I went to Keith and Katie's to see the comet and Saturn this evening/night. I went pretty late, and without Mom because of how late.

No luck. Worse, I didn't have ANY luck with the new camera. Took crappy pictures compared to the older one. I think more because I was able to get the focus set with the telescope lens.

Ah well, at least I managed a view of the metro area. Not that you can tell.

Mom and I went up to San Mateo today, to meet up with David Weekly and a few others, so that we could tour some possible locations for a new coworking/community sort of place. There are a number of coworking places in the City, but, as far as we can tell, none on the Peninsula or in the South Bay. Which is not to say you can't find shared places to work: those exist. However, none (also "as far as I can tell") are community run. Most are for-profit facilities with an internet connection, a phone line and a desk. You might have a window in there, too.

So, David put out a call to other like minded people, asking if they'd be interested in starting a coworking/community center on the Peninsula. The response was pretty much overwhelming.

Having recognized, despite my loner tendencies, just how much I need to interact with people to stay happy, I signed up.

Community run means that each member in the community has to help out, or the whole structure falls apart. If nothing else, running multiple ultimate leagues taught me how stressful having a small group, or one person even, run a large organization can be.

So, off we went to help tour places.

Unfortunately, the realtor dropped the ball and didn't meet up with us at David's work place. We ended up chatting about locations and what each of the four of us who showed up were interested in finding. It was a good meeting, if not as exciting as I had hoped it would be so that Mom wouldn't be bored. She was a good sport about it, though.

When I was growing up, one of my aunts joined the Cult of the Triangle (not really, but it sounds good). She had heard about the power of the triangle from somewhere and shared it with the rest of us.

Essentially, if you had a pain or something that needed fixing, you could make a triangle by holding your palms out flat, pointing your thumbs toward each other and angling your hands so that your pointer fingers formed the top of a triangle (at nominally 120° inwards). I don't know if your thumbs and pointer fingers were supposed to touch.

After forming the triangle, you now had the power to eliminate pain, cure cancer, and increase the length of your penis. All you have to do is hold the center of the triangle over the area to affect and concentrate on the outcome you desire. Trying to remove a pain in yourself or someone else? Feel the pain draw out of its original location and into the triangle.

But wait! I lied. That's not all you have to do. Once you draw this bad mojo into the triangle of your hands, you also need to be rid of it. If you don't, your hands would hold the pain, cancer, short penis, whatever the original issue was. So, you need to shake out that bad mojo. That's right - flick it away, get rid of it, shake it off.

Be careful where you flick that bad mojo, though. Depending on its original state, you can confer it to the object you flick it on to. Why, a friend of a friend of my aunt flicked some bad pain mojo onto a rock, figuring the rock could take it. It split with a large crack some days later. So, don't go flinging that bad mojo indiscriminately.

About three weeks ago, my monitor died. Since Mom is out and helping me with my personal tasks, I asked her to find a new power supply for my monitor. After surfing the various Apple forums for a bit, I came to the conclusion that the power supply was the most likely problem, as others had "fiddled" with their power supplies and had their monitors start working again, an event that had happened to me months earlier. I had spent a long while trying the fiddling trick again, without succuess, so I wanted a new one to see if my current power supply was indeed the problem.

After explaining all of this to Mom, she looked at me and said, "Just use the triangle on it."

"Mom!" I exclaimed, exasperated. I had tried who knows how long trying to fiddle with the power supply, what could would a triangle have? Argh!

I humoured her, hoping where I flung the bad mojo wouldn't come back to haunt me.

The monitor fired right up.

Although Mom is on a different time than I am, and managed to get up early to come visit me, she was game for heading over to Keith and Katie's house tonight for some possible comet viewing. Comet Lulin isn't at its closest, but it's certainly close, and I wanted to see it, presumably through Keith's telescope.

The weather didn't cooperate.

We did, however, have hot chocolate and play games. To my surprise, Mom was willing to play, too. We played the train game that Vinny, Heather, Keith and Martha had all played before. I think Mom and I did pretty well: we learned the game.

Mom arrived today. I'm so unbelievably happy to see her. I haven't seen her for too many months, which is too many months too long. She's out for the week to help me out: do my taxes, be my personal assistant for a short while and just BE. I'm so happy she's here.

After picking her up from the airport (an adventure that), and driving home, Christmas began.

Mom always brings me little gifties when she visits. This time was no exception. She brought me the start of the quilt piece she's making for me. I "commissioned" a piece from her, which is a quilted underwater scene. Like all of the artwork in our house, I wanted big big BIG. She offered a series of smaller works that could be arranged and rearranged as desired.

I have to say I'm thrilled with the first part of the artwork.

I am, however, worried that Mom may hate me at the end of the week. My taxes? Hoo-boy, THIS is going to be an adventure.