Who will still be around tomorrow and not going down to Califur? I'm leaning more towards going home after work as I suspect that a lot of people will be out of town or getting ready for the con.

Thank you everyone for the birthday wishes, and well...remembering my birthday :3 I usually hint shamelessly but this year I was shocked at how many people actually acknowledged it when I hadn't said anything. Thank you, it meant a lot and made what would have otherwise been a very mundane and stressful day into something special :) Well that and vantid took me to Red Lobster where I put both coconuts and shrimp on the endangered species list.

And now, just to show you another style of badge I will be offering at Califur, inked badges for $25! This one is for panth because he's always offering me drinks and being such a help to both vantid and I at cons.




So the rundown:
Pencil Badges: $15
Ink Badges: $25
Toony Badges: $35 (full body)
Marker and colored pencil badges: $45 They look like this

And the super-deluxe watercolor/colored pencil badges are $65, but I take those home to work on them.

So, lots of choices, kids!

See you there!

Oh and I should maybe (or maybe not) mention that for my birthday I got myself a fish.

...


I named him Frasier. He's a very pompous betta. Fits! :D *obsessed*

Not my favorite panel ever, but it works. The best thing about this comic is I know I'll get better, so even if a panel just isn't working, I can make tomorrow's better.

A little bit of catch-up. Graduation was this past Sunday. I've unofficially got my Master's degree. (I know all the requirements are fulfilled, it's just a matter of getting the paper that says so.)

Yesterday I got a phone call from the company I went to interview with in Kansas City. I guess I never wrote more about that trip. Ultimately it ended up that there was a tornado warning the night that I was there, and the short flight back from Chicago was canceled due to weather even though the ones before and after us went, so I took the bus back and got home at 1 in the morning. The hotel I stayed in was VERY nice, and I also had a hired car to take me around. Felt like I was somebody important (which I guess was the point). Very strange feeling. I tried to play it cool but I know at least when I was in the hotel room I was grinning like an idiot. Anyway, this company offered me a position, 56k with a 3k signing bonus and up to 2k relocation assistance. Kansas City's not exactly where I want to be, but it's a decent offer if nothing else comes along.

Tomorrow I go to interview in Atlanta. This company is a small firm with just one office, and very ambitious people running it. The VP (who I coordinated a visit for here back in April to give a lecture) is picking me up at the airport and then we're heading back to the office to interview and stuff, and I think he mentioned dinner. Then Friday maybe going over to a site they're working on. Sounds interesting, at any rate, albeit a little intimidating. I guess something like that is a little less unexpected in such a small company, but I'm still just going 'Um... you're doing that just because of me?' We'll see how it goes, and then how it compares to the other interviews and the one at the end of the month in Orlando.

On a different note, today I went to the grocery store for a final time with Kashif, the Pakistani guy who shared my office. He's possibly going to Chicago to start an internship on Sunday, so it'll probably be the last I see of him here. He made the offer so I decided I may as well go, though part of me wonders if it was to get to spend a little more time talking to me. I've learned a lot from him over the past year and a half. I don't think it really hit me until he was dropping me off and I was kinda like 'Well... I guess this is it.' and could only really manage 'Thanks for everything.' because I thought I might lose it if I tried to say much more. I'd like to think he understood there was more meaning behind them than just what I said.

I think that's all I got. It's going to be an early morning.

Over at woadwarrior and jeanineers for the evening. They watch American Idol, but I love them anyway. Currently we are waiting for pizzas to be delivered.

http://rss.sciam.com/~r/ScientificAmerican-News/~3/290592623/article.cfm

The U.S. Department of the Interior Wednesday listed the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973 based on evidence that the animal's sea ice habitat is shrinking and is likely to continue to do so over the next several decades. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, however, made clear several times during a press conference announcing the department's decision that, despite his acknowledgement that the polar bear's sea ice habitat is melting due to global warming, the ESA will not be used as a tool for trying to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for creating climate change.

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My email is not working, or at least, emails that I am trying to send are unable to be sent. So if you aren't hearing back from me, that's why.

Charmed Life by Dianna Wynne Jones (21)
The Lives of Christopher Chant by Dianna Wynne Jones (22)
Conrad's Fate by Dianna Wynne Jones (23)
Witch Week by Dianna Wynne Jones (24)
The Magicians of Caprona by Dianna Wynne Jones (25)
the Pinhoe Egg by Dianna Wynne Jones (26)
All the Chrestomanci books. Jones is to Rowling what good ethnic food is to Denny's. It's nice to read these all together. A lot of things remembered from the other books makes for more fun.

Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke (27)
Rama Revisited by Arthur C. Clarke (28)
The Garden of Rama by Arthur C. Clarke (29)
Almost finished with the last book but not quite. Truly epic and entertaining, with both mind-blowing concepts and good characters.

Heir Apparent by Vivian Vande Velde (30)
Brain candy that wasn't as good as it sounded in the blurb.

The Sky People by S. M. Stirling (31)
Alternate history where everything that Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote about Venus and Mars is literally true. This one is set in 1980 on Venus and there is a Mars one out there somewhere, too. Quite a lot of fun.

You never know when Rule 34 is going to pop up and bite you on the ass. So lock up the children and throw away the key, tonight it's Nature Gone Wild in Seattle! Flies and flowers frenching! Forget your tawdry encounters between furry fur seals and penguins. Romance between Classes is sooo passé. Here for your viewing pleasure is the cutting edge in kink: members of two different Kingdoms tonguing in broad daylight!



( Pssst! More hot frenching fly action this way. )

I don't care that I'm thirty-two. I still love getting presents for my birthday.
My Mother-In-Law sent me an AmEx gift card, so today I went shopping. I had a 25% off coupon from Borders, so I bought a copy of 'Unweaving The Rainbow' by Richard Dawkins. It was a real toss up between that book and 'Death By Black Hole' by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, but biology won out over astrophysics.
Then I headed out to the mall, and the Apple Store. Ooh, shineys! My best beloved told me that since he had not been able to buy one for me before my birthday, I should get myself an iPod Shuffle, and he would reimburse me. Not quite as romantic as him presenting it to me, but that's okay. Now I am the proud owner of a (RED) 2G Shuffle. Yay! I've already loaded it with an audiobook, a couple podcasts, and a fair amount of music.
Before leaving the mall, I bought myself a pair of slip on shoes. I've been wanting something that I could just slide into, without fussing with laces or straps. I guess my feet have gotten bigger, because now I'm wearing an 8 1/2 instead of just an 8.
To top off my shopping trip, and to use up what was left on my gift card, I went to the liquor store and bought two bottles of Iowa wine to take back to Milwaukee with me. My cousin is getting married next month, and one of the bottles is going to be her wedding present. The other will be for general consumption.
So all told, I have a new MP3 player, new shoes, a new book, a new shirt (I ordered a knitting shirt from CafePress yesterday), and alcohol. I'm driving to Milwaukee this weekend to spend time with my family and some friends. I'd say I'm having a pretty good birthday this year.

http://rss.sciam.com/~r/ScientificAmerican-News/~3/290492025/article.cfm

Astronomers have discovered traces of a star that went supernova about 140 years ago, around the time of the U.S. Civil War and the publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species. The expanding debris cloud, or remnant, known as G1.9+0.3, lies near the center of the Milky Way, about 25,000 light-years from Earth.

Besides making G1.9+0.3 the youngest supernova remnant known in our galaxy, the finding begins to fill a peculiar astronomical gap. Based on studies of other galaxies, researchers estimate that about three supernovae should pop off per century in the Milky Way. They knew of one recent remnant, Cassiopeia A, which went supernova around 1680.

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http://rss.sciam.com/~r/ScientificAmerican-News/~3/290470230/article.cfm

"Follow the water" has been NASA's mantra as it has explored Mars for signs of present or past life. It will be no different later this month when the Phoenix Mars Lander touches down on the Red Planet for what researchers hope will be their closest encounter yet with extraterrestrial water.

Powered by solar panels, Phoenix is set to take a three-month tour of the plains near the north pole of Mars, enduring surface temperatures from –100 to –28 degrees Fahrenheit (–73 to –33 degrees Celsius). The craft is designed to dig into the cementlike layer of ice that researchers believe lies buried a few inches below the surface in the planet's polar regions, scanning for signs of past liquid water and organic compounds, the carbon-rich molecules that make life on Earth possible.

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