Another Mish-mash
Feb. 25th, 2014 11:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogI haven't been on social media for a bit. I've been concentrating on other stuff, whether school-related or other. I always feel a little bad when I'm not contributing to conversations here on LJ. It's an important space to me and I want to be part of keeping it active and interactive.
Anyway, I had a really nice weekend with Danae. She came up from Evanston and we spent the weekend alternating between our respective school work and playing games. In fact, we played a spur-of-the-moment game of Arkham Horror with my brother. To my surprise, we not only won the game, but we actually really enjoyed it! (It may sound odd that we play a game that we don't fully expect to enjoy. But it's that kind of game. We've likened our connection to it to an abusive relationship. We keep coming back, hoping it will have changed.)
But possibly even more memorable than that, I made the unlikeliest dice roll I have ever made, or likely ever will, during the game. I rolled five six-sided dice in an attack against a monster. All five came up ones. All five. I had an ability that let me reroll one and I did. I got a one. I think the odds of that happening are six to the sixth, or one in 46,656. "Did I just see that?" I asked.
I dropped off a public records request at the municipal building today. I'm looking for a number of document reference in minutes of the Kenosha Common Council from the '50s. Reports and petitions and things that are referenced in the minutes and sometimes noted as having been "recieved" or "filed", but which are not at the archives where the proceedings are. If it turns out they have any of them, I'll have more requests going on into the '60s, but I'm not hopeful. The person at the clerk's office indicated that they don't keep many old records. A great deal of the public records requests must be election related. The request form has spaces for various kinds of voter records, real estate inquiries, and license reports. There are only two blank lines under "Copies of the following document(s): (describe in detail, including dates if possible).
I filled that out with "Please see attached." Then I wrote up a page explaining what I'm looking for and referencing the assembled photocopies of the proceedings with red boxes around the dates I want, stapled it all together, and dropped it all off on the way to school this morning. I'm slightly concerned about the potential cost. Copies of records cost 25 cents per page, and if there's too much search time involved, I start paying the hourly rate plus benefits of the person doing the searching. I asked in my description that they let me know before performing a search that would entail such expenses. I wish they'd just let me come in and look myself! I have made some progress in searching for relevant info via microfilm, though it took me an most of two hours to go through just a month's newspapers. The joy of unindexed microfilm. Methinks I'll be spending most of a weekend at the library at some point in the future.
I visited a family friend who is a sports and chronic injury massage therapist on Friday to ask about the knee pain I've been having. After a brief examination and description of symptoms, he told me I'm applying pressure unevenly between my feet (something like 98% of people are right-footed, he said; a much higher percentage than are right-handed), and that I'm toeing out when peddling and applying force to the outside of my foot. Then he did some further work on my knee, leg, thigh and hips. When I left the office, I was even walking differently. I've also been paying attention to correcting the problem while biking this week and things seem rather better. I'm really relieved; biking has become a big part of my life and I don't want to have to change that.
I miss the warmth that we had for a few days last week. It's back to the ski jacket and mittens for my commute. And tomorrow's going to be worse. Woof! Still, with rainy weather coming up, I contacted a costumer friend to ask about commissioning something like an English or Chinese bicycle rain cape. I want something of durable, sustainabily produced materials that I can get into in rainy weather so I don't have to layer up with something like the plastic, unbreathable Coleman rain suit I've been using up to now. The crotch of which tore out when I rode with it in that aforementioned warm spell.
The next piece of reading for my anthropological theory class is on Karl Marx. But the prior chapter wasn't assigned, and the one on Marx opens with a reference to someone discussed in the previous one. So I just read it. It was a neat introduction to the foundation of social science in general and anthropology in particular. I'd never heard of Ibn Khaldun before, but am not surprised that someone from the Middle East was thinking way ahead of his time in matters of cross-cultural comparison and that his name is so little-known.
My time seems to fly away so quickly in the evenings. Spanish practice, reading for class, making dinner, the occasional bit of homework, trying to catch up with at least reading social media, packing for school tomorrow, and hey, it's time for bed. I didn't even make it to my to-do item of finding an urban-focused anthropological academic journal or two to start actively following. But I'm trying to keep caught up so I can have the occasional weekend where I don't have to be anxious about school.
*yawns* Anyway, I think I'm going to get to bed.
Anyway, I had a really nice weekend with Danae. She came up from Evanston and we spent the weekend alternating between our respective school work and playing games. In fact, we played a spur-of-the-moment game of Arkham Horror with my brother. To my surprise, we not only won the game, but we actually really enjoyed it! (It may sound odd that we play a game that we don't fully expect to enjoy. But it's that kind of game. We've likened our connection to it to an abusive relationship. We keep coming back, hoping it will have changed.)
But possibly even more memorable than that, I made the unlikeliest dice roll I have ever made, or likely ever will, during the game. I rolled five six-sided dice in an attack against a monster. All five came up ones. All five. I had an ability that let me reroll one and I did. I got a one. I think the odds of that happening are six to the sixth, or one in 46,656. "Did I just see that?" I asked.
I dropped off a public records request at the municipal building today. I'm looking for a number of document reference in minutes of the Kenosha Common Council from the '50s. Reports and petitions and things that are referenced in the minutes and sometimes noted as having been "recieved" or "filed", but which are not at the archives where the proceedings are. If it turns out they have any of them, I'll have more requests going on into the '60s, but I'm not hopeful. The person at the clerk's office indicated that they don't keep many old records. A great deal of the public records requests must be election related. The request form has spaces for various kinds of voter records, real estate inquiries, and license reports. There are only two blank lines under "Copies of the following document(s): (describe in detail, including dates if possible).
I filled that out with "Please see attached." Then I wrote up a page explaining what I'm looking for and referencing the assembled photocopies of the proceedings with red boxes around the dates I want, stapled it all together, and dropped it all off on the way to school this morning. I'm slightly concerned about the potential cost. Copies of records cost 25 cents per page, and if there's too much search time involved, I start paying the hourly rate plus benefits of the person doing the searching. I asked in my description that they let me know before performing a search that would entail such expenses. I wish they'd just let me come in and look myself! I have made some progress in searching for relevant info via microfilm, though it took me an most of two hours to go through just a month's newspapers. The joy of unindexed microfilm. Methinks I'll be spending most of a weekend at the library at some point in the future.
I visited a family friend who is a sports and chronic injury massage therapist on Friday to ask about the knee pain I've been having. After a brief examination and description of symptoms, he told me I'm applying pressure unevenly between my feet (something like 98% of people are right-footed, he said; a much higher percentage than are right-handed), and that I'm toeing out when peddling and applying force to the outside of my foot. Then he did some further work on my knee, leg, thigh and hips. When I left the office, I was even walking differently. I've also been paying attention to correcting the problem while biking this week and things seem rather better. I'm really relieved; biking has become a big part of my life and I don't want to have to change that.
I miss the warmth that we had for a few days last week. It's back to the ski jacket and mittens for my commute. And tomorrow's going to be worse. Woof! Still, with rainy weather coming up, I contacted a costumer friend to ask about commissioning something like an English or Chinese bicycle rain cape. I want something of durable, sustainabily produced materials that I can get into in rainy weather so I don't have to layer up with something like the plastic, unbreathable Coleman rain suit I've been using up to now. The crotch of which tore out when I rode with it in that aforementioned warm spell.
The next piece of reading for my anthropological theory class is on Karl Marx. But the prior chapter wasn't assigned, and the one on Marx opens with a reference to someone discussed in the previous one. So I just read it. It was a neat introduction to the foundation of social science in general and anthropology in particular. I'd never heard of Ibn Khaldun before, but am not surprised that someone from the Middle East was thinking way ahead of his time in matters of cross-cultural comparison and that his name is so little-known.
My time seems to fly away so quickly in the evenings. Spanish practice, reading for class, making dinner, the occasional bit of homework, trying to catch up with at least reading social media, packing for school tomorrow, and hey, it's time for bed. I didn't even make it to my to-do item of finding an urban-focused anthropological academic journal or two to start actively following. But I'm trying to keep caught up so I can have the occasional weekend where I don't have to be anxious about school.
*yawns* Anyway, I think I'm going to get to bed.
