Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

A good weekend, just way too short. (Aren't weekends always too short?)

Good things, in a list:

- Watched the first seven episodes of Lost. Wow. I always forget how great the first season was. I've never gotten further than two or three seasons in, so I'm hoping to make it all the way this time. I know a few spoilers (including how the series ends/what the island was all about, if I'm correct about what I know), and the theme just works for me so very well. Do I need to put it behind a spoiler cut? When it's more than ten years old? Better safe than sorry, I suppose. If I remember correctly (don't correct me or confirm!), they did indeed end up having all died in the plane crash and the island was a purgatory sort of place. I love that idea so so so much!

These first episodes were genuinely creepy! The sound effects were so well done! When the monsters(?) shake the trees, there are odd metallic/industrial noises in the effects. It's just so jarring and odd and I love it to death.

- I'm afraid I have to just give up on Farscape for the near future. I tried watching it again this weekend, but it's just not a show you can multitask during. While that means it was a really good story, I cannot just sit there and stare at the screen and do nothing else. (Side note: I really want to see the new Jurassic Park movie in the theater when it comes out, but I don't know how I'll be able to sit there for two hours doing nothing else! Hopefully that I'll be in a theater will make a difference.)

- I got good RP, yay! More than that, I found a mature, experienced RPer, which is becoming more and more rare. RPers keep getting younger and less experienced (*cough* Really! It's not me getting older!), so it's getting harder and harder to find a good match for me to write with.

- The FFXIV benchmark came out this morning, and I was able to confirm that my new machine is indeed a monster. YAY! While there are a few people with a higher rating than mine, I'm perfectly fine with that. I'm usually in the "can barely run this" group of people, and now I'm near the top of the rankings. My new worry is that it will get stolen: I live on the ground floor, with a window RIGHT THERE next to my desk. Anyone could break in while I was away and steal it. :/ Unlikely, as my window faces our "quad" (grassy area where kids play and dogs crap), but it could still happen.

- I finally lost weight. After three weeks (gained a pound, stayed the same, gained pound) I lost five this week. That means in four weeks I lost five pounds. While isn't good (for me), it's better than the previous weeks had been. I'll take it. (I try not to worry how quickly the clock is running down. After surgery, you lose the most weight in the first six months, which are gone. Then the next six months it slows down but still happens. After a year, you're seriously going to be struggling to lose. I'm at 7.5 months, so my time is slipping quickly away.)

- I actually caught up on sleep this weekend, which was nice. Unfortunately my upstairs neighbors woke me at 4 AM this morning YET AGAIN, so I'm currently functioning on less than four hours sleep, which is not at all nice. Mumble grumble neighbors.

Edit: I feel like 2015 is my slowest year ever for reading. The book I'm reading now is really good, nearly perfect, yet... I lost my drive to read. Rarely in my life have I had a time where I just didn't feel like reading, so this is very strange. I've only finished eight books so far this year, so I'm pretty confident in saying that I won't be making my 50 book goal this year.

In 60 seconds, this video shows you what was considered 'beautiful' for each decade. An interesting watch!



In other news, I use reddit a lot. Mostly the FFXIV subreddit, but a few other small subreddits as well. It's a free site, but you can help support it by buying "gold" (paid account time) to give out to posts you like. I never really felt the need before, but I came across an especially amusing FFXIV one this morning, so I shelled out $4 x 3 so I'd have three months of paid membership to use or give out.

Unfortunately the site wasn't very clear, so I ended up buying one three month of paid membership instead of three one month ones. (You give out one month of paid membership when you like something, not multiple months.) So I hunted down a help email address for them and sent off an email.

The site is free, there's no membership charge ever (other than this optional gold), so I figured the customer support would be crap. I didn't expect to get a reply at all, and if I did I figured it would take weeks and they'd likely tell me they couldn't help.

I got a reply within an hour, fixing the issue.

I boggled. I don't get that good of support from companies I do real, paid business with!

Good work, reddit.

Bathing suit first: How lucky I got! I've not bought a bathing suit in 15-20 years, and the first one I buy (over the net, no less) and it's perfect. It's the oddest bathing suit I ever saw, but perfect -- if I had known it existed, I would have gone looking for one just like this.

Two pieces, but it's no bikini (thank every god above and below). If you didn't know it was a bathing suit, it would appear to be a dress and a pair of shorts. The dress part comes down to my knees (YAY), the shorts don't matter, since you can't see them. My only worry is that the dress part might float up. Hopefully it won't. Worse comes to worst, I'll somehow add a belt (haha). It's not tight/clingy, the dress part is a straight line down (when dry...). It couldn't be more perfect for hiding as much skin and shape as you can.

Birds: Nine out of ten birds do not approve of thistle seed. They toss it out of the feeder and make a giant mess all over the ground. You haven't seen a mess until you've seen thistle seed all over the floor! (Why yes, I do amuse myself with this.) I ended up throwing half a bag of it out.

Birds, continued: I noticed a bird was pecking my bird feeder. I went over to the window for a closer look, and saw a pretty little bird. Soft grey color with a crest on its head. I thought it might be a woodpecker (after pecking the (plastic) feeder for a while, it moved to my wooden fence and pecked more). Turns out it was a titmouse!

OMG! NWS! Tits-- Oh wait...

(As usual not my photo.)

Not only are they a pretty little bird, they mate for life! My bird identification site says they shouldn't arrive until May, but it's nearly that. It's so exciting watching to see what new birds will show up! And the old bird species are growing bigger, too. (I'm probably making them fat with an endless supply of seed...) The tiny little house finches who were my first visitors are now twice as big as they were when they arrived! Huh, their average lifespan is 9-10 years. That's a lot for a tiny little bird!

Edit: Not sure why the identification site said they arrive in May. Other sites say titmouses (titmice?) defend a territory all year.

Cooking success! Though there wasn't really all that much cooking involved, which might just be why it was a success. :P

Pepperoni Pizza Quesadillas.

The person wrote: " The key ingredient to making them so mouth-watering was pan-fried high-quality pepperoni to give each bite the crispy texture reminiscent of real pizza." That was so true. I've done this before without pre-cooking them (and using cheap ones) and it didn't come out well at all. These were the best thing I've eaten in ages.

I used this pepperoni, which cost twice as much as the brands I was more familiar with, but it was totally worth it. Most pepperoni is too spicy for me to eat, especially raw, but this stuff was yummy and not too spicy.

I'm so looking forward to making this again, and as I had to buy a package of pepperoni and tortillas, and open a new jar of sauce for this, I'll be making them again soon so I can use up those ingredients. Like tomorrow. :D

I have no idea how it works, but it was many times better than a great slice of pizza. Mmmm

*sniffles* I don't know why happy, hopeful videos always make me cry. I think something is cross-wired in my head.


(Work safe, though it is Burning Man, so there are a couple quick glimpses of scantily-clad people and suggestive positions.)

"Based on Dr. Seuss's final book before his death, this is a story about life's ups and downs, told by the people of Burning Man 2011."

This is just so sweet and positive and hopeful. I love everyone in the video. Every colorful, pierced, costumed, person in it.

So tired. I have no idea how I can both not sleep and get nightmares. Maybe three hours of very broken sleep last night, and in that time I had three nightmares, all basically the same. Ten people taken and placed on the block I grew up on, all had to kill each other, last one standing "wins" (gets to survive). As I don't fight, run slower than anyone, and have generally no survival skills, this game was really not very fun for me. In addition to the nightmares, I got up twice during the night to be sick. Stupid body.

Work was rough, then yay RP! Eeee! Basically all afternoon and evening I spent RPing, woot. :D Happy stuff!

And then the wonderful prettyredeyes drew Thistle for me! :O Suddenly I have more pictures of Thistle than any other character! (Even more than FFXI Thistle had, I bet!) You can see the small version in the icon, but look at the full sized version! Is he not cute as a button? :D And his hair is so perfect and I love the texture of the picture! And his armor makes me grin. :D

My sinuses are killing me today. I'm going to go to bed early, but I hope they don't keep me up.

Sometime during the day today I watched the mid-season finale of The Walking Dead. SO MUCH LOVE IT DESERVES ALL CAPS. Shane is the most interesting character ever. :D ( I suppose I should make a cut if I want to babble about it... (light spoilers?) )

[I started writing this post yesterday afternoon, then paused to do what I thought would be a couple minute RP scene. Six hours later it was midnight and well past my bedtime! ...ha, the first sentence of the post is now amusing.]

Slow night tonight, I've been catching up on all the shows I've Tivoed during the week. Big Bang Theory (SO GOOD), Mike and Molly (meh), and now last week's Two and a Half Men (blech).

As often happens in Two and a Half Men, someone's having sex. Loud sex. (Off screen of course, but loud.) I was playing with Ellie, dangling her favorite toy, and as the noises from the TV started she dropped it, sat up straight facing the TV, her ears pricked. She didn't look away until the scene/noises had ended. I've never seen her so interested in anything before, especially for so long a period.

My little cat is a perv!

Speaking of Two and a Half Men, the more I see of Ashton Kutcher, the less I like him. His looks, his voice, the way he killed the show... I used to get multiple laughs per ep, now I just sit and frown at the screen.

I have mixed hopes on the weekend's entertainment. Pocahontas (the Disney version) should be good, I loved it years ago. The TV shows are more questionable though. The Secret Circle (about witches) I'm wondering if it will be like that movie, the one with the teenagers from many years back. The movie was entertaining enough, maybe the show will as well. The other show is a long shot: Teen Wolf. See, I love werewolves, I have since I was a little kid, then damned Twilight came along and ruined anything vampire or werewolf related. I fully expect the show to be aimed at Twilight fans, so... likely going to suck. But I'll give it a try as time permits.

[Almost 24 hours later...]

It's been forever since I stayed up hours past my bedtime for RP. My poor brain is all fuzzy today! But I was still happy to be involved. :D

Clover hit 85 today, and needs only 3 more champ seals to be done with jousting forever, so it's time for him to retire to Dalaran and start his life as an AH mule. (Which means I can delete Dogcatcher and will finally have an alt slot free!!)

The thing is, now is the time to decide what to do about my Alliance guild. When worgen were announced, I grabbed the name <Team Jacob> , thinking it would be funny and amusing and ironic.

Instead everyone thought I was a Twilight fan. ><

I went on Trade briefly to try to sell it, but I've come to the conclusion that no amount of gold is worth spending time on Trade. I made a post on the official forums. If no one bites on that, then maybe... I hate to just delete it outright (er, if a guild can be deleted?), I don't know.

Which means, of course I need a new name. I thought of <The Speed of Dark> (book title + cool, but it might be too long, and it might become annoyingly emo). <Her Doxy> would be an amusing pairing to my Hordeside <His Doxy> guild. Plus is nice and short, and also has a great word (doxy!) and has the amusing racy undertone. I'd kind of like something new though. Hmm. Clover will be the only member in it, so:

Clover
<Four Leaf> ?

*ponders more* Anyone have other ideas?

Edits, so many edits: LJ hates pointy brackets, mistakes them for HTML code.

[Error: unknown template qotd]

I never do these Writer's Block questions. Heaven knows, I don't have writer's block when it comes to LJ -- I have to work hard to not post multiple times a day. However, this is a question I'd like to answer.

My first impulse was to be flippant. "I love how stable it is, the lack of downtime, the outstanding customer support!". I got over that fast though.

I love LJ. I love how it lets me stay in contact with people. All the FFXI people who I would have long since no longer been able to talk to. Fandom people. PokeMUSH victims staff and players. Heck, I still have anime people on my friends list (forever ago!). Random people I've met through talk of cooking and diet, friends of friends, artists, writers, people I know RL...

My journal was created on August 15, 2002. I've written 4,811 entries. But the most important stat? 39,636 comments received, 39,803 comments posted. That's what I love about LJ -- the interactions. The conversations. Conversations about the most important things in life, conversations about the silliest things (who wants a cute kitten video!).

LiveJournal is a big part of my life. Even just the act of writing posts often helps me feel better (and if worse comes to worst and it's too sad/negative to post, there's the 'private' setting so no one will see it but me).

In the last few weeks, I've had an influx of IC (in character/fictional) journals onto my friends list, which is just another dimension of enjoyment.

I may be the biggest introvert on the planet in RL, but through LJ I can meet new people and interact with anyone in a safe, comfortable way. Thank you, all of you on my friends list and anyone else who happens to know of my journal, for making my online life all the better. Thank you to LiveJournal as well.

Pride weekend was this week, yay! And I live less than an hour from San Francisco! All the news reports make me kick myself for not going, but I know how badly I'd flail in crowds that big. At least I got to watch it on the news, I was grinning from ear to ear during every report.

Only bad part of Pride was Chicago Pride Parade Float Tires Slashed In Possible Hate Crime.

Possible? Possible?

I'd like to think that one day all this hate will end, but there are still people out there who hate black people, so... :/

Edit: While I didn't go, at least I had an outstanding night at home. It's been a long time since a RP scene has been so great I was willing to lose sleep over it. Now I'm at that 'exhausted but hyper' stage. Must sleep! :D :D

Edit, next morning: ZZZZZ Why I can never sleep in is beyond me. I'm off today! No need to wake up and stay awake at the time I'd usually get up for work, stupid brain. zzzz

Historic Vote Makes Gay Marriage Legal in New York State!

I just wish California would hurry up and settle this. We should have been the first state!

In other news, got RP tonight, WOOT. Finished that scene from earlier this week. HAPPY! Must RP on WoW more though, been slacking off!

For some reason, RPing over IM gives me a massive eye strain headache. Trillian lets me adjust the font, but when someone uses AIM (like my RP partner), somehow it returns to the default (tiny) text. With other Trillian users it stays nice and big.

In cooking news, I'm looking forward to making last week's tomato sauce again tomorrow. I hope it comes out as well as it did last week! I've actually been thinking about it all week. Mmm.

In less good cooking news, I'm 0/2 on roasting green beans. I keep buying them and then forgetting (or not making the time to) make them. Blah. I feel silly buying them and letting them go bad! Just cook them, darned me!