crab-asses of the world, unite!

warning!!!! you are about to enter a verified crab-ass zone! beware!

nothing like a little sleep deprivation to improve my mood - ha ha ha....

seriously though, folks, i am one tired little chicky and it's making me so crabby it is unbelievable. i owe it mostly (though not entirely) to my attendance this past weekend at the bioneers conference. it was a great experience but one that didn't allow me to sleep in at all, thus serving as an eye opener about how much i depend on those lazy weekend snoozes with wake up times of 10 a.m. at the extreme earliest. that said, the conference was really cool. it would have been cooler if my little brother had been able to attend as planned, but apparently playing flag football and ping-pong can be pretty hazardous to one's health; he was sidelined with injuries from both (and he was pooped - he works too hard and much.)

so while the conference was good, it was the second day before i realized that my number one reason for going was to get to hang out with him, as i don't get to enough, and maybe that was why i wasn't experiencing a paradigm-shifting event like he and my sister, who also went, have as a result of attendance in years past. in any event, not all was lost as my sister and her husband, not to mention my niece and her tutor, were there. the plenary sessions were great and i was introduced to so many interesting people and their work, like jay harman, founder of pax scientific, specializing in bio mimicry design - very cool stuff; van jones from the ella baker center, which is working with disadvantaged youth in west oakland, california, training them for green collar jobs; eve ensler, playwright of the vagina monologues fame; and the amazing husband and wife team ka hsaw wa and katie redford, founders of earth rights international, the organization that successfully established the ability to sue corporations, in this particular case unocal, in u.s. federal court to hold them responsible for human rights abuses committed as a result of their business dealings. again, in this case, during construction of their oil pipeline in burma. unocal settled once they went all the way to the supreme court trying to get the case thrown out, so it's the same difference, and they established that it could be done, not with standing katie's many law professors telling her it not only couldn't be done, but was unconstitutional. they are now suing shell for the heinous human rights abuses being committed in nigeria, including the murder of activist ken saro wiwa. and so, so many more that i am not going to write about here or it's all i'd do. so many inspiring people and their work... it makes me feel like i really ought to be doing more and that my accomplishments in life are meager indeed. i know that's not the intent of conference, but still... i really need to do more. but first i need to get rid of the two-ish hour commute every day (round trip, i'm not that crazy), which is sucking my will to live right out of my body.

not much else new. got some new yarn and am expecting more to do some felting projects! when i'll have the time to do so, well, that's another matter for another day. at least i have the raw materials. was reading how my dear friend lb's blog about the entire room she is devoting to her knitting projects (and possibly others) and i just about had to wipe the drool off my keyboard. i can only dream of such spacious accommodations at the moment.

anyhoo, that's it for me just now. send all kind of love to the world and all of her inhabitants, people. if ever a planet needed it, she's it.