May 3
I must have been tireder than I thought because I didn't really wake up when Aric came home. When I woke up in the morning he was next to me and I had a vague memory of him asking me if I could move over a little bit but I thought I'd dreamed it. And maybe I had; but he was there.
He had his back to me and I nuzzled along his spine then when he didn't respond I hooked a hoof over his shoulder and kind of gave him a little tug and he finally snorted in his sleep and rolled onto his back, and I put my head on his chest.
I probably could have stayed like that for hours but he started to wake up and I felt a little bit guilty—I should have let him continue to sleep. And he didn't open his eyes but he lifted his hand and rested it on top of my forehoof, then he gave a little squeeze and felt around until his hand was on my cheek.
I asked him what time he had gotten home and at first he didn't answer and I thought maybe he was still asleep but then he said three am and I asked him why and he said that he was putting up lights for the Frelon Dance Company, and had he forgotten to tell me that there was a show coming up this weekend?
That sounded familiar, but I couldn't remember if he'd told me a specific date for it before. So I asked and he said it was Friday night, and then afterwards I'd get indoctrinated into one of the great campus traditions if I wanted to but when I asked what that was he wouldn’t tell me.
He said that he would be home late every night this week because of the amount of work which went into the show. And then he finally opened his eyes and sort of pushed me off him so that he could properly gesture. Humans love making hand gestures to illustrate things.
There were lights that had to be run on stage, he told me, and more lights in the background and by the time they were done they would be using every circuit in the theatre except for six of them that nobody could find.
Then he told me how there wasn't any map of where all the circuits were and only the ones in the catwalk were labeled, so it was guesswork to find the rest. He had found a couple in the basement, under the moving stage elevator, and there were more hidden in the back balcony, but he said that there were still six that couldn't be accounted for.
I told him I could come over and help him look and he laughed and said that I didn't have to; they'd designed the show without using them and everybody thought that they probably had been covered over in one of the renovations of the theatre, like when they'd built a new stage floor maybe.
And he asked me how my weekend had been and I told him all about seeing Gusty and how well she had done. He said that he wasn't really that much of a fan of Shakespeare but he would have liked to see that show.
Even though he was still pretty tired—I could see bags under his eyes—he said that it wouldn't be a proper morning if we didn't have sex and I couldn't agree more. I told him that he owed me for not being home last night and he was going to have to do all the work, then I rolled onto my back.
He ran his finger down my ruff and said that he would be home late every night this week, and that if I didn't want to come over I didn't have to but I told him I wanted to even if he wasn't home when I went to bed it was better waking up with him than alone, and he said that I was an eternal optimist.
I flew out his window and he waved goodbye and when I looked back he was still standing at the window, so I guess he didn't mind if the neighbors on the other side saw his penis.
I felt a lot more complete this morning and the trees were starting to bud finally. It was chilly again, but this time it was clear and so I could get up to altitude and look over the whole world and that was a fun feeling because it was like I owned it. I was queen of the cloudpile.
Then I heard a distant noise and finally located an airplane far above me (they're really hard to see when they don't leave clouds behind them) and I guess it was actually queen of the cloudpile because I knew from up there you could see even further.
It didn't get me down, though, 'cause it went across the sky and then vanished and I was still here.
I took a long leisurely shower and I could have stayed in there until lunch except finally Brianna knocked at the door and said that she thought my singing was lovely and she hated to cut me short but she wanted to take a shower too, then I felt guilty because maybe she had been waiting for a while and hadn't wanted to interrupt so I stopped the water and shook myself off and let her have a turn.
Trevor and I went to poetry together after lunch and we both sort of wondered out loud what we'd be learning. He told me that the thing he liked the most about Conrad was how spontaneous he was; how he'd just pick a poet which he thought fit the mood and I said that was what poetry ought to be like. Classes like math, you had to learn one thing before you could move on to the next. But you could approach poetry in any order you wanted to and it wouldn't make a difference.
And so it was. He introduced us to William Butler Yeats, who was Irish. And he started us off with a short poem called A Drinking Song, and one of the girls in the class said that was stereotyping and Conrad just laughed and said that he hadn't been the one to write the poem.
Then he followed that with An Irish Airman foresees his Death. He had Trevor read it and it sounded both sad and noble at the same time. And I hoped that when I met my fate it was also somewhere in the clouds above.
Conrad got a little twinkle in his eye and said that I could read the next poem which was called The Fascination of What's Difficult, and I had a really hard time reading through it without laughing because it was about the theatre and Mister Yeats was using a colt as a metaphor and before I could think I said that maybe I ought to take Mister Yeats's advice and lock my colt in the stable before he spends any more time in the theatre.
Melissa raised her hand and said that she knew this was not about Yeats but had any of us heard of the pony Puck in Madison and I said that that was my friend Gusty and I had seen it last weekend and it was really good.
We had a little bit of a talk about Shakespeare and Conrad said that maybe we'd talk about him more later but he hated to step on the theatre department's toes like that. Then he asked if anybody wanted to read Adeh Tells of a Valley full of Lovers, which sounded like a place Cayenne would like very much.
I was going to read more of my Bible tonight because I was way far behind and would never finish up by the end of this school year but at dinner Sean and Christine invited me over to her suite to watch another Star Trek movie because Sean said that I needed to catch up on the lore if I planned to see the new one that was going to be in theaters and so I said I would, and they said that they wouldn't be starting the movie until nine.
So I did get to read a little bit of the Bible, and I got a computer letter from Doctor Thomas Thompson asking if I was still interested in being a storm watcher and I thought that would be a big honor so I sent him a letter back saying that I was interested. There had only been one storm so far but surely there would be more.
Before I knew it it was almost nine and so I went down to Christine's room and I sat on the papasan and we watched the movie. It confused me a bit because it took place before any of the other ones I'd seen, even though it was newer, and Sean explained that that was called a reboot, which was where the filmmakers made a movie about what happened before other movies, or when they changed around a franchise a little bit.
I thought it was pretty good and Sean said that he thought that most of the new actors played the parts really well. And it reminded me that I ought to see if I could find a place to go skydiving because that was something I could do with my friends.
As I was flying across the quad and back to my dorm I got to thinking that there were a lot of things that I wanted to do and the school year was coming to an end really quick so maybe I ought to be smart and write down a list and then check things off as I'd done them. Big things that might take a weekend and little things that could be done in an afternoon.
I had a gruff English teacher who had chain smoked every day of his life, who talked about Vietnam way too much, and who had been using the same jokes for 50 years. I never knew a better fellow than he. He was obsessed with Yeats. He would stick a finger on my chest and growl,
IRISH POET, LEARN YER TRADE
and I said, Yessir, Mr. Avalon
There is a pony in your bed; what do?
Aric's already making horse noises.
Q. What's the difference between a pony and a gift?
A gifts come with their packages wrapped, Ponies come with their packages unwrapped
Also, if Pony body temperature is 102, that is 3+ degrees. Ponies probably feel toasty warm but people are unpleasantly cold.
7354016
Well, Aric's strategy seems to be "do pony".
7350252
Okay, that's a new one.
Those naughty pegasuses again...
static.ngs.ru/news/preview/8193813d6bcd4f5c17b2dd8c7d309d580fde71fd_473.jpg
I think it should be when rather then with.
Maybe would instead of was?
Judging by her observed comportement, I'd say Silver is part cat.
Yay!
By the way, mr Thompson's letter seem incomplete "If you are interested", shouldn't there be a "then" after that?
So I wonder what she wants to do? Are suggestions ok?
Yeats writing about capital-P Pegasus. Got to love those moments of serendipity.
And it's not like Shakespeare wasn't also a poet. Those sonnets didn't write themselves. (Granted, Shakespeare might not have either, but that's a whole other can of worms.)
7354041
Though Excalibur was stuck for a long, long time. I know some people/ponies are into that, but Aric should really ask Silver first.
Yes. Yes she would, the little minx.
One wonders why they haven't brought up Star Trek Online yet. Then again, it really hasn't been the same since they went to the "pay-to-win" model.
And if Conrad's going to do Yeats, he ought to at least include The Second Coming. Silver's reaction would be interesting, though she might find it more relevant by the time she gets around to reading Revelation.
What has Silver planned for after her exams? Might she go working with Doctor Thompson studying storms with a combination of technology and magic? That would be pretty neat.
If Conrad was going to bring up Yeats, he might have introduced Easter 1916, given that they're right after the centenary...
Looks like the pony got her ride.
I enjoy the odd glimpses we get at the slightly overbearing support staff. Trying their hardest to stay in the background, being a pony support staff human must be stressful.
That poor nurse in the "sick" chapters probably had to deal with so much paperwork; id like to see something entirely from their POV. She must have such a huge background support team trying their hardest to not be noticed.
They would really be wrong not to be spying on them 100% of the time to ensure their safety. It's way too risky not too.
7355030
Yeah, they probably watch out for them a little bit, though I don't think the ponies have secret protection details or anything. Otherwise, some nondescript plainclothes people would probably have suddenly materialized in that Walgreens when that man was getting shouty.
Silver going skydiving with Aric sounds like it would be very interesting.
7354017
Just three degrees sounds pleasantly cool, actually. Like a self-chilling pillow.
Yeah, you better run!
It would probably confuse the poor pony even more to point out that it really takes place both before and after the older movies.
The best Irish poems are Mise Eire, Sailing to Byzantium, Song of the Lonesome Boatman, For What Died the Sons of Roisin and Easter 1916.
7357128
Wow, that is her?!
I was going to ask if she (or that story) were already in another issue, but then I checked and saw that you actually introduced her a few weeks after that Humble Bundle. I only got my copy in the mail this week, because of international shipping.
7350252
Does a tiny tent on a camping place counts allready as outdoor ?
They do have telegrams in Family Appreciation Day . Historically, this ran off DC current (battery power) for decades before AC was invented.
An electric generator is fairly simple. You need only rotate magnets in a wire coil. AC generators are a lot more difficult. It is my head Canon that Ponies did not have an equivalent to Nicolai Tesla. Thus they have DC but not AC electricity. This means they do not have long distance transmission of electricity -generators have to be within a few miles of users.
As to high voltage uses. Maybe particle accelerators + lighting rods if you want to stretch a point.
7353992
I missed out on chain-smoking teachers, but I still had some great ones. My high school English teacher, who probably as much as anyone else is the reason I'm here writing for y'all right now, claimed that he was an alien who ate cats, and made sarcastic comments on most of my essays, and awarded my class journal with one of the very few A-pluses that he had ever awarded (my history teacher even congratulated me about getting an A+ from him).
7354016
We all pick up little habits from those close to us.
7354017
It probably depends on the season. In the wintertime, I'd prefer to snuggle with someone who was warmer than me; in the summer, cooler would be nicer.
7354028
Isn't that the best strategy?
7354041
One of my personal favorites.
7354169
No doubt Silver Glow's Soviet counterpart is just having a bit of fun.
7354388
Suggestions are fine! Welcome, in fact.
7357306
Cool! I would like to see Silver Glow take her friends both human and pony to a Wonder Bolts show if they where to put on a show near her. It could be interesting to see how we humans would react to one of their shows.
7354319
Fixed!
Made an earlier correction; I actually stopped mid-sentence to research the different types of ham radio licenses and then must not have caught how I started it out when I finished it (and then I only had five minutes to edit before publishing or I would have been late to work).
I honestly don't see how that would be an improvement.
Aren't all ponies part cat?
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7354434
To Silver Glow, every poet is writing about Ponies.
It's actually quite fun reading poems as a pegasus.
He totally was. Although that really is more of the theatre department's purview. IIRC, the Shakespeare class was done by the theatre department, but could be counted as an English Lit class as well.
7354512
7354540
Maybe they will. Silver hasn't showed much interest in computer games yet.
That's a good suggestion.
7354633
She hasn't got any specific plans. But she certainly is going to spend some time with Dr. Thompson and probably go out to tornado alley for a bit, too.
Not a bad idea.
7354916
7355030
Yeah; at least for the direct helpers, they're not supposed to help unless asked, or if there's an emergency.
They aren't. But that's mostly due to negotiations and the fact that this program has been going on for a little while. The humans would have initially wanted for each pony to have her own 'helpers' that were with her 24/7.
She was actually a vet and she volunteered for the program in case a pony needed an exam.
7355216
They're not quite that quick, but they can be pretty fast.
7355735
Nothing like skydiving with a pegasus.
I was thinking the same.
7355951
That part of it confused me.
7356755
<starts googling>
7357161
Ironically, I haven't even downloaded my copy yet. I just found her on the wiki.
7357194
I would say if Silver Glow is counting being in Winston as outdoors, a tent counts.
7357380
Since she isn't dead yet, wouldn't it make more sense for her to talk about it to the future rather then to the past?
If it something that can be done, then I just learned something new.
7356962
wow, then stay away from tig and stick, those are even harder (tig has a gas pedal and you have to manually feed in the filler metal). By chance were you working with sheet metal or thin pieces? If so you should probably use a short circuit transfer. It'll stop you from melting holes through the metals. keep the electrode in the front third or so of the weld pool. This way when you stop, the electrode is in molten metal and you can pull it out easier. You can also try angling the welder slight away from the direction of travel instead of holding it vertical.
I may have seen it before, but I never knew the name. Still not really common in my area though.
Especially considering most computers have an operating voltage of 1-5 volts depending on the type. I think the highest i've used for welding was 20 volts or so.
7357128 Shoot, there is a telephone with a wire! You learn something new every day, I guess. I think your idea that they run the lines through the railroads makes the most sense, since if they had wireless technology they wouldn't need wires to their phones.
Wonder how Meghan is doing
I'm really hoping Conrad covers the poem high flight during the course.
7357287
Actually, it's the other way around -- it's the AC generator (also known as an "alternator") that works the way you describe, of simply rotating the magnets around the wire coil. As the magnet rotates, the induced current in the coils naturally reverses direction due to the N and S poles of the magnets swapping position, as shown here:
i1180.photobucket.com/albums/x403/antohendarto7/Material%20Handling/generatoranimation.gif
(this shows a 3-phase AC generator, but the principle is the same for a single-phase one as well.)
It is the DC generator that's more complex, because you need a split-ring commutator and contact brushes to compensate for the magnetic-pole swaps, by switching the positive and negative ends of the coil on every 180-degree rotation so that the induced current flows in the same direction on its way out of the generator even though the induced flow in the coil is actually still reversing direction on every rotation of the coil or magnet.
Except that AC current was known long before Tesla; the alternator was invented in 1832, well before Tesla was even born, and AC lighting systems were in use in some European countries as early as the 1870s.
the
7357691
I'm not good at grammatical rules, to be honest. So I have no idea if that was the proper way to say it, but that's how I would say it.
Maybe if 7358816 is feeling generous, we can both learn something.
7357703
Yeah; I was trying to weld braces to a hood. What I really need to do is just practice, but I never seem to have time to.
7357714
I'll admit the telephone came along after I'd already come up with my headcanon that they don't have electricity . . . but then again there are sound-powered telephone systems, so it's plausible that they could have that for interoffice communications but nothing long-distance.
7358053
She's feeling a little sad and a little betrayed and a little lonely.
7358561
He probably won't; Magee isn't a very well-known poet (besides that one, of course). Although that doesn't preclude him giving her a copy of it.
FWIW, there are at least two stories about Cherry Berry that use that poem as a central theme.
7358855 One can definitely use either the past tense or the future tense, and when discussing a hypothetical future rather than the most likely future, it is more common than you would think to lean on the past tense. Since this journal does refer to most events in the past tense, it does make more sense and flow better if one uses the hypothetical past tense. If, by contrast, the majority of the prose were in present tense, one would use the future tense.
I feel like I've said tense too many times, and I may or may not be fully awake yet. Blame those factors if I appear to be spouting gibberish.
7358915 Neat!
Thank you.
7358934 You're welcome!
Skydiving? Remember, Silver Glow: Using your wings is cheating!
Just kidding. She'd probably feel confined and uncomfortable dangling from a parachute, and even worse in a two-person training harness.
7362031
I've never been in a parachute, but I've been in a flight harness for a stunt group, and when you're wearing it right it's bloody uncomfortable.
She should just skip the AbramsCrap:
The defining characteristic of Star Trek is continuity. All real Star Trek happens in the same continuity. Abrams does not give a crap about continuity. It is not like we have decades between Star Trek Ⅷ: First Contact and Star Trek: Enterprise or between Star Trek: Enterprise and the Enterprise NCC 1701 under Captain April or another Gap between Captain April and Captain Pike or Captain Pike and the Original Series or between the Original Series and the Animated Series or between the Animated Series and the Movies or between the Movies and ST:TNG S03E15 "Yesterday's Enterprise" or Between Yesterday's Enterprise and the Next Generation.
¡Abrams craps on everything!
7470451
As a non-purist, I can say that I enjoyed the most recent Star Trek movie that I saw. Yeah, there was some stuff in it that I thought was silly (although I'm enough of a skeptic that I have real trouble enjoying superhero movies), but overall I thought it was pretty good.
Silver hasn't been indoctrinated enough in the Star Trek culture to really understand what's 'good' and 'bad,' so she sees each movie as it is, not as part of a vast continuity.
7477306
The Irish Airman really struck home for me.
7470451
Well, yes -and no. Like it or not, the original Star Trek is over 50 years old & the original actors are either dead or too old for the part. They flat out have to get new actors & almost have to reboot the franchise. Marvel is going to be facing the same problem in the next 5-10 years.
8728862
Abrams could have easily slotted his movies into canon. We have over a century between Enterprise and the Original Series and almost a century between the last of the movies with the original actors and the Next Generation. The AbramMovies do not follow from any StarTrekSeries and do not lead to any StartTrekSeries. They are isolated. ¡Screw that!:
From Enterprise, the Original series, Deep Space 9, and Voyager, we have continuity. Every now and then, we would explore separate universes like the Mirror Universe, or counterfactual universe like Worf did in Parallels but always returned to the MainVerse. The AbramsVerse and STD —— ¡very aptly named! —— refuse to do so; so therefore, they are not real Star Trek.
You just know there are a bunch of local terms for that sort of rain, all some version of 'pulling a [insert name of some pony that screwed up and caused it once]'
Silver, allow me to give you the vast knowledge gleaned by Naval Nuclear ETMO, (Electrical Theory for Mechanical Operators). Zap Zap bad, no touch. See spark, apply PKP. Though you only say that second bit when an electrician is around to watch them flip out. (PKP is a firefighting agent on ships that is very, very corrosive to electrical equipment.)
Also yay meritocracies can be good, though always run into issues with any system, but you go with your Pegasus Pride Silver!
And of course doing anything based on color of you skin is going to be so so SO freaking bizarre for ponies.
It's always good seeing these little bits where Silver reminds her friends, she only seems sweet and innocent because 90% of the jokes and innuendo pass right over her head. Also showing off just what a pony tongue can do, good thing Meghan wasn't there at the time, she might have feinted. Or at least have gotten a nosebleed.
Also, always fun when renovations hide things, or you just have phantom stuff that either isn't on any chart, or should be there but isn't.
Yes, Silver you ARE an eternal optimist.
I'm not sure being a storm watcher is really an 'honor', or even THAT huge a deal. But it's adorable just how super serious she takes it.
The Abrams trek..... ehhhhh... It was a fun, mindless popcorn sci-f movie. But 'mindless' and 'popcorn sci-fi movie' are not what good trek is based off of. Also screw reboots. At least he did a decent job on Star Wars, till Ryan Johnson completely freaking shit all over everything.
8966966
Oh, yeah, there'd have to be. And they'd stick around until somepony else screwed up worse.
The parts guys at the dealership I used to work at would give out what they called the 'greenhorn' award when someone messed up (it was a pair of green horns in the parts office). They liked puns, if possible, so 'Neon Freon' Deon kept the award for quite some time . . . he opened an AC system that was still pressurized. I had the award, briefly, for managing to spill five gallons of used transmission fluid, then it got given to Rex 'Thousand Parts' who had them look up every single component to rebuild a manual transmission individually (apparently, GM didn't have a kit for that trans), and then he didn't sell the job.
I once told a guy who had worked in a foundry and knew what would happen to make sure to lube the fittings on the oxygen cylinder. He laughed, and then told me about the guy who had tried to run an impact gun off the oxygen line to the blast furnace. It ended about like you'd expect.
The key to a meritocracy is replacing the leader whenever somepony better comes along. And it probably only works well in fairly simple societies.
Way back in the early days of the show someone wrote an essay about how the ponies were racist because they had color discrimination, and I was like, "have you even seen the show?"
One of the conundrums of Silver Glow that many of her friend and classmates have had trouble figuring out--she's not some sweet and innocent pony by practically any definition of the words. She's seen all sorts of bad stuff, and she's certainly flown into weather that would make a professional pilot curl up into a ball. Sure, she's kind of adorably clueless when it comes to a lot of stuff on Earth, but in every other respect she's probably more mature than most of the college students.
It probably wouldn't surprise you to know that that's actually true. Perhaps by now they've found the missing circuits, but in my four years at K, they never did. We found a couple that were undocumented and in kind of weird places, but not all of them.
It's the pony condition.
I mean, for her it is. She gets to be up there in the weather, doing what she was born to do.
I'm not enough of a fan to really complain about the canon on Star Trek or Star Wars. I've watched some of the movies but not all of them, and I either liked them or not. For Silver Glow, it probably doesn't really matter how good they are--she's going to enjoy the eye candy and the imagination of the movie, plus bonding with her friends.