Fall(ing) leaves
Light and fresh
Ah, haircuts! They are always so refreshing and renewing. There’s something about getting rid of some hair and coming out with a silky, shiny ‘do that is very pleasing. And today that is what I got done. 🙂 I’ve been meaning to get a haircut for awhile now – the ends of my strands were beginning to fray and the dryness lately has made my hair brittle and coarse.
The cut is nothing different from what I usually get, but the shampoo and conditioning I got today were great for the condition of my hair. Now my hair doesn’t weigh heavy on me or get tangled towards the ends. It feels so good to run my hands through and there’s not a hint of static! The wonders that a salon treatment can do. I absolutely love it, though I still don’t go more than two or three times a year at best, since it’s really a luxury and not a necessity.
Doesn’t your mood lighten too when it’s a bit breezier around your head? The better to appreciate wind with! The better to flip around! The better to twist and curl! Oh yes, it feels good and it makes me feel good. Sometimes I do understand why people spend so much money on things.
Dolphin acrobatics
Dolphins can do some nifty tricks! (Here are some more videos from before.) They’d be awesome pets.
dolphins spiraling from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
dolphins racing from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
dolphin shark from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
Computer fail
Well, I had the misfortune of dropping my laptop from about desk height to the (carpeted) ground. Now I can’t log in to my user profile and it takes me to a generic temporary one each time. 🙁 I’m glad that I can still use the computer, but all the settings I had saved in my account are pretty much inaccessible and I don’t know how to fix it. I took some time to load all my pictures to my external hard drive in case I can’t log in at all at some point, but I’m really hoping that a day-long break will help my computer right itself. I’ve restarted and system restored and tried a variety of things to help the situation, but as of yet nothing has helped. Yet another motivation to get myself a desk to use in my room. All other surfaces are just too unstable! Maybe I’ll end up replacing this computer for my birthday then… I have been meaning to get a new one, but never had much of a reason to.
Super cool pens (maybe it’s the super ink)
What time is it again?
Oh Daylight Savings, how you confuse me. All this talk of falling back and springing forward makes sense until I try to figure out if the sun will be setting earlier or later in the day now. By all intuition, it should be later since it gets dark pretty early now. Yet, according to all logic the opposite will happen. So why does it happen?! It doesn’t make sense to get up and have the sun even higher than it was before, then leave work only after the sun has set and not during the setting. You’d think they’d fix the time so that we get up as the sky is lightening and leave work when it’s still light out. I’m baffled.
But hey, at least I get an extra hour to work with!
Airports
Well, my mom missed a connecting flight today, so I decided to share some videos from when I was sitting around at an airport in Thailand…
First, the retracting of the bridge when all the passengers are loaded:
retracting jet bridge from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
The plane, unable to back up itself, gets pushed by a pushback tractor (I believe that’s the correct term).
The next plane comes along and the bridge slowly seals itself against the side.
jet bridge meeting plane from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
Our luggage is loaded and soon we get to boarding to start the process all over again, for anyone still sitting there to watch.
luggage loading from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
Haute, hawt, or hot?
More dogs from the Halloween Haute Dog parade. Part 2, pictures from my camera. (See Part 1 here.) Click to see a larger image.
Election day
I’ve hated the negative back and forth going on between Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown, so I chose to exercise my vote by not voting for either of them. This time around I chose to stay away from the polls because there was nothing I strongly cared for or believed in. I’ve voted in both presidential elections since I could vote, missed the mid term election in 2006 since I was studying abroad, and now again decided not to participate in this mid term election. I also don’t feel good about voting if I didn’t take the time to review the materials for the opposing sides to make a decision that I am comfortable with.
But, I think in a way I was hoping that Meg Whitman or Carly Fiorina would win, just to get that business perspective into our government. We could use a bit more fresh blood with new approaches. But I guess I generally do tend to side with Democratic views a bit more, so I guess the outcomes can still be good. We’ll just have to see how things pan out from here…
The power of many
When it’s one, it looks a little insane, no?
bird dust bath from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
Ah, but when it’s many, it’s a party!
birds dust-bathing from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
I never knew that birds took dust baths. I thought that was just something chinchillas did.