Collie's Bestiary

Woohoo! I am now certified on the TechShop embroidery machine! Our practice to prove that we'd mastered the teaching was to make these cute little patches (the photo is slightly larger than life-sized), which I promptly gifted to one of my ever-deserving housemates. :) The embroidery machine is surprisingly flexible, even though it can take [...]

Once a week we usually have some friends over for dinner and gaming or video-watching. For the night falling on Hallowe'en week I decided to celebrate a bit with a special recipe: Rat on a Stick! Here it is in all its delightfully messy glory: Rat on a Stick Ingredients: 1 to 1-1/2 lbs. ground [...]

Yesterday I had a wonderful but accidental first while trying to get photos for another of my firsts: I successfully took some pictures with my new xoom tablet, then uploaded them to our server — all by myself! This might not sound like much to the heavily geekified, but it is for me. The xoom [...]

It's funny… in making up potential things to try for my 50 New Things list, I find myself adding on all the ideas and events I've wanted to try for a while, but never got around to doing. Some of them are bigger, like "climb Halfdome," but some of them are small and simple. I [...]

As you may know from one of my previous postings, in 2011 I had my 50th birthday. I was trying to think of something special to do in order to more fully celebrate that lovely life marker, but couldn't come up with anything that felt quite right. Then I heard a woman talking in a [...]

I've been effectively running at a frantic pace for the past three or four months, in order to keep up with all the things happening in my life. Several things went by the wayside as I tried to be sure I completed all the reading, thinking, and writing required for my doctoral program. Keeping up [...]

Today is my 50th birthday. Lying in bed this morning, listening with pleasure to the lovely silvery sound of the falling rain, I found myself pondering an alarming dream from last night, where I had to save the life of a feral kitten from a thoughtlessly cruel acquaintance — a kitten I unwittingly handed over [...]

It is 11 September 2011, the ten year anniversary of the tragedy of 9/11. Many people have spoken and created many moving eulogies to those who died on that day. I've also heard of interviews with survivors, including one man who was among the only four who survived despite being above the 100th floor of [...]

I had an interesting bit of cognitive dissonance the other day, upon hearing about Slutwalks. For those who haven't yet heard of them, earlier in 2011 a male cop in Toronto was apparently giving an anti-rape class to a bunch of women. During the class he mentioned one way to avoid being raped was to [...]

Due to California law, medical cannabis dispensaries (I think that's the correct phrase) are springing up all over the place. There is, of course, quite a bit of argument still over these little storefront operations, with some people angrily declaring NIMN (Not In My Neighborhood), and others simply seeing it as another legitimate and tax-paying [...]