Amethyst's Shiny Pebbles

Making stuff

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 06:11:21 GMT

I am glad I decided to work on drawing recently. I saw a set of prompts for January, and decided to try it, with the primary goals of the exercise being to familiarize myself with my digital drawing software (Sketchbook) and to get better at drawing cats. So far I've done, oh, a grand total of seven (I fell behind fairly quickly when what I was trying to draw surpassed my ability to get something completed in an hour or so), and so now I'm just drawing the ones I get ideas for, as quickly/slowly as the material demands. It's really nice to have an activity that's really portable and easy to do for a fairly short while (or that I can get completely engrossed in at least for a bit). And it's nice to have a project that I can do that is NOT thinking about the ridiculousness and horror of our world today. It's definitely a form of self-care!

I haven't been posting the pictures here, but you can see my drawings on Tumblr and on Mastodon. They're fun, and I hope you enjoy them! (The current one is a bit of a beast and is going to take a while, please be patient.)

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Good things in 2025

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:01:59 GMT

So, I think many of us would generally agree that the year 2025 in America was terrible in a lot of ways, primarily by the actions of the federal government. (I won’t bother listing any of them, as I don’t want to inflict unnecessary pain on myself or anyone else!) Given our national emotional distress, I thought it would be useful to remember the good things that happened in my household this year.

( Read more... )

Take care, and may 2026 be EVEN BETTER than 2025!

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Tea sets of the Maiar

Fri, 03 Nov 2023 17:05:16 GMT

I don't quite remember how my husband and I got to talking about tea, tea sets, and tea parties last night. I remembered that I had been given a Really Nice Tea Set as a girl in the late 1970s. I remember my mother making a huge deal about the fact that it was made of porcelain, and being very upset when I inevitably broke some piece or other of the set.

I had no idea what to do with a toy tea set. My parents did not give tea parties. Nobody I knew gave tea parties in the late '70s. Perhaps some other social set still gave tea parties, but not ours.

(Cocktail parties, now, those I knew about. But they were boring grownup affairs, so even if toy cocktail party sets had existed, they would not have been any more fun than the tea party set was.)

One reads about girls giving tea parties for their dolls in older children’s books, like from the early 1900’s maybe. E. Nesbit’s characters probably had tea parties. And - I’m not sure how wizards got into the picture - if Nesbit had had recognizable wizards in her books, they probably would have gone to tea parties. At any rate, they would definitely have had tea every so often.

Which made me remember Gandalf in the Peter Jackson LOTR trilogy. In the first movie when he comes and visits Bilbo, Bilbo offers him all kinds of food. But Gandalf declines, saying tea will be just fine.

Gandalf is one of the Maiar, one of the demigod-level characters in Tolkien’s mythology. We discussed the question of whether the Maiar get together for tea every so often. Do they take it in turns to host? Does Gandalf have a permanent residence where he could host tea? (Our image of him is very much a wanderer, so I think he’d have to ask someone else to provide the lodgings, and he’d bring all the snacks and stuff.)

( Which led me to wonder: what would the tea sets of the Maiar look like? )

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I wrote a thing!

Fri, 02 Jun 2023 00:58:54 GMT

I had a dream the night of 5/29/23, almost exactly as described in this poem. Food, Neil Gaiman, and crying are all mentioned.

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I made a thing!

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 01:05:22 GMT

I've joined Mastodon (@amethyst73@mastodon.social). I'm still technically on Twitter because some friends are there, and I don't want to migrate entirely - not that I ever posted much to Twitter before, and will be posting less now that the Musk is making a hellhole of things. But I'm really enjoying Mastodon. No ads, no algorithms, and so far, people being decent, interesting, kind.

Anyway. @Curator@mastodon.art posted a drawing prompt. I haven't drawn in forever, but the prompt "A crab riding a bicycle" caught my imagination! The main rule: Artists are not supposed to use reference images. Crap and garbage are happily accepted. So I put this out. (Google Photos link too; I don't know why trying to post links to Google Photos images here at DW isn't working, but it's not.) Anyway! Follow a link to see my Really Rather Cool If I Do Say So Myself image of a crab riding a bicycle.

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Shot #2

Wed, 12 May 2021 01:03:22 GMT

For the record, I got injection #2 of the Pfizer vaccine against Covid-19 today. It's been a long, strange year and a quarter or so. We're incredibly lucky - we live in a beautiful place, nobody in our family has gotten sick, and our employment situation is fine. But it's hard for me to express just how much I'm looking forward to doing normal things like going into a store and browsing, or going to the library, or getting a meal from a restaurant. (I'm more than happy to wear a mask to do so, for the record.)

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2020: The Year of Plague, Entry 1: The Beginning

Mon, 15 Mar 2021 04:32:36 GMT

It’s March 14, 2021. I should have been writing a lot more over the past year; it’s the first anniversary of COVID-19 being declared a pandemic and of the various (mostly horrible) things that have happened to the world since as a result: lockdowns, massive unemployment, remote schooling, etc. Lots of people have been posting their memories of the beginning. Since a lot has happened, I figured I should make this a long entry, or series of entries. (ETA: after having written this entry and made a list of Important Things in the last year, it'll be a series!)

( In The Beginning )

That's enough for one entry. More will come, and I'll try to make them fairly quickly.

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Fire update

Sun, 20 Sep 2020 00:16:23 GMT

Huh. Can't edit posts once posted, it appears?

We're fine! Evacuation orders for Scotts Valley were lifted a week after being imposed. We returned Friday 8/28. Our house and property were completely fine. The cats recovered from the trauma of being boarded after a few days. So that's all right.

There are, of course, hundreds of families who have lost their homes. I've already made small donations to a couple of recovery operations. I'm assuming the county will put together some sort of recovery fund and I'll give a larger donation to that.

We're extremely fortunate, and extremely grateful.

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Fire

Tue, 25 Aug 2020 18:59:57 GMT

I figured I should post. (I should have posted about lots of things, but haven't. Someday I'll try to catch up, really...)

Before I go any farther, let me reassure anyone reading this that we are safe and the cats are fine!

Late Sunday August 16, a tremendous electrical storm moved through California. It was a dry storm, and set a huge number of wildfires. One of these was the CZU Complex fire, one of the several large fires that's been making national headlines. The southern part of the fire was/is not hugely far from our home in Scotts Valley, CA, and we elected to evacuate Wednesday August 19, about a day before evacuation orders were issued for our area. (The evacuation orders were primarily to get citizens out of the way so that the firefighters could move around and do their job. While it was initially feared that parts of Scotts Valley could burn, the consensus seems to be that it'll most likely be unharmed.)

We're living with P's family over in Portola Valley, which we're very grateful for. We don't know when we'll be allowed back, but I'll keep you posted.

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Cool Covid-19 article/simulator

Wed, 20 May 2020 20:43:28 GMT

My department chair just sent out a link to an article/set of simulations that communicates the basics of epidemiology and has a bunch of cool simulators to look at the effects of various actions/lack of actions on the spread of the virus. Check it out!

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Kitty photo

Wed, 15 Jan 2020 16:39:16 GMT

Here. Have a photo of Luna!

Isn't she a sweetie?

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I wonder if this will get an Ig Nobel?

Sun, 12 Jan 2020 20:51:00 GMT

Via Neil Gaiman's tumblr:

The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute

Abstract:

Objectives To determine the overall rate of loss of workplace teaspoons and whether attrition and displacement are correlated with the relative value of the teaspoons or type of tearoom.

Design Longitudinal cohort study.

Setting Research institute employing about 140 people.

Subjects 70 discreetly numbered teaspoons placed in tearooms around the institute and observed weekly over five months.

Main outcome measures Incidence of teaspoon loss per 100 teaspoon years and teaspoon half life.

Results 56 (80%) of the 70 teaspoons disappeared during the study. The half life of the teaspoons was 81 days. The half life of teaspoons in communal tearooms (42 days) was significantly shorter than for those in rooms associated with particular research groups (77 days). The rate of loss was not influenced by the teaspoons' value. The incidence of teaspoon loss over the period of observation was 360.62 per 100 teaspoon years. At this rate, an estimated 250 teaspoons would need to be purchased annually to maintain a practical institute-wide population of 70 teaspoons.

Conclusions The loss of workplace teaspoons was rapid, showing that their availability, and hence office culture in general, is constantly threatened.

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A wizard's pendant

Thu, 26 Dec 2019 18:04:20 GMT

Saw this on tumblr (full post here):

I'm not sure that the wizard wearing this pendant would be good, evil, or hey in between. But I guarantee they would be totally badass!

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In France!!!!!!

Sun, 14 Jul 2019 19:33:33 GMT

We're in France for a couple of weeks! We arrived yesterday and spent today getting ourselves to Dinan up in Brittany. Already having a good time despite lack of sleep and time zone confusion.

It's 9:30 PM. It's still super-light outside here, which doesn't exactly help with the time zone adjustment. Think we'll go to bed shortly anyway. Pictures and stories eventually!

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Life news and changes

Fri, 14 Jun 2019 15:30:16 GMT

So I got notified the other day that my position is going away in a year. (This is part of why I prefer academia to companies - your lead time for ends of jobs are WAY longer.)

Nominally, it's due to financial reasons. The full story is more complicated and will be in a later post.

I wasn't particularly surprised, and I'm not particularly upset or anxious. Again, full story later. But I figured that I should post that This Thing Is Happening.

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Test from Google photos/Fanime

Sat, 01 Jun 2019 18:18:16 GMT

I went to Fanime last weekend and took bunches of photos! Wonder of wonders, Dreamwidth has decided it's going to play nicely with Google+ photos - here's one test.... (I wasn't able to insert images from GooglePhotos before and am astonished that I can now. Note to self: may have to do from HTML - Insert Image - insert image location, it generates HTML)

A really impressive Princess Zelda costume

Test inserting through regular rich text interface:

Impressive Yennifer and ..what-was-he-thinking.. Geralt cosplay from Witcher 3

oo, that works too!!!!!

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Random links

Sun, 19 May 2019 04:10:29 GMT

Someday I'll post a real post, I promise!

Meanwhile, have some entertainment.

First, who knew that there were gun-violin hybrids out there? (In the opinion of dragon-in-a-fez over on tumblr, few of them are practical for either purpose.)

Second, who knew that commercial greenhouses experienced such drama? (From the ever-popular gallusrostromegalus over at tumblr.)

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You want me to play this how?

Sun, 17 Feb 2019 18:03:15 GMT

Hilarious stories of what happens when instrumentalists are faced with dynamic instructions which make NO SENSE for their instrument.

Via gallusrostromegalus 's tumblr.

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Day off

Sat, 16 Feb 2019 05:42:08 GMT

Work's been pretty crazy recently. (At some point I may post about the specific craziness which was this week, but not now.) Anyway! I took today off to help myself recover from things a little. I:

- went and had a deep-tissue massage (and concluded that yes, I really need to commit to having one once a month if not more often)
- took myself for a sushi lunch afterwards
- acquired a chocolate croissant
- did necessary grocery shopping
- landed at home, where I watched an episode of Dark Matter and ate the croissant, and watched the rest of an episode of Your Lie in April
- went for a walk while the sun was out
- came back, considered sewing, decided I was physically tired and so sat and watched the rest of an episode of Lucifer with Luna Cat on my lap
- considered sewing again, decided I was tired, and lay down on the futon for close to an hour without disturbing Luna at all
- got up and sewed some

It's been SO nice. I desperately needed to take care of myself, and I did a lot of that today.

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Minor update

Sat, 19 Jan 2019 19:38:35 GMT

Sorry I've been so terrible about posting (again). I keep meaning to be good, and then I'm not.

We had a great Christmas break. We mostly hung about home; I sewed a lot; we both played a lot of our respective video games (Skyrim VR for P, Assassin's Creed 4 for me). Christmas day we spent with P's family, which was quiet and pleasant. Shortly before the end of break we went to Houston to visit some cousins for a small family function. It was a nice change for me - previous family functions have all been of the sort where there's literally 200+ people invited, of whom I know about six (and all of whom are busy organizing the event and saying hello to all the guests), but this one was the six people or so that I actually knew, and who I got to know better. Lovely visit. Then I went back to work for 4 days and came down with a cold. I'm still dealing with the chest congestion/stupid fatigue dregs of that, and P's now got it. :(

I know two people who are directly affected by the dratted government shutdown, which is on day 28 (the longest in history, over border wall funding). One of the two works for NASA and it is a felony for her to go into her office. The other doesn't work for the government in any capacity, but her office is inside of a government research lab and she hasn't been able to get into her office for a month now. She would really like to be able to do her job! Fortunately she's got a second job that she can put more hours into while the shutdown continues, but it's a soul-sucking position. Meanwhile there are lots and lots of people being forced to work without pay, which is starting to affect the economy, etc... What a country.

The work going on in my group is getting exciting and cool, and I'm looking forward to getting back and being a part of it again. And the sewing project I'm working on right now is coming along well; I think I'll have energy a little later today to actually do some work on it, which would be nice.

Happy weekend, everyone!

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The Neverending Story

Sat, 22 Dec 2018 16:59:31 GMT

Some things do not hold up over time.

I remember being COMPLETELY ENCHANTED when I first saw The Neverending Story in theaters. The puppets! The characters! The story! Magic breaking into the everyday world, or someone Very Like Me escaping into a world of magic! It was all just amazing and wonderful and transportive at the time.

With those fond memories in mind, I put it on again last night (currently on Netflix). I discovered that the eyes and experience of a 40-some year-old are very different from an 11-year-old.

From an adult point of view, the story is one that I've now read or seen in a few hundred books and movies. This particular iteration of the Hero's Journey isn't very deep or very involved. The dialogue is simple and not particularly witty. The puppets were probably pretty impressive at the time, but lip-synching is an issue and they're just not very convincing anymore compared with today's CGI wonders. It was a film of its time, and it was aimed squarely at kids. Which was fine when I was eleven, but sadly doesn't work so well now.

In contrast, while I haven't seen them all that recently, I believe films like Labyrinth and Dark Crystal hold up better to adults, perhaps because they're targeted more towards teenagers than children. Similarly, The Princess Bride, while pretty goofy, is still very watchable.

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Look, up in the sky!

Fri, 21 Dec 2018 04:50:47 GMT

I walked out of work yesterday evening, and saw this:

(click image to embiggen)

It was sort of worrisome to behold. I figured anything that had left that crazy a smoke trail can't have had a good ending!
Fortunately the consensus is that this was a noctilucent cloud left behind by a meteor/meteorite. It must have been quite high up - it was seen in Sacramento and Lake Tahoe.

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They're tracking me...

Thu, 13 Dec 2018 17:00:03 GMT

YouTube must know what field I work in. It's showing an ad for an orbital shaker (good for growing bacteria, yeast, and other single-cell cultures) before showing me the video that I want!

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Just two things of which you must beware

Fri, 16 Nov 2018 16:42:49 GMT

A quick post to note that the smoke from the Camp Fire up in Butte County (burning since last Thursday night) reached Very Unhealthy levels in our area yesterday, and is predicted to do the same today. Several school districts have closed schools today due to the poor air quality, and Stanford has cancelled classes.

I am basically okay but am having a lot of congestion and irritation from the smoke. I'm really grateful for my little steam inhaler which I bought a couple of years ago for a bout of bronchitis and which I will now swear is full of miracles. It REALLY helps, and keeps me feeling better for hours and hours and hours.

More later when I have time.

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Smoky

Fri, 09 Nov 2018 16:23:18 GMT

There's a big wildfire up north of Sacramento, near Chico. Our weather comes down from the north, and this morning the light looked really odd. If you step outside, you instantly smell smoke - lots of it.

Because research in my building involves lots of chemicals, the building is required to have air from the outside circulated into the building to keep the air 'fresh'. I'm really not looking forward to breathing smoke all day!

(And given how bad the smoke is here, I can only imagine how horrendous the fire itself must be.)

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