have that and dave matthews' "crush" stuck in my head.

i'm almost done untangling this huge ball of yarn. have a cute puppy icon. puffs' heads are so comforting.

the next time i go out, i'm wearing "twelve things ..."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

One night in high school, I was driving home from dropping scottjames off*. I used to love to drive short distances on cool evenings with the windows open and the radio on low. That night, Marilyn Manson started hiss-croaking, "Some of them want to use you..." at me.

After that, I have liked driving short distances on cool evenings with the windows open and blessed, blessed silence.

Y'know. When I can drive again.

*scottjames will probably label this story apocryphal on the grounds that he always, always had to drive. But he is wrong: that time I did.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

It's not Sleipnir, but it's very dramatic. Like the curtains about to be pulled back to reveal a storm, but since it's the Bay Area, the storm part never happens.

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/beryllos/111189503/)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I offer sad sympathies on your lack of storms.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

They're even funny-looking at night (http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080416.html). (here via friends-of-friends list. Hope you feel better soon)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That is indeed funny-looking!

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

We had clouds all over for the past 2 days, so they were all sort of mushed together. They're mushing together again and looking like they're going to roll in... ah well.

But the Blue Angels are flying around this morning, practicing for Seafair this weekend. So that's kinda cool...

*Offers a cup of tea and a cookie*

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

Recently I bought four cases of my favorite powerbar-thing through Amazon.com and I'm very very excited about it. Unfortunately, I now know you that I can also buy cases of chewy Spree, my latest favorite candy which local stores don't sell.

CASES.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Local stores don't sell you Spree? Do gas stations? Because, I mean. Spree. I can't tell you the last time I bought or consumed Spree, but it's one of those things that Must Be Present To Be Bought, even if one isn't going to buy it.

[seagrit.livejournal.com]

The only cloud pictures I have are ominous, but there are happy little girly-girl pictures available (http://gallery.greenfld.net/v?g2_itemId=12983&g2_page=3).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Flowers and trains! What a busy time it must be to be the niecelet.

[zwol.livejournal.com]

John Scalzi likes to post sunset pictures on his flickr account, e.g. this one (http://www.flickr.com/photos/scalzi/2717798131/sizes/m/).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Those are indeed pretty. I would even see if I liked beets under that condition.

My dog was snoring cutely. Now she is indicating that I should stop typing and merely sit here holding the dog.

Completely sans "Begin the Beguine," however. More's the pity.

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

The cloud going by just out my office window (that way, toward the river, see?) looks quite like a young dragon. I'm looking out while I wait for the doctor to call me back, because I've been pestering.

And also, there are people climbing too, too high on the parking garage roof! (There, in the other direction opposite the river and across the road).

Down the street aways, they've closed everything off because Joe Pesci's making a movie here (and Drew Barrymore a different one in the next town over--a ROLLERDERBY movie!); yesterday they blew up a car and we got to watch! You can see all of their movie trailers down to the right; they are very white and shiny in the sun, and in the green green surrounding Ann Arbor even downtown it's very pretty.

Do you like strings? Do you like Hartmann? I could send you a CD of my Montreal playing some Hartmann violin concerto. It works very nicely for sitting on the porch for short periods of time on cool evenings, eating sprees. (You are quite right about the sprees. I always pine for giant chewy sweet-tarts, which used to come 3 to a pack; I can never find them any longer).

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

The next cloud coming from the west toward the river looks like a goose in flight with its wings straight up!

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

no funny shaped clouds here. however, i'm not currently nauseated! hurray!

also, i repainted some of the walls in my bedroom, and here's what it looks like.

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/kalmn/2720565538/)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Red red, red's the best!

Sorry, family thing.

[aedifica]

I went looking at clouds on Google Images and some of them have really neat names. I'm particularly taken by the lenticular clouds, because I like lentils. :-)

This page has some pretty cool cloud formations in the second entry down, but the top entry has a way cool valley!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

They're like the Clouds of the Future!

[ckd]

The sky's kind of a uniform gray at the moment, but I can see a funny-shaped ornament[1] atop a building from the window.

[1] I always think of it as "Sputnik on Stilts".

[pameladean]

You should be getting a package today. It's from Eric and me.

P.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And you should be getting a thank-you note today. It's from me.

Silly slow intertubes.

[braddr.livejournal.com]

Sunset up in the mountains of the pacific north west. I love this one. One day I'll make it back there for a nice long 'do nothing' vacation.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oooh.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

What I learned yesterday: in Korea, when you earn your first paycheck, it is traditional to buy underwear for your parents.

Red underwear.

After some further discussion it was established that this is usually a pair of long underwear drawers; after all, it gets cold in winter in Korea. (Ask a Korea vet about "Frozen Chosin" sometime.) This came as some relief, as I'd been boggling at Victoria's Secret-type images.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Is it unfathomably odd that I had no difficulty imagining going out and buying red underwear for my parents? Of the non-long-john kind?

[laurel]

I've been better.

But look-- a Westie eating an ice cream cone!

Boiled in Lead playing "Silver Carp" in an appearance on Almanac.

Joe Mauer being rather Minnesotan in a SportsCenter commercial.

A Scottie "helps" someone shovel snow.

Richard Shindell plays "Are You Happy Now?" and tells how he came to write the song.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

So Minnesotan, my goodness.

And Helpful Scottie Is Helpful! Ista is Helpful, too. She Helps with some of my PT. Sometimes markgritter has to carry her from the room crying because she cannot Help any more.

[teadog1425.livejournal.com]

The clouds outside my windows look like steel-grey manta rays laying low and slow-moving over London. Underneath them, the pin-sharp planes dart across the sky like tiny cleaner-fish.

(which is mostly to say it is grey and cloudy in London right now, in a kind of lowering, not-summer way... however, it is Friday, which is good...)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Every year my birthday is in the summer. Every year some tiny irrational part of me hopes that it will be not-summer. But it always is summer. When I said this to dd_b, he suggested that I spend my birthday in Australia some year, but it wouldn't be fall there, and it wouldn't even be a real solid winter. Just not-summer. Ah well.

[howl-at-the-sun.livejournal.com]

Silence and not-speaking-of-serious-things-but-obviously-rattled has in my experience, in the culture I've grown up around, often been synonymous with resentment and growing anger, which subsequently results in some emotional lashing out in whatever direction is convenient.

Thus, I sometimes I have to quiet my immediate reaction to introverts, which is to ask if they would like to talk and then promptly disappear if they say 'no', because I don't want to be around when the explosion comes.

I have been around people who would like some distraction and are pleased by it, though. The difference seems to be that they willingly focus on the distraction and seem relieved to be able to do so, instead of quietly broody and resentful.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah. As much as introverts are often brooders when angry -- I don't think it'd be fair for most of us to deny that -- one does try to focus on distraction rather than taking the brood out on others. Or to remove oneself voluntarily rather than making the other person do it.