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- January~2005 - HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! Enjoy the Christmas tree...
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- 11/03/04 - HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE! Ok, so I'm a few days late... what else is new? Between Dragon*Con and Trick-or-Treat, we had some awesome costumes this year, and Padawan Pumpkin even got carved before midnight!
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- 09/22/04 - Great news... I updated this page! Preparations for Dragon*Con literally consumed my August, but it was well worth it! I had such a blast! I got to meet Ray Park (finally). Made some new friends and hung out with old ones. Watched Xana squeeze lemons at the foot of a gas pump at four in the morning. Swam in the pool in the hurricane. Sang in the car all 900 miles of the way home (just to stay awake). Anyway, check back soon for pics. It'll be worth your visit! |
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- 07/08/04 - Ok... I'm supposed to write about something here... some kind of news that's cool, and interesting, and - and... naked? So how about this:
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Forget Madame Tussaud... Move over Salvatore Dali! BodyWorlds is here! A unique combination of Science and Art, the exhibit has recently arrived in Los Angeles, and is meant to educate, to enlighten, and to allow us to marvel at the beauty and "complex simplicity" of the body human. And these are actual bodies here, not models like you might study with in med school or shake hands with at the chiropractor's office. These are real live dead people... riding dead horses and dribbling dead basketballs! There are families of cadavers... even a pregnant mother with a fetus inside! This has got to be intense to see! |  |
| A German scientist named Gunther von Hagens invented this technique called plastinization, which basically means that you get dehydrated and defatted (or you could just go on the Atkin's Diet) and then shot up with plastic or silicone. I got news for you Gunther...Michael Jackson and a bunch of other chicks in Hollywood have been doing this for years! Kinda makes you wonder what he did for fun as a kid... or--- maybe not. But the weird part is that you can buy souveniers... t-shirts, posters, mousepads, backpacks... and games! Games? Geez, I knew kids who got kreeped out when they played 'Operation'! Well, I have to admit, I was kinda scared of the buzzer. And what... no action figures??? Oh well.
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- 06/22/04 - So is anyone else besides me sick of logging into this page and reading my rant about the Atkins Diet?! Yeah, I though so. So here's the big news... Yesterday morning, despite a few in-flight glitches, Space Ship One successfully left Earth’s atmosphere, soaring to a record-breaking height of 62 miles after taking off with White Knight from California’s Mojave Spaceport, and touching |  |
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down safely nintey minutes later. The event marked the dawn of a new era of privately funded civilian and commercial space flight. The ship was piloted by Mike Mellville of Scaled Composites, the aerospace company that designed and built the spacecraft. According the reports, Melville released a bag of M&M’s into the cockpit when he reached maximum altitude and watched them float around in zero gravity. I wonder how much M&M/Mars would pay for that footage! Instant TV commercial if you ask me! Hmm, What colors were they… primary? Pastel? Or how about a new design… white with black dots and some stars on the bottom! And what kind were they… plain? Peanut? I wonder how he kept them from smacking into the control panel... Hey, maybe that's what caused the ship to veer twenty miles off course! So then, who's fault would it be if they crashed? I don't see any "warning - do not open bag in zero gravity" labels! Or think about this... what if he was able to remove his helmet and actually catch all those floating chocolates in his mouth in mid... um... float? The official SS1 in-flight-meal! Forget Tang... I can see the slogan now… "M&M’s – the official snack food of the crew of Space Ship One, and armchair astronauts like you!" Oh…wait… let’s get that right… low carb M&M’s! Geez... I'm makin me hungry! You gotta check out Space.com’s special report of this exciting event! Also check out the details of Scaled Composite’s Private Manned Space Program |
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- 06/15/04 - So is anyone else besides me sick and tired of hearing about this Atkins Diet?! "Eat anything you want as long as it has little or no carbs in it!" Oh, please!!!! "Be healthy... drink low carb beer!" This is a fad people! Your body needs carbohydrates... just like it needs fats, and proteins, and vitamins and minerals, and, and... normal beer! Uhg! - Can you imagine replacing all the carbs you eat with protein and fat (mostly fat I’m sure)? Geez… like my face isn’t greasy enough as it is! |  |
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Seriously, though… Restricting carbs in the diet can result in a toxic state called Ketosis. See, what happens is... free fatty acids are broken down in the liver where they are converted to substances that the body uses for metabolism. But when there is an imbalance due to some crazy diet, some of the stuff gets converted into ketone bodies (acetoacetate, beta-hydroxybutyrate, and acetone... to sound cool and technical). Excessive ketone levels in the blood can change the blood pH, resulting in Ketoacidosis, a potentially life threatening condition. Other, more common side effects of Ketosis are potassium depletion and other electrolyte disruptions that can cause cardiac arrhythmia, and elevated levels of calcium in the blood and urine which can lead to osteoperosis... due to the fact that the body is constantly trying to normalize the blood pH, and well... as you may imagine, the calcium has to come from somewhere ! Not to mention that the kidneys have to work extra hard to excrete the excess calcium and whatever else has been stored in those layers of melting adipose that are now being dumped into the bloodstream. Hope you don’t have a kidney problem, ‘cause this’ll surely aggravate it. As with most fad diets, the weight you lose at first is likely due to dehydration. Not a good thing. Also, following a high fat/low carb diet is a really effective way to increase your LDL’s (bad cholesterol) and consequently, your risk of chronic high blood pressure and heart disease. Yum! So go ahead, butter up that steak… but don’t say I didn’t warn ya! For all the gory details on the subject, log in to PCRM's Atkins Diet Alert, or pick up Volume 10 – Issue # 4, 2004 of Skeptic magazine. Basically what I’m saying is… don’t buy into this before you do your homework! |
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- 06/14/04 - Well last Saturday I went shopping in NYC and I bought way too much stuff. And next weekend I'm going to a big flea market...I think I'm gonna leave my credit cards at home!!! I swear I get high on shopping... my eyes glaze over and I cease to think rationally! Well a week has passed since the Venus Transit and I'm still awed by what I saw. Here's the latest in pictures from Space.com's image gallery. All you have to do is click the link that says "June 8th, 2004 - Venus Crosses The Sun"... but like I said, Ain't nuttin like the real thing!!! |
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- 06/11/04 - A Spaceport is born in California's Mojave Desert! How awesome is this! If all goes well, Ansari X-Prize contender, the White Knight, will successfully deliver SpaceShipOne to suborbital altitude, becoming the world's first FAA liscenced, commercial space vehicle... marking June 21st as the dawn of a new era of commercial spaceflight! Gee, maybe when I'm sixty it'll be cheap enough for me to travel into space... I mean, like...for real! Now that's worth the effort of staying in shape for!!! |  |
| According to Space.com, the small town of Mojave will celebrate "Space Day", selling souveniers of the event, and the NSS will host an "all night rave" for the out of towners who have already booked up most of the hotels in the area... kinda like a 'space-olympics' or something! I suppose I'll be on the lookout for T-shirts on e-bay... | |
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- 06/09/04 - Ain't it sweet? My husband complained that there were no pictures of him on the site!!! I kindly explained to him that it was simply because he had no costume. Well, Oli... be careful what you wish for...heheh! By the way... nice bod!!!! Doin' anything for lunch? |
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| - 06/08/04 - Wow... what an experience! I must say, seeing it in pictures is one thing... but witnessing an astronomical event like that with my own two eyes (well, one, in this case) was just totally awesome! Words simply can't express the feeling I got in the pit of my stomach as I watched this event play out! It was different than looking at, say, Jupiter or Saturn through a telescope... even different than viewing Venus in the evening sky. I felt as though I was seeing our solar system from the outside in... the actual layout of Venus in it's orbit in conjunction with Earth. I sensed that I was standing on a rock in space, watching the planets dance around me! Truly the wow! factor all over again! |  |
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- 06/07/04 - It's sunny! Yay! That concludes my weather report. Thanks for checkin' out my new homepage. I just needed someplace to vent... an outlet, so to speak... a place to express my enthusiasm about the things that pique my interest... otherwise I might talk to myself all day! - On another topic... The event has arrived!!! Lovely planet Venus will be passing between us and the sun tomorrow morning! The Venus Transit will begin during the wee hours and will be visible to us (obviously) at sunrise on Tuesday, June 8th, You'll be able to see it through the smallest of telescopes... provided you use the solar filter made for your particular optical instrument! Please don't try to view it without protection... didn't you're mother ever tell you "Don't look at the sun, you'll go blind!" ...or... maybe that was in reference to something else... hmm... |
 Venus - NASA/JPL |
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06/03/04 - So this is big... I'm finally learning html! Yay! Sorry 'bout the text being all over the place. I'll fix it when I figure out how to do tables (gimme a break, I started learning this at 2 o'clock this morning!). On another topic... Lovely planet Venus will be passing between us and the sun next week. The Venus Transit will occur at sunrise on Tuesday, June 8th. It will be visible through the smallest of telescopes... provided you use the solar filter made for your particular optical instrument, otherwise you are really stupid and nothing will ever be visible to you again in your lifetime! But for now, enjoy this 3d image of Mars (below), taken by the 'Spirit' rover. (Darn... the Martains stole my bucket!) |
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