Home | Join! | Help | Browse | Forums | NuWorld | NWF | PoPo   

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.


The Profile


Zanzibar
Age. 40
Gender. Female
Ethnicity. that of my father and his father before him
Location Altadena, CA
School. Other
» More info.
The World









The Link To Zanzibar's Past
This is my page in the beloved art community that my sister got me into:

Samarinda

Extra points for people who know what Samarinda is.
The Phases of the Moon Module
CURRENT MOON
Croc Hunter/Combat Wombat
My hero(s)
Only My Favorite Baseball Player EVER


Aw, Larry Walker, how I loved thee.
The Schedule
M: Science and Exploration
T: Cook a nice dinner
W: PARKOUR!
Th: Parties, movies, dinners
F: Picnics, the Louvre
S: Read books, go for walks, PARKOUR
Su: Philosophy, Religion
The Reading List
This list starts Summer 2006
A Crocodile on the Sandbank
Looking Backwards
Wild Swans
Exodus
1984
Tales of the Alhambra (in progress)
Dark Lord of Derkholm
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Lost Years of Merlin
Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers (in progress)
Atlas Shrugged (in progress)
Uglies
Pretties
Specials
A Long Way Gone (story of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone- met the author! w00t!)
The Eye of the World: Book One of the Wheel of Time
From Magma to Tephra (in progress)
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Harry Potter 7
The No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency
Introduction to Planetary Volcanism
A Child Called "It"
Pompeii
Is Multi-Culturalism Bad for Women?
Americans in Southeast Asia: Roots of Commitment (in progress)
What's So Great About Christianity?
Aeolian Geomorphology
Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits
The City of Ember
The People of Sparks
Cube Route
When I was in Cuba, I was a German Shepard
Bound
The Golden Compass
Clan of the Cave Bear
The 9/11 Commission Report (2nd time through, graphic novel format this time, ip)
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Twilight
Eclipse
New Moon
Breaking Dawn
Armageddon's Children
The Elves of Cintra
The Gypsy Morph
Animorphs #23: The Pretender
Animorphs #25: The Extreme
Animorphs #26: The Attack
Crucial Conversations
A Journey to the Center of the Earth
A Great and Terrible Beauty
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Dandelion Wine
To Sir, With Love
London Calling
Watership Down
The Invisible
Alice in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The Host
The Hunger Games
Catching Fire
Shadows and Strongholds
The Jungle Book
Beatrice and Virgil
Infidel
Neuromancer
The Help
Flip
Zion Andrews
The Unit
Princess
Quantum Brain
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
No One Ever Told Us We Were Defeated
Delirium
Memento Nora
Robopocalypse
The Name of the Wind
The Terror
Sister
Tao Te Ching
What Paul Meant
Lao Tzu and Taoism
Libyan Sands
Sand and Sandstones
Lost Christianites: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
The Science of God
Calculating God
Great Contemporaries, by Winston Churchill
City of Bones
Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne
Divergent
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Old Man and the Sea
Flowers for Algernon
Au Bonheur des Ogres
The Martian
The Road to Serfdom
De La Terre � la Lune (ip)
In the Light of What We Know
Devil in the White City
2312
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Red Mars
How to Be a Good Wife
A Mote in God's Eye
A Gentleman in Russia
The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism
Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
The Juanes Module


Juanes just needed his own mod. Who can disagree.
Carousels
Tuesday. 3.14.23 9:05 pm
Some might say that the most important part of a carousel is the mechanism on the inside-- without this the carousel would not spin around, nor its horses go up and down. Some might say that it is the horses that make the carousel-- what is the mechanism without the reason to ride it, the fanciful exterior that makes its imprint on your childhood.

I say that the most important part of the carousel is the mom or dad who is there to wave furiously at you every time you go by--- just as enthusiastically, no matter how many circles you turn.

It wouldn't really be the childhood memory you treasure without that.

Comment! (1) | Recommend!

Laughing Girl
Wednesday. 10.26.22 11:40 pm
These days the baby is all smiles and laughter, mischievous grins, and dancing eyes. If she catches sight of the dog she bursts into laughter, interrupted by the sharp intakes of breath required to produce more laughter, interrupted by the sound of slurping as the dog takes the invitation to lick her smirking face. I grab her in my arms and roll her over my body, away from the dog, both of us erupting in a peel of giggles, the mirth of each amplified by the other in an endless loop.

Her new trick is to descend on us in a quick swoop, catching us on the cheek with a wet smooch. Recently she has added a "mwah!" sound to her attack. Then she smiles a megawatt smile of satisfaction at what she has done. She is a bright twinkling light, a gushing point-source of joy, her baby-soft skin glowing like an angel in the soft nursery light.

I imagine what it would be like if I died and she never got to know me as her mother. Perhaps she could read this journal entry and know that being her mother was the joy of my life. Dear baby, I love you more than life itself. All I can hope for is many more years to love you.

Comment! (1) | Recommend!

Sick Baby
Tuesday. 9.27.22 5:06 pm
My baby is sick with a cold. In the middle of the night she starts coughing like crazy and cries and cries. I leap out of bed to rescue her. She is sitting up in her crib, wobbling back and forth, wanting to stand up but too tired, too sick. I am her mama and I scoop her up into my arms. She cries and cries, but when I offer her a fresh bottle of cool milk she closes her eyes and drinks and drinks and drinks. I turn on the shower and fill the room with steam. I have to pin her down for a second so that I can put saline drops in her nose and suck out some of her boogers so she can breathe. She hates it. Full of milk and breathing quietly out of her nose, her eyelids start to droop. I cradle her in my arms. Her whole body suddenly relaxes. Her breathing goes from fast to slow. She is snug and safe in her mother's arms. You are safe. You are loved. You are my baby. I am your mama. I will take care of you, my darling. I carefully place her back in her crib, and she immediately flips over and falls dead asleep until morning. It is 3:45 am and I have work tomorrow at 8. But it doesn't matter: when I feel her tired and sick little body relax against mine, I feel like this is the most important work I will ever do.

Comment! (1) | Recommend!

Little Mortal
Thursday. 3.11.21 4:53 am
My little dog is Juan Pablo is sitting in my lap. He's not so little... he barely fits. His chin is resting on my forearm and making it hard to type.

His warm belly is resting on my calf. Sometimes it's still hard to believe that he is a living thing.

A little, mortal thing, with thoughts and desires, exuding heat, twitching in his sleep. Alive for such a short interval of time.

I'm glad that we got to be alive together.


Comment! (0) | Recommend!

Mars Landing!
Thursday. 2.18.21 11:59 pm
Today our rover landed on Mars. Everyone was pretty stressed out and worried.

But the rover didn't crash and we all get to keep our jobs. :)

Comment! (1) | Recommend!

The Best Part About Skiing
Tuesday. 2.9.21 4:18 am
It's strange to say it, but my favorite thing about skiing was always the crashing. The gliding, the floating, the building up speed, the thrill of being completely out of control... and then the crashing--- the great poof of powdered snow, skis all over the place, grabbing them before they took off down the mountain, icy particles sneaking their way down your neck and waistline. Such a wild experience with so few consequences!

Then, when I was a freshman in college, an old high school friend of mine took a tumble on a ski slope with much graver consequences. He was a good skier-- not too fast, not reckless. The light was flat. He hit a bump that he didn't see. He fell. He broke his neck. He was paralyzed. It was an accident.

I was at his house one day afterwards with some friends and his mother asked what we were doing later in the week.

"Going skiing," we said.
His mother took each of us by the shoulders and looked straight into our souls.
"Be CAREFUL," she said, and then held us tight to her chest. She said it in the way that a mother can say things, a mother who poured her life and body into a baby boy, protected him, nourished him to adulthood, only to have his back broken by a mountain on an otherwise uneventful afternoon.

I have never completely enjoyed skiing after that.

I enjoy the gliding, the floating. Never building up speed. Never letting myself get out of control. Anxious in flat light. Never letting myself crash.

A mother's voice always in my head, saying "BE CAREFUL"

I have to admit that my favorite part about skiing is surviving to take my skis off at the end of the day.

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

The Council of Atmospheres
Monday. 1.25.21 11:31 pm
The Mars 2020 rover, Perseverance, is less than a month away from its landing. Everyone around my work is holding their breath a bit as the day approaches. The technology that we are using to land it is pretty crazy, even if it already worked once when we landed Curiosity in 2011.

In preparation for landing, my orbiter is taking measurements of the temperature and opacity of the atmosphere to wager a guess at its density. The density of the atmosphere of course figures into how much the incoming spacecraft will be slowed down by its parachute and its heat shield, ultimately determining how close to its targeted landing site it will be when its ready to deploy its final landing stage.

My orbiter is just one of the many spacecraft on Mars taking measurements to prepare for the landing. To coordinate the information, they have awoken the "Council of Atmospheres", which has been slumbering since the landing of the InSight mission in 2018. The Council of Atmospheres is composed of a bunch of experts in atmospheric data and atmospheric modeling. They will gather all of the information from all of the orbiters and models and make the ultimate recommendation to the rover. Once on Mars, Perseverance will rover around picking up samples and caching them. The cached samples will be returned to Earth by a pair of upcoming missions-- one for launching the samples into Mars orbit, and the second for taking the samples back to the Earth. If everything goes according to plan, we could get the samples back sometime before 2030.

In other news, it SNOWED today in Altadena (near Los Angeles). SNOW was falling all around the palm trees. It was crazy.

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

Ambush
Monday. 1.25.21 4:01 am
Me and Ben, walking through the parking lot. He brings me in and I hug him and put my head on his shoulder.

"HEY YOU!" says a woman.
We turn around. "Us?"
"DO YOU HAVE A CELL PHONE IN YOUR POCKET??"
Me: "Um, yes..." ::reaching for the cell phone::
Her: "Then you should take a selfie, girl, because you two are the cutest thing I have ever seen. And when you get mad at him, and if he ever get mad at you, you better take it out and look at it, and remember this moment!"
Us: "Uh... oh. I see. Thank you"
Her: "Ha ha HAH! Goodnight!"

Comment! (1) | Recommend!

Zanzibar's Weblog Site • NuTang.com

NuTang is the first web site to implement PPGY Technology. This page was generated in 0.038seconds.
  Send to a friend on AIM | Set as Homepage | Bookmark Home | NuTang Collage | Terms of Service & Privacy Policy | Link to Us | Monthly Top 10s
All content � Copyright 2003-2047 NuTang.com and respective members. Contact us at NuTang[AT]gmail.com.