keyblogger.

dr. anna

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:49:00 +0000

kenny, please comment with your email address so i can give you the info you wanted. comments don't show up unless i approve them so your email will not be displayed. thanks!

a village of treehouses

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:52:00 +0000

wow, check this out. i want to go there. or maybe move there. i've been in love with this concept ever since i first read about the elves of lothlorien.

new song

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 16:09:00 +0000

root signals have posted a new song, heart of wisdom, to our myspace page. folks who have heard it have had a really positive response so far. go have a listen, and as always: best on headphones.

flood

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:58:00 +0000

surely you have heard about this grand-canyon-flooding thing. but, wow. look at the slideshow here. in the fourth photo especially, that water is really moving. yeow.

national geographic

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 02:09:00 +0000

vanuatu is in this month's national geographic. check it out.

barf

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:41:00 +0000

when i lived in belarus, an english-speaking friend of mine whipped out this detergent to clean her bathroom. we thought it was the funniest thing and i took several photos of her cleaning with "barf" like a happy housewife. now i see this video:

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 20:16:00 +0000

root signals has decided that our studio is my dad's office floor. this is how we spend sundays.

donors choose

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 17:21:00 +0000

i read an article about this site called donors choose a few weeks ago and thought it sounded like a great idea. donors can browse through different projects in low-income schools and pick specific projects to help fund. you know our public schools sorely need help; this is a way that we can make sure the money is going directly to the students and their classrooms.

i am not into selling stuff, but this is a worthy thing: a friend of mine is raising a few dollars to help transform the learning environment in her classroom at one of philadelphia's poorest, toughest high schools. her classroom is a stifling 80 degrees in january, far more conducive to her special ed students falling asleep than to them learning anything! it only gets worse as the spring term progresses. please consider helping out!

the toothbrushing incident

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 14:28:00 +0000

have you ever tried to brush your teeth while laughing hysterically? it's not easy.

this morning i was brushing my teeth, as i often do, and my toothbrush hit a particularly sensitive area in the back of my gums [i have already determined that i am a very sensitive and radicular person; the other night someone was trying to massage a knot out of my back and i felt it in my ear] and it made me gag. it also tickled and made me laugh.

the resulting sound was something like what i imagine a cow would sound like if it was surprised and angry. it also sounded a lot like jon stewart's impression of dick cheney, which i don't feel like finding online right now, but if you've heard it, you will certainly know what i mean.

i was so shocked and amused by the sound that i couldn't stop replaying it in my head, which meant i couldn't stop laughing, which made the rest of the toothbrushing experience quite a challenge. it's always good to laugh yourself to tears in the morning, i say.

lungs

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 21:12:00 +0000

i love the lung-off here between the singer and the bassoonist. and of course, i have always loved kitka ever so much.

man at work

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 20:05:00 +0000

putting dave's desk together. he's a good guy.

frozen

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 21:13:00 +0000

oh, this is great. "it must be some kind of protest."

"or acting class!" [via]

trampoline

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 14:23:00 +0000

i wonder if i can send pics? this is my man on a trampoline yesterday. hmm.

i'm testing sending this from

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 14:18:00 +0000

i'm testing sending this from my phone. i finally got a phone with a qwerty keyboard so i might find myself doing this at random.

really

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 00:53:00 +0000

gift baskets
Originally uploaded by alannka

i wasn't kidding about the gift baskets at work.

gift baskets

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 19:19:00 +0000

the last few weeks our office has been getting huge (clearly very expensive) gift baskets from every nook and cranny of the philadelphia area, it seems. they are still coming. it is very dangerous.

someone got me 1000 places to see before you die for Christmas. also quite dangerous.

great blue

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 19:44:00 +0000

i saw a heron on my morning commute today. i just looked up at the sky, frustrated that i had forgotten my transfer money, and there was this gorgeous huge heron flying in front of the trees. i believe it was a great blue heron because it looked pretty much exactly like this and great blues apparently do hang out in pennsylvania. seems rather wintry to be hanging out here, but i am not a bird expert.

i took it as a good omen.

saw the nutcracker last night. i realized i haven't been to the ballet since the bolshoi in moscow in 1999!

perforation of pharyngeal tissue

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 16:21:00 +0000

i got this email from my dentist regarding the hole that the strep bacteria dug into my tonsil. it cracks me up:

When I saw you in November, I told you I had never seem such a prominent perforation of a patient’s pharyngeal tissue following a streptococcal infection. I also said I wanted to research the matter further to see if it really is that unique. I have checked various sources on several occasions and have found no similar description. Not that it matters…it just seemed interesting to me.

plink jet

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 16:30:00 +0000

i think i just might have to make me one of these musical instruments made out of old injet printer parts. there are videos!

via engadget

torba

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 02:48:00 +0000

finally i have had the time and wherewithal to put together some notes and photos of my time in torba province in vanuatu; a segment of the trip that was sort of just skimmed over in this blog.

i know, i know, you're sick of hearing about it. but i couldn't rest until i put this stuff out there. you can find it here, living with older trip journals on my travelogues page.

waitress....

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 13:58:00 +0000

... is a really good movie. i rarely see movies that i like so much. and it even has nathan fillion in it! mal from firefly! basically the movie manages to be both sad and funny in a really tender and beautiful way. five stars. had to mention it.

poker gelt

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 17:10:00 +0000

poker gelt
Originally uploaded by alannka

a bit more light. we played poker with hanukkah gelt. i did not do very well.

light

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 16:45:00 +0000

light
Originally uploaded by alannka

happy hanukkah. in honor of this festival of lights i have been experimenting with taking photos of lights and other bright things. this is one.

so busy! all aspects of my life are busy, busy, busy! so i haven't been updating this but then a friend said last night that he's been telling people about my blog and i feel like i ought to post something.

let's see... work is busy. absurdly so. then it's the season for parties and gatherings of various kinds so there have been a lot of those. then i finally have regained my voice after my bout with The Worst Case of Strep Known to Humanity, so i've begun to sing again, and have recorded some decent (i think) stuff for root signals.

i still do have a large (5mm x 2mm i think) hole in my left tonsil. i might keep it forever; apparently they are called crypts and i figure it'd be a good place to hide microchips full of secrets when i become a spy. of course, i just gave away my secret plan, so now i'll have to go to plan B, in which i am not a spy. so much for that.

also, i have been home for more than a month now, and i still keep thinking i see scampering geckos out of the corner of my eye.

to the streppies in my throat:

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 20:59:00 +0000

iv
Originally uploaded by alannka

i say to ye: die! die! die!

this is a photo of the IV they gave me sunday at the ER. it's my very first IV in my life ever ever! lovely, no?

i have never had strep before so i have nothing to defend myself against it. and this must be a nasty strain anyway because i've been on antibiotics since saturday and it's still very swollen and painful and streppy!

my diet for the last several days has been cheese soup, avocados, bananas, an egg-and-cheese soufflé thing that i made monday and have been eating every night since, applesauce, and sweet potatoes without the skin. i kind of miss chewing but it's painful. as is anything with any acid in it at all, apparently. this is all a new and very fascinating experience for me.

throats

noreply@blogger.com (alannka barabanka) — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 16:30:00 +0000

so i've managed to come down with a rather severe case of strep throat. my throat was pretty painful thursday and friday, and then saturday it started to get white spots so i headed to my family doctor and got antibiotics. on sunday morning, though, it swelled very much very quickly, and i was nervous enough about my airway to go to the ER. good thing, too, because it kept swelling and there was NOT much space in there. they gave me all sorts of fun drugs (my first IV ever!) and took very good care of me.

as did my local friends and family, and the whole weekend served to convince me once again that i have the best friends in the world. [thanks friends!]

anyway i'm doing better now, taking stronger antibioitics along with some percocet for the pain. life is never boring!