This sun image contains 2 solar eruption events from a couple of days ago… and a cat or lion cub. It caused a bit of a solar storm. At first I got excited about it being ‘Severe’ but then it also reached ‘Extreme’. The following images are screenshots taken during the event which occurred on Saturday 11th May AEST.
Note the red line here is what was actually achieved, whilst the black line is only a prediction. All timestamps on images are UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) which is 10 hours behind AEST (East Coast of Oz). Also a fun note is that this graph didn’t go below -400 (Severe) till this morning and now it’s set at -800.
Canberra, ACT, Australia.Antarctica has it all going on today!
I found it interesting that today we reached the limit of the scale created in 1949, 75 years ago. Hello Kp of 9! I’m adding a screenshot from early in the storm while it was still 8 just so you can see crazy a 9 really is. It’s the end of the scale! I bet there were a few people considering how to present it if it got worse.
I wonder if Julius Bartels ever considered it might pass 9?
And now for the coolest feature of a solar storm… Aurora intensification.
May your satellites not get lost in space and your social media feeds be filled with aurora awesomeness.
It’s hysterectomy day. Assuming I don’t get bumped for an emergency. I’m a bit excited about this. Not so excited about the initial aftermath though. Haha
I figured I should honour my womb by thanking it for the good things it has brought me. Here’s a list of all those good things:
– my 4 children.
That’s it. I can’t think of anything else positive it has brought to my life. Hahaha. It’s funny how the doctors have to ask, “Are you sure you don’t want to have more children?”, when I’ve already added to overpopulation and they’ve got kids of their own!
I’m really grateful for my YoungGuns. The early years were loads of fun, being a part of their learning about love and other emotions, the world we live in, and how to best combine these two. The teen years were very overwhelming for a number of reasons and I was mentally absent for most of that. And, having had 4 kids in 5 years, all 4 were teenagers at the same time. I know… young and dumb… me that is! But the adult years have been the best of all, getting to watch their adventures, navigating everything on their own, discovering who they are separate from birth-family, and even creating little treasures of their own. It’s the best adventure show ever! And I’m glad I am a part of their world and they mine.
Well that took up all of no waiting room time. I’ve still got hours to go with no food or drinks!
No volume for the following one. I forgot to add this to the one above. This one actually occured before the above one. I recorded it the morning before.
According to a DNA test I did a few years ago, I’m 9% Irish. So today, St Paddy’s Day, I did some math and figured I should spend 9% of my day celebrating it. So for at least 2.25 hours this evening I hung out at the good old Eltham Pub with folk music and Irish tunes from the nephew and co. There was food, friends, drinks and laughs… lots of laughs when Brodie Buttons sang his highly educational Mary-Jane song and a table of old folks pulled prune faces and left. And now I know exactly when to plant and when to harvest if I ever want to grow a crop hidden in the bush. Haha. I recall visiting one of their past homes one day and at the back of the vege patch was a huge wall of the special stuff. He’s definitely got a green thumb, that young man.
At the Eltham
I got to thinking on the way home about my DNA test and how I’d like to get Brodie to write me a song about “If you want to be my lover, you’ve got to get a DNA test”, cause I could be related to anyone up here thanks to a great grandfather being a local travelling salesman. And I could also be related to folks around Newcastle thanks to a grandfather being a High School Head Master and my father having a doppelganger who grew up a few suburbs over from him. At least I know I’m definitely related to the 3 above mentioned males because I’ve got strong DNA matches to people in their family trees. Buuuuut, I’m not having any kids with anyone so maybe being related and not knowing won’t be a problem. Haha.
About 2 years ago my rather aged Uncle learned that his dad wasn’t his father, but that he was the son of a famous aboriginal tightrope walker from Lismore. Being a very religious man he wasn’t so happy about the shock discovery, but my cousin has been having fun exploring it all. Sometimes you just can’t be sure who your father is. Haha. I’m not related to the circus fella, but it’s now part of my family story. Watching to below ABC video and seeing the photos, I swear its like looking at my uncle when I was a wee-tacker. He used to look almost identical.
Today I decided to go check out a ‘sketch club’ thing. I had to bring my own art supplies and just do whatever with whatever was presented to us.
I knew I would only get so many minutes to draw before the model moved, but I didn’t realise how quickly the minutes was when your brain wants to get details right. You just can’t do details. Like faces or fabric folds. I learnt that the hard way.
Here’s a few of my first attempts. There were a few more with scribbles through them like the middle image from frustration. Haha.
I seriously can’t draw faces. Haha.
After trying and failing to sketch realistically, I decided to play with the shapes I could see the bodies make. Btw, all models were fully clothed.
I discovered today that feet are like triangles
Then after taking a break and deciding to just do whatever first came to my mind, I came up with these two to finish off the session. The hare-person actually started out as a woman with a weird paper hat. And the last one for the day was playing with light and shadow whilst restricting myself to moving my pencil side to side only.
‘Hats’ was the theme for today
So that was a bit of fun in the end, even if the first half was definitely not fun. Haha. I think I’ll have to go to sketch club again.
It was interesting to see what I could produce when restricted to three minutes. A mess mostly, but also exploration of ability and imagination.
Woah! This is cool. I hadn’t even heard of this mission till this morning. I might not do ‘news’ but I am subscribed to NASA and JPL on YouTube, but I just haven’t bothered checking out their posts in a while… till I saw the image for this one today.
Message to Europa
Message
Poem to Europa
I wish I’d seen this earlier so I could have my name on the list going to Europa, but anyway, at least my name should be going to the Moon and Mars still.
Ticket to MarsTicket to the Moon
—
And now for something self-related to destroy this cool post. Haha.
It was a strange sequence of thoughts that led me to discovering this ‘message in a bottle’. When I woke this morning and worked through my morning thoughts, plans for the day and memories of yesterday, a song appeared in my mind and got caught up there. This song triggered the memory of a realistic dream I’d had this very night.
It was a wowser of a dream. I only remember it as a moment. It was a very normal moment for me too. The crazy part was that in that normal moment I recalled a memory of something happening in the past as if it really had happened, but in real life it has not. The memory helped me make a decision in that dream moment. I am not going into the details, but I did end up quickly grabbing my computer and writing down what I could recall. Is it called ‘writing it down’ when I’m really ‘typing it up’?
At first I hadn’t realised the song in my head triggered the dream remembrance. After writing it all down I went to grab my morning coffee and the song returned to my mind. When I get songs in my head like that, I try to recall the lyrics of the bit that repeats and figure out how the song got there in the first place. Then I look at the song lyrics as a whole. I’m a bit of a lyricophile. So here I was making a coffee and singing the song aloud now, when I realised the words I was singing related to the dream. That was when I realised the tune in my head caused me to recall the dream.
I rushed off to find my phone and check out the lyrics (not trusting my memory for some reason even though I knew every word). I played it on spotify first. Then I thought about watching the old video clip for it. I didn’t quite get there, for as I opened YouTube a suggested video on a channel I’m subscribed to got my attention instead. It was related to the dream in a way and my mind was wandering that direction, so I followed my mind and clicked the suggestion. The next suggestion was from another subscribed channel, NASA, for the above first video. I got lost in the wonder of it.
I love working with themes myself, so really loved the way they played with the water theme. I mean, hey, how clever is the idea of ‘sound’ waves as part of the water theme.
So as I drift on into a cloudy Sunday, I share with you a song that continues to swirl around my mind.
I’ve got this stupid thing stuck in my head… Whenever I see a T-Rex (you know, cause I see them nearly every day wandering around in the valley), I see a giant weird looking chicken with tiny wings. You can’t deny many dinosaurs have bird features in their skeletons. I mean look at those legs and wings! I also wonder how many T-Rex skeletons are found without their drumsticks.
Imagine the size of those drumsticks!!!
Seriously, people have been known to kill black rhinos just for their horns making them nearly extinct. Maybe this is how dinosaurs really became extinct! Growing up when a roast chicken was brought to the dinner table I’d always considered myself really lucky to get a drumstick. And drumsticks are sold without the rest of the chicken bodies for a good reason – they stop family fights! So our ancestors may have hunted dinosaurs like the T-Rex just for their drumsticks! I think I would have because you’d only need one to feed the tribe.
And imagine how much spice you’d need to make Spicy Rex Wings! Okay, maybe not so much – those things are tiny compared to the rest of its body. Haha.
Oh, and breaking the wishbone (because they did have them) would be like a tug-o-war game. Tribes could have kept them to resolve disputes rather than attacking each other.
Another thing that gets me wondering is the sound of a male T-Rex crowing every morning. With a chest cavity that size it would have to be loud. COCK-A-DOODLE-ROAR! Good morning world!!!
I’m back studying again. Partly because I need this to make a change in the right direction, and mostly because I physically can’t work. I’m still waiting for surgery.
[Side note: nooooo, let’s not share a huge paragraph of negativity and gory details of my agonising state. You’re welcome. Although you’ll never know how thankful you should be that I just deleted that bit]
But I’m here to discuss the pain of learning new things at my age. I liken learning with a tertiary institution to the pain endured by Ashton Kutcher’s character in ‘The Butterfly Effect’ every time he altered his past. When things changed, his mind had to catch up with the newly formed past timeline, a full on rewiring of memories and more. So much so he’d have seizures and nose bleeds. When I’m studying I pretend to check for blood coming out my nose sometimes just for fun because I feel like my head is about to explode. Haha
I now figure the old dog, new tricks thing wasn’t just some dumb thing someone said one day and everyone repeated it because it sounded cool. It’s actually bloody hard!
Another way to look at it is like plants in pots. You’ve got 2 plants in exactly the save sized pot. One is a new sapling of a plant, the other has been sitting in that pot quite a long time. The new one has a few roots stretched out comfortably. The old one has a tangled ball of bound roots that have been restricted by the pot size.
Now, say both these plants are looking to expand their roots into new soil. They are pulled out of their pot and placed in a new larger one with a refresh of nutrients. The younger one with free roots can immediately dig into the new soil and soaks in all those new nutrients with ease. The older one can’t stretch its roots out because they’ve grown thicker over time and are all caught up in each other. To reach out and soak in those new nutrients is a lot harder for it. Of course for real root bound plants there are ways you can fix that a bit – see end of blog.
Neuroplasticity isn’t so “plasti” when an older brain has what seems like a whole new language suddenly thrown at it to learn in 5 months.
[Linda checks her nose isn’t bleeding again from just thinking about it all. Haha.]
The crazy thing is, even though it seems so incredibly hard in the moment, I can look back a week or two later and see that I’ve learnt something new and technical (as opposed to the stories in all 4 seasons of For All Mankind which i “studied” in the 2 weeks prior). It makes me want to spin around to the no one beside me and excitedly proclaim, “Hey, look at me! I CAN do this stuff!”
Well, here you go, a little video with one method of helping root bound plants get those nutrients it needs to keep on growing. Some of these instructions sound like exactly what I really need 😉. Haha.
There’s a cat I have known for 20 years. Yes, it’s 20 human years old. It’s been like all cats I’ve known when it comes to affection – it’ll come to you when it wants to be touched and is very clear when it doesn’t. At least it has been that way till recently.
It’s moved house at least 7 times that I know of, and has lived in 3 houses in the last 3 years, at which time I’ve lived nearby and seen it often. The last move it made was into the same house as myself.
Can I please get up and get a coffee now?
And now, the cat has become clingy. It’s humans are away this weekend so it follows me around, calls out to me and paws my closed door all night, and when I lay on the couch it lays on me and snuggles right up hard under my chin, or reaches its paws out like an embrace. It is much like it’s humans behaviour toward each other. One of them has been away for work a lot and when they return both humans behave like their clingy cat, especially when watching TV… or at least that’s when I see them.
Getting this sudden affection from the cat has reminded me of what I’ve been missing. I’ve haven’t had this kind of affection for 3 years. And how I need it. I think i need it anyway. Actually, my brain tries to convince itself that it’s only a want, so i should get over it. That’s my way of coping without it. Haha.
This solo life is my own fault to some degree. I’m scared. Trauma can do that to you. I’ve been trying not to call it trauma either, but my psychologist wants me to own it so I can deal with it.
It’s like a big empty room with a coffee table in the middle. If I close my eyes the coffee table is no longer there. I can blindly walk around that room from wall to wall, but should I bump into the coffee table causing pain that makes my eyes water and my body paralysed for a moment, who or what am I going to blame? Not the coffee table – it’s not there. But it is. I just need to accept it so I can find ways to navigate around or over it and remove it from the room altogether. So yeah, trauma. It’s a thing. And I’ve got a problem with it.
I’ve spent the last 5 years bouncing from one job to another because I don’t feel comfortable with the people I work with. Hello, Linda! Common factor alert! I’ve seen the common factor issue, but having shut my eyes on that coffee table, I couldn’t see what the issue was. I feel really quite stupid now that I’ve opened my eyes and am taking a good look at the coffee table.
I had thought communication was the big issue and have spent a few years trying to improve my communication skills (which sadly haven’t improved much due to a different coffee table my psychologist and I have been working through recently called Neurodiversity).
And so I’m finally working on a new coffee table project – conflict management and resolution. I’m so fucking scared of conflict. Seriously scared of it. So much so I find it odd that I couldn’t see it even with my eyes shut to it. Thank you so much for this wonderful gift, abuse! Blame had been my blindfold. It’s not me, it’s them. I’m not over sensitive, they just don’t like me and aren’t afraid to show it. Or even worse still, I imagine possible conflict and project that onto them, and so am scared of them without even seeing or hearing or meeting them. I can see a stranger across the room, think they might be a nice person to get to know, then think of innumerable conflict scenarios in a second, and turn around and walk away.
Safe to say, I really hate my brain. How much would I like to kill the over-thinker in it. Haha. No, that’s not the solution. I just have to learn to work with it and sort through my memories that cause me to think stupid things like the above.
The cat’s need for affection has given me a new goal to help me knuckle into working with my conflict trauma. One day I too may be able to snuggle up to someone I feel safe with and know there is something in me worth loving. Fingers crossed it’s not going to take me another 3 years of lacking physical affection to get there. Haha.
Now To Morrow 