[This is cross-posted from the Dreamwidth community [community profile] threeforthememories, which is great and you should all join it. You have until next Monday 24 January if you want to post three photos to it that define your year last year, and no time constraints on enjoying everyone else's posts. I think it might actually be years since I've either promoted a community or cross-posted from one. Yikes.]

  1. Telstar (RIP)
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    This is - was - our beloved cat Telstar, just before he turned twelve in June of last year. We had no idea that we only had a few months left with him at this point, as his decline was very sudden. Losing him is an event that will forever be associated with 2021.


  2. ”+2” )

I got bored with the 365 question meme after the end of February and have no plans to restart it. I can, however, thank it for one thing: reigniting my interest in cross-stitch. I was taught to cross-stitch by an eccentric great-aunt when I was around eight years old, on the plastic frames with thick yarn. As I grew older, I graduated to the Aida cloth patterns, and eventually to linen before I lost interest in my teens.

The offhand answer to one of the meme questions prompted an Etsy search and I purchased a couple of beginner-level kits from KnitKnotKrafts (UK). Behold, my first cross-stitch in over twenty years:

  Map of Africa
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The back is a hot mess because I had forgotten that you don't tie knots in the thread, you just leave a tail and stitch over it:

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I just completed a second, which is a gift for my Cthulhu-loving sister-out-law.

Octopus (sans eyes)
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Much tidier back:

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I feel this is an excellent step to be taking toward my bonkers blue-rinse little-old-lady aspirations.

I'm spending my Easter break on a more difficult pattern with flowers and hummingbirds. Once I've finished that, I'll get some more from Fandom Cross Stitchery. No prizes for guessing which is my favourite.
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We had clear sunny weather for the most part while I was there, but then one morning it decided to snow. And yes, my dad drives a black Mustang, hahaha.

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This is one of two baby bunnies living under the bushes outside my parents’ back door.

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Here is a slightly wonky photo, taken by our server, of me and Sockenmonster with my parents and their friends at a breakfast gathering at the local golf course. I'm not smiling because I'm in the middle of explaining to our server which button to press to take the picture.

These were taken just over a week ago. It feels like a lifetime.

nanila: me (Default)
( Sep. 19th, 2019 10:44 pm)
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Today I was in London where, amongst other things, I hung out with my old labmates and watched the sunset. This was taken from the first desk I worked at in the lab when I started there in 2006. Sitting in front of those monitors brought back so many memories, all of them rose-tinted because I was so happy for such a very long time.
Hello dear online community. I have missed you all. I'm slowly making my way back through the timelines, but if there's anything you'd like me to respond to specifically, please PM me with the link.

We've spent most of the last few weeks in the USA, visiting my family. My apologies to anyone located in these places who would have liked to meet up; my parents were distraught due to the very recent death of one of my father's sisters, and my auntie had an itinerary planned for us which was magnificent and also jam-packed.

I'm currently assembling all my photos (thousands between phone and dSLR) to make a book of the trip. Humuhumu has expressed a desire to help me as she adores the ones I've made out of previous trips and pores over them regularly. So we'll be making a project out of it. Below the cut is a very rough timeline, without photos, to get us started.

10 days in the USA )
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On Monday, I discovered a couple of tiny paintings of Norfolk that I did years ago - each of these canvases is 3” x 3”. The children demanded that they be put up in their room.

+6 )
Ever since I was a child I've been able to immerse myself completely in things to the exclusion of everything around me. This power of concentration, or "total lack of situational awareness" if you prefer, never left me. My favourite anecdote about it is the one from when I was about ten. My dad handed me a drink whilst I was reading. I took a big swig of it without looking at it. It was beer (stout). I ran around the house trying to find things to eat and drink to take the taste away for a good quarter of an hour.

Today was the first time in a while I've had this particular ability tested. I work in a big glass fishbowl of an office. I like the fishbowl. It's clean, modern, has good lighting, and I have a nice desk between two lovely colleagues, with three on the other side of the partition. The fishbowl is quite a busy place, with phones ringing and people talking.

I was in the middle of writing a document when one of my favourite lecturers came up behind me. According to my colleagues, she became curious when I failed to react to her presence, especially since all five of them had acknowledged her. (She has a very strong presence. She is also quite mischievous.) She crept up very close to my chair and said cheerfully, "Hello!"

I leapt out of my chair and then burst out laughing. She looked almost as astonished as I was. "How did you not notice me?!" she demanded, sounding mildly offended. "It's my superpower," I replied. "Rubbish, isn't it?"
I received a message from LJ a couple of days ago, as it seems they’ve jumped on the #10yearschallenge bandwagon. It linked me to an entry I wrote back when the bloke and I were living in Cambridge in the years BC (before children).

“The Tragic Case of the [personal profile] nanila who wasn’t French”: DW / LJ

This is one of those entries which made me so glad I keep a journal, as I have no memory of the event otherwise, and it was quite sweet even though it involved me being heavily patronised, particularly by Mama.
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My soon-to-be-retired line manager brought me a final crop of Cassini memorabilia. Pictured are badges, produced by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, commemorating the following events along Cassini’s journey to Saturn:

  1. The first Venus flyby (April 26, 1998)
  2. The second Venus flyby (June 24, 1999)
  3. Earth swingby (August 18, 1999)
  4. The Jupiter flyby (December 30, 2000)


The lithograph is of some very old promotional artwork, also produced by JPL.
My boss and I have begun the sad task of sorting through and either saving, re-purposing, or throwing out thirty-odd years of accumulated Cassini information. Today I found these newspaper clippings on my desk. He discovered them last night and thought I’d want them. He was right.

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From The Orlando Sentinel, 16 October 1997. “Next stop for Cassini: Saturn: Probe’s long journey will keep scientists and critics waiting”

+4 )

I didn’t know Cassini’s launch had attracted protesters due to its plutonium power source. Their signs...! “I don’t want to glow in the dark” is my favourite. I also wonder who sent these clippings to the MAG team, or if my boss had collected them himself. Must remember to ask him when he’s in next.

On a less sad note, here is an item that has been re-purposed! This is a mu-metal can, used to test magnetic field sensors. It isolates the sensor from the Earth’s magnetic field, so the sensor can be calibrated. This can was used when Cassini was being built, to test the Vector Helium Magnetometer (VHM). We will now use it in the lab to test the JUICE magnetometer sensors.

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Mu metal can has a rather spiffy casing and even a handle to make it easy to carry (they’re heavy!). My feet included in the photo for scale.

+1 )
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