Oof.

[mrissa]

Please tell me something nice in the world, here or on e-mail. My back has gone totally nuts. I swear C.J. was not beating me with a stick this afternoon, nor Mark or Timprov this evening now that I'm home, but that's about what it feels like. Beaten with a stick, vertebrae knocked out of kilter. No particular reason for it that I can see. So tell me something that's good in the world you live in. Please? Extra points if it's also the world I live in.

Comments

[adriennelily.livejournal.com]

Chocolate.

Tomorrow is Thursday and the next day is Friday and then it's the weekend.

Some people are in Iraq. We're not.

American Idol is on tonight. This season of American Idol is almost over.

Women are allowed to learn to read here. We can also get jobs. We don't have to marry who our parents tell us to.

Within a 1/2 hour drive there is a McDonalds. There is also a Pizza Hut, a Burger King, and probably an Olive Garden too. If there is not Olive Garden, there is an extra McDonalds, or a suitable alternative. If we are extra lucky, the Pizza Hut has an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet.

We can get antibiotics if we need them. We can get our children immunized from things like Polio, Rubella, and Diptheria.

It is spring, and the tulips are coming up.

We are knowledgable about AIDS, we have the means to protect ourselves, even if some of us are too stupid to use that knowledge.

Soon it will be summer, and we can go on picnics, and watch the butterflies float over the flowers, and pick the ants off our tuna-salad sandwiches.

We will wake up tomorrow and no one will need to change our adult-sized diapers. We are afforded the dignity of wiping our own asses.

How's that?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's mostly good. I don't watch American Idol, and I last ate in McDonald's eleven years ago and that only because I was a teenager on a family trip and didn't have a choice. So I guess my good thing there would be that there's a McDonald's within half an hour and nobody will make me eat there.

[adriennelily.livejournal.com]

LOL! The kids love it, I still don't understand it. They've got some pretty decent salads recently though, but I try to avoid it. Glad you're feeling better. :)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Turns out the vertebrae are mostly fine (I do have problems with them due to a past car accident), but it looks like the virus has partially settled there. They seek out weaknesses, they do!

When I was too sick to do anything else, I lay and watched the trees toss and the light shift from the backyard. It was good. No baby yet, though....

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

some good things in my world

Blind people like me can go to school, receive training, work at whatever we please, and not be forced to spend our lives drudging in sheltered workshops.

The Buses in the Twin Cities are running again

Chocolate. Enough said.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Chocolate is indeed enough said.

Hey, are you aware of the Blind Science Access program at Oregon State? They've got some stuff that might be applicable even if you're not interested in science. I worked with them a little one summer because I was doing research there and my advisor was blind. If you'd like to see what they've got, I can find their webpage for you.

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

That would be so cool I cannot find words to express how cool it is!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

So far what I've been able to find is their company webpage, here (http://www.viewplus.com/); OSU is being snitty with me about showing staff homepages. But the professor's name is John Gardner, his department is physics, the institution is Oregon State, and one of the main things he'd worked on last I was there was an embossing printer with much better resolution than a standard Braille printer. It was one of those things that I had taken for granted people had because the technology was there. Until I worked with John, I didn't realize how much technological ability can be hemmed in by human indifference.

John's a great guy, very funny and very cool. He lost his sight in his early 40s and decided he'd rather be a blind guy with a sense of humor than a dour blind guy. So he collects blind jokes and really enjoys telling them on himself. (Not least, I think, because he enjoys other people's initial shocked reactions.) His wife left him sitting on a bench about a third of the way down the Grand Canyon while she hiked further, and he scared a park guide about half to death that way. "I'm very good with the cane," he grinned at her.

[jenett]

I have an incredibly cute cat asleep on the other end of the couch. Cute adorable cats make me smile.

There's a lot of music out there that makes me grin. Is there music that makes you grin?

Whatever you think of the weather, there's *green stuff* on the trees. And they'll have leaves in the near future!

There's chocolate. And soon there'll be fresh fruit and berries in the way that only happens in the summer. And Farmer's Markets.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Cute adorable cats make me smile, too, especially when they're at your house and not at my house where they would make me sneeze.

I've been listening to an album of Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby duets. This is something of a guilty pleasure for me, but Louis's voice just makes me grin, and when he sings with Der Bingle, it's pure clowning.

Do you know where the good Farmer's Markets are in the Cities? Or are most of them pretty good?

[jenett]

I've been to both the main Minneapolis one and the main St. Paul one (the latter is in Lowertown).

They're both cool, the Minneapolis one is bigger. The St. Paul one, however, has my favorite soap maker ever, and is much closer to me, so it usually wins out.

http://www.mplsfarmersmarket.com/ is the Minneapolis info - on Nicollet Mall Thursdays and Saturdays, and 312 E Lyndale Ave on the weekends.

There's a bunch of St. Paul locations - http://www.stpaulfarmersmarket.com/ lists them. The 5th and Wall St. is the Lowertown one, and the one I like most. May have to go on Sunday, actually.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The Strib had info on them just today, in a timely enough fashion. Sometimes they come through for me. Thanks for the links and the personal assessments.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

My world: egrets and sunrises by the water in the mornings. Worthy man in the house -- that latter is men in your world.

And today I had a telecon with someone who was working from home and has a new puppy. When she had to go answer the door I could hear the puppy saying "Oh my GOD there are people at the DOOR this is the MOST EXCITING thing that's ever happened to me EVER EVER EVER!!!" Because that's how puppies are.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ooh, good one, puppies. We get a puppy. That's a happy thought.

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

Overhearing a young groom-to-be very earnestly questioning the priest on the various parts of the marriage service - going through the vows and the readings line by line, etc. I dug how he was giving the words so much thought.

Also, I picked up lunch at Zoe's Chicken Shack - chicken salad, cole slaw (dressed with bits of feta cheese), sweet tea, and a really superb hunk of chocolate cake - just the right amount of sponginess to chocolateyness.

Hope you feel better soon!

good things

[greykev.livejournal.com]

Books one can hold in one's hands and read.

The smells of fresh-cut grass, backyard grilling, and of sprinkler water when the hose has been lying in the sun for a while.

Big comfy chairs in which to curl up and feel snuggly.

Small curious puppies who sniff one's ankles before skittering off.

Large friendly dogs who will come lean against you while you pet them.

The feel of kneading bread and the smell of it baking afterward.

The murmur of loved ones talking in another room.

The look on an infant's face in the grocery line when you make monster cheeks at it.

Friends who catch all your in-jokes.

Having people you know well enough to make in-jokes with.

Fresh garlic, sage, thyme, and other herbs & spices.

Gingerbread cookies.

Knowing that the store will have an interesting assortment of cheeses when you arrive there.

Knowing that there are no annoying neighbors sharing your walls, ceiling, or floor.

Revisiting the books of your childhood and finding them nifty in new and different ways.

Discovering an author you like has a number of other books you haven't read.

Knowing that if you decide to garden no one is going to tell you to stop or what to put where.

Knowing that there are people who love you and care when you're hurting.

Hope you feel better soon

Re: good things

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The murmur of loved ones talking in the next room has carried me through a lot of the last two days.

I have no idea what you mean about in-jokes, but you should just eat it, because it's good.

Actually, Timprov would tell me not to put tomatoes in the mint spots or vice versa. But that's all right.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

Strangers who only know you through words you write have decided they like you.

I think that's pretty cool, myself.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's nifty in the extreme. Also I'll probably get to meet some of them Labor Day weekend. That, too, has nift.

[cpolk.livejournal.com]

The Flames won Yesterday.

The Leafs Won Today.

There is Hockey Tomorrow.

I bought a galvanized metal Planter box from Ikea - a long one that would hang out a window. I made sure the joins were leakproof with some nice bathub sealant, got organic potting soil and some good garden earth from the back yard, and put in a Peace Lily, a False Aralia (the plant that looks like pot, to people who don't know what pot looks like,) an Elephant Ear, three varieties of Ivy, an aluminum plant, something that looks like a miniature deifenbacchia, and a cute little guy that looks like his leaves have silver spiderwebs traced over them. It is a lovely thing, and it's sitting on my bookshelf by a west facing window. I want to get another one and do it again.

I also got a violet star clematis vine for the garden, a bunch of gladiolus, and a flower that looks like it should be growing on some exotic jungle planet. for the food garden, there's raspberry canes. The compost is rotting like mad now that it's warm out.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And that pass from Sundin to Mogilny was just art, is what that was.

I couldn't stay up long enough to see if the Flames won or lost. I said to Timprov, "It's not that I hate Detroit. I just want to see them lose. Every single time."

Good Things

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

The Count of Monte Cristo and The Phoenix Guards were waiting for me at the Library yesterday.

Megan Lindholm/Robin Hobb's Fool's Fate is waiting for me at the library today.

I am almost done w/ primary revisions/cleanup on Vicious, and will shortly be able to torture myself by attempting to revise the tricky bits, which I skipped over in the first pass.

And yes, that last *is* a good thing...

Re: Good Things

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Of course it's a good thing, silly Alec! If you've gotten to the torture phase, you're that much closer to the tormenting publishers phase, which puts me closer to the buying it as presents phase.

I don't have any library books waiting for me yet, but I've already read all three you mentioned, and the holds I asked for should come in soon. And I couldn't go get them today anyway....