(This message originally posted by yessod )
This post is to announce the successful birth of Julia Mairi Shields at 11:37 AM, 1 October 2009.

She was born by C Section, and both she and diony appear to be happy and in good health. She was 7lbs 6 oz and 20.5 inches at time of birth. Her current favorite activities include sleeping, feeding, and waving her ( Read more... )

Happy birthday, beloved husband yessod! I love you much more than I can say in person, much less in a livejournal post, and I am very grateful indeed that you were born!

When I was a kid I loved watching women's gymnastics, but then I lost track of it for many years, only to realise in 2006 that I could tell the TiVo to tape everything with 'gymnastics' in the title or description. Thus I got to see the leadup to the Olympics -- Chellsie & Shayla's struggles, Nastia's injuries, the sudden appearance of Shawn ( Read more... )

Yes, I did just remove a ton of people from my 'friends' list. I will probably remove many more. Nothing personal; I am just trying to impose some order on my online spaces, and perhaps to repurpose my LJ back to its original intent as an actual, you know, journal.

I'd say on the whole things are improving, but locally they are still not as pleasing as I would look ( Read more... )

I've been thinking about Tolkien lately, in large part due to kate_nepveu's chapter by chapter reread of LoTR that she's blogging about on tor.com. And thus, while reading John Buchan on Sir Walter Scott's novels, I was struck by this:
I am willing to go farther and argue that, without some such salt of the pedestrian, romance becomes only a fairy tale and ( Read more... )

G-d, I hate being angry.

I mean, I just hate it. I hate the way it feels in my body, I hate the adrenaline, I hate the way my brain circles around & around the thing I'm angry about, unable to let go of it and think of something else. When I get angry when I'm fighting (in the professional teaching/learning self-defense sense) I can do something ( Read more... )

Life is being rather complicated ( Read more... )

As you all know, I read LJ extremely irregularly, so it wasn't until yesterday that I came across the complex and often painful discussion about cultural appropriation that's been going on in various journals these last 10 or so days. But when I did I started to read, and then I read, and read, and read some more, and tried my hardest to listen ( Read more... )

Attention local people with daughters age 12-16!

If you'd like to put your daughter into a self-defense class in San Francisco this weekend for free, contact me by 10pm tonight (via LJ comment or email) and I will gift you one, as I've just found out that I temporarily have that power. No previous martial arts experience necessary, and girls with ( Read more... )