Posting here mainly so I remember that I made the thing, and can refer to it for book-buying after Christmas:

Kaboodle wishlist


I went through a few different sites, and Kaboodle is definitely the best wishlist site. You can paw through their selections, OR, plug in a direct weblink to what you're looking at, and it'll pull in all the pictures and info you'd like to show up. Very cool. Also - other people can click and say they've bought something...which for some idiotic reason, many other sites DON'T have. Given that this is the main reason for using a website to make a wishlist, I found this rather odd.

(This will be an ideal place to make a gift registry, somewhere down the line... I keep hinting at Tom that we're coming up on five years now. It's about time my ring finger stopped being so naked, I think. ;)

Labels: life in general, product whoring, technology

 
New wallpaper! No particular reason. I was bored with my current one, and wanted to have something new I'd made myself - it's been awhile. So I flipped through my photo stash, and found a starfish shot I took at the aquarium on Long Island earlier this year. It had a nice composition.. and really a nice color.



See? pretty. But, not enough detail stayed put, the light in the place was so weird to try to work with, there was only so much I could do. Couldn't get the camera to focus properly to save my life.



The end result is not what I had in mind initially... but I didn't have much of a plan initially anyway. I wanted to add texture, something old-paper-ish.. but then a bit of tweaking revealed some tiny scratches on the aquarium glass, and I decided I liked those. They were too faint to really do much with, so I added more in toward the end. Photo is mine. Brushes (scratchies, swirly bits, etc) and textures (a pattern fill that's slightly in there, and a watercolor wash that's layered in) are from various sources. Handwriting is mine. ;)

The (purposely) faint writing is lyrics from The Church's "A New Season". (The album it's on is Starfish. Very creative, I know. ;p )

Shaded crystal water, bathed in by God's daughter
Sighing, whispers near, a new season passes here

Sensory gifts to all who come
Soak up the stars and setting sun

Labels: art, photos, wallpaper

 

Labels: nanowrimo

 
The (belated) Thanksgiving menu:

- Duck, with an orange sauce from the Good Housekeeping
- Sweet potatoes with marshmallows, from the Better Homes book
- Japanese-style Sesame Green Beans
- Pillsbury dinner rolls
- cranberry sauce (the whole-berry kind, which I added orange peel and some spices to)
- a very fruity semi-sweet white wine
- pumpkin pie (pre-made crust) for dessert


The duck? Was DELICIOUS, though inevitably messy. Tom's raving over it juuust about made up for the giblet issues.

I was planning to make Heidi's vibrant tasty green beans, buuut... Tom and I bought anise instead of leeks. Thank you Tops for not labeling your produce. (Fortunately, I have a favorite Heidi recipe involving anise, that I'd previously had to sub aniseed in. And it shouldn't be difficult to find a use for the fresh dill I picked up.)

It's VERY, very rare that I use something partially pre-made like Pillsbury, but, I had enough things to worry about (i.e., duck), that I didn't feel like messing with yeast dough, and I wanted something puffy rather than biscuity. And pie crust... is a lot of work. For something that you try to eat as little of as possible, especially with pumpkin pie. Tom and I agree pre-made was the way to go on that one.

Note to self: completely mash (possibly even puree) the sweet potatoes next time 'round. Also note that Tom haaates cloves, and can taste even 1/4 tsp. of them in cranberry sauce. xp

Also: need to find a different pumpkin pie recipe. Like fifteen minutes after it was supposed to be finished baking, the center was still a little wobbly. When we went to eat it...it was pretty soppy. Tasted yummy, but.. BHG's "Best Pumpkin Pie" recipe called for milk, while Good Housekeeping used evaporated - think the latter may be the way to go. (That, and I'm beginning to suspect my oven doesn't heat like it should.)

Despite the minor issues, everything was deliiiiiicious. Tom didn't eat the beans, but I didn't expect he would. He would have enjoyed the cranberries, if I'd remembered about cloves.

After serving the duck, and we'd both had some, he did kind of casually make the pan his plate, and pick everything he possibly could off the thing. A little caveman, yes, but also very cute and gratifying.

Labels: apartment, cooking, life in general

 
Cooking. whole birds.

FREAKING SUCKS.

Tom talked me in to trying to cook a duck for our belated Thanksgiving. I was skeptical. Tom has told me that even restaurants don't always cook them right. Y'know, places where people are PAID TO COOK THINGS RIGHT.

So not a good sign.

I was feeling a little better - just about everything else is ready, the other two things will take about ten minutes, just before eating.

But the duck was still pretty solidly frozen in the fridge. So I plunked it into a cold water bath. After an hour or two, it felt pretty thawed, and it was getting close to 3, when I wanted it in the oven.

So I take it out of the water, and out of the plastic, and try to wrestle the sauce packet out of "the cavity".

It was still a little frozen inside. At which point, I remembered there were "giblets" I was going to have to deal with.

I looked inside the cavity.

There was no happy little plastic package of giblets. Just a lot of icey red stuff clinging to the inside.

OH GOD.

Therein followed a lot of angry prying at things with a knife, and trying desperately to mentally use nice, unemotional terms like "giblets" and "cavity", instead of letting my brain try to help by imagining a duck, and where its various bits might be located.

There was a bit of feather quill stuck in what I soon realized was the thing's tail.

OH. GOD.

After a little while in the oven, I hauled it out again, and managed to remove what I hope is all the rest of the giblets. There were a lot of them. I have no idea if they're all out or not. The lovely little (non-photo) illustration in my Good Housekeeping book showed everything coming out in oooone niiiice eeeeasy little bundle.

Yeah, not so much.

At this point, I do not care how the duck tastes. I will slather it in orange sauce, and if that is insufficient, I will slather it in the packet of pre-made orange sauce too. All I care, is that MY HANDS WILL NEVER FEEL CLEAN AGAIN.

And that Tom take out the now-giblet-filled garbage today. ick ick ick.

Labels: cooking

 
HOLY SHIT I GOT TOM A 1ST EDITION STAR WARS BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was on etsy a few nights ago, poking around for Christmas ideas. I found some interesting things, including a book. One of the pre-movie releases of the novelization.

Tom had seen one of these once in a bookstore upstate somewhere years ago, and realized only later how INSANELY rare a find it had been. I'm not sure if the one I have in my lap right now is the same one or not, but...

It is from December 1976. First edition. George Lucas' name is given as the author (though it was actually ghostwritten.) Same cover as on the Star Wars wiki's entry. It's Ballantine Books, instead of Del Ray, and it's fairly beat up around the edges, but... Okay some googling tells me that the Del Ray book was out in November, so this isn't THE first, but, holy shit is it close.

And dude, I only paid $25.

I'm kind of spazzing. HOW IN HELL CAN I WAIT UNTIL CHRISTMAS!?!?


Having discussed some shipping cost questions with the seller, this morning I snagged a set of FOUR of the original Star Wars Burger King glasses. (One is a duplicate to one I've already gotten him, but, three more? all in one go? awesome.) My other awesome find was this.


I was looking for some interesting art, something more than just random Jedi fanart... and this totally nails it. Tom loves abstract simple geometric lines. And I think the design on this is pretty damn brilliant - such a few simple shapes, but it captures that opening shot SO well.


p.s. I LOVE ETSY. I reallyreally do. Not only are there amazing amounts of original artwork, some of it incredibly well-made, but the site works beautifully, their organizational system makes it actually plausible to shop for things, and the people on there... they really bring up my level of faith in humanity. For the book? I missed seeing a notice from the seller that I should have waited to pay until she sorted out sales tax, since we were both in NY. I usually pop over to paypal to send payment as soon as I click "buy"... but the girl was SO nice about it, and said it was no problem, she just sent a little like $2 bill to my paypal, I clicked okay, and we were good to go. I bought: 11/27. Book in my mailbox: 11/30. Carefully packaged and wrapped, pretty tissue paper, and a hand-written note from the seller. <333

Labels: art, books, life in general, product whoring, spazz, star wars geeking

 
You know, this whole being the oldest sister thing has really soaked into my psyche. I'm constantly playing the big-sister to people I know. This may be partly because I do find myself hanging around people younger than me - coworkers, lots of my friends in high school, etc. But whether I'm listening to one of the girls at work talking about her boyfriend, or one of the boys talking about some social drama, or just now, talking with DJ, who said he had planned to go to sleep, and I know from Tom that the kid hardly ever sleeps, so I get all "You goose, you're sleep-deprived often enough as it is. GO SLEEP!" and "But I'll be good and go write, if you'll be good and go sleep."

Tom thinks it's all a mothering-complex, but I think it's more of a big-sister thing. Either way, I'm such a gooshy little mother-hen sometimes it's ridiculous. I just see these little kids with problems and I have the psychological impulse to scoop them up, pat their heads, put them to bed and feed them soup and/or cookies.


...and then at the same time, aaany time I'm with a group of people, I wind up hanging around the outskirts of the group, just kind of watching and soaking things in, without actively participating much. (Take a look at any pictures other people post to facebook of me, and you'll see it.) Oh, contradiction-laden personality.

Labels: being social, navelgaze

 
I was going to be all ambitious today, given that my days off are going to be farther between for the next week or so (and my schedule extra-screwy, with Tom on day shifts for two weeks, and me on day shifts on weekends). I'm a smidge ahead on the novel, but I'd like to get a bit more ahead than I am..

But I'd left some notes around facebook, and DJ responded to them, and next thing I know we've been talking for an hour. Half on my wall, half on Tom's. (Tom may very well never notice this, I don't think he's done anything on facebook since he made the damn profile. Unless of course he gets updates emailed to him...in which case he's going to come home and flip out because there are like 30 posts to his wall. lmfao.) He's a very cool person to talk to - the same kind of nice, open, rambling conversations I miss from college. (And lord knows Tom's talked to me about DJ anough that I feel like I've known the kid as long as he has! Which feels much longer than it is, because the two of them really do think a lot alike.)


i'd rather laugh at everything, then be angry ever

(I am posting that here, because it really struck me, it's an absolutely wonderful outlook to have. I'm a little jealous that he manages to actually live by it as well as I think he does.)

Labels: being social, friends, life in general

 
This is going to be short, because I'm too lazy to plug in the laptop, and its battery life is... well, an hour and a half tops, when I'm only typing, with no wifi/networking enabled. ha.

I worked normal-people hours, while Tom's working his normal night shift, so after work I went over to Tim Horton's to write for a few hours, and finish catching up for the week. (Also, I will need to get a bit ahead, with Thanksgiving and some other things looming.) But I am SUPER happy with what I wrote today, I'm actually terribly amused by the banter among the historical society members.

Yes, historical society members. Sounds dull, I know, but who else is going to know all the hundred-year old gossip?? They're awesome. And I get to flesh out my backstory, huzzah!!!


While I was sapping Tim Horton's electricity (offset by the coffee, soup & bagel, then hot smoothie & donut I bought - it was dinner-ish time, and I need to munch when writing), I got a phone call. Actually, I should back up a bit. Did I mention that Tom and I went to Dave & Buster's again the day after I went with the Paper Factory crew? We did. I was talking to Tom about it, and he got all excited, and, discovering we both had the next day off, we decided to go. We also decided it would be more fun with more people, so in the end, he got his buddy DJ to come, and I got Mel to meet us up there.

Jokingly, Tom and I threw around the idea of trying to set the two of them up. We thought this was hilarious - really, Tom, a matchmaker? Terrifying. And funny as hell.

But then when we all got there... the two of them genuinely seemed interested in each other. It was really freaking cute. Cuter still, was later in the week, when Tom got obsessive texts from DJ about Mel, and I was getting texts from Mel about DJ, and Tom and I were sitting in the same room sharing notes on the whole situation.

(Finally, we got them to exchange phone numbers, so they could waste each others' minutes instead of just ours.)

So the two of them have been talking all week. They're both somewhat spazzy, but deep-down really good, kind people. Neither one has the attention span of a gnat. Tom and I are endlessly amused by all the shy little cautious repartee that the kids trade back and forth, instead of just being blunt like he and I are now. It's freaking adorable to watch.

So. DJ, wanting an excuse to visit Mel, sees on Facebook that she has a band concert today. He decides to go. Now, I had heard Mom mention that she might go to the concert, but that she wasn't sure she was going to make it. I decide this might well make the already-nervous DJ not go, and anyway I'm not sure, so I keep my mouth shut. (The kids need to handle their own relationships, Tom and I will be there for each of them and give advice, but we're making sure they run their own affairs here.)

Now, DJ is a pretty attractive kid. Even Tom is always going on about DJ's absurd powers of attraction over women. (For which Tom gets all kinds of gay jokes from me, ha.)

[plugging in the laptop because I'm enjoying this story too much to stop now.]

DJ, however, is a fan of anime, and must know a bunch of girls who are as well. He also lived in Japan for a handful of years, not sure if this has affected his viewpoint. As Tom has told me numerous times, DJ likes playing up the image of the cute anime boy. Sometimes this means good things like wearing tiny little clingy black t-shirts. (This happened one day at work, and the conversations Tom related to me when he came home were insanely entertaining, consisting in large part of Tom saying he could well be gay for DJ. Or at least that's the impression I insisted upon getting, because it makes Tom feel so awkward. ;)

Most of the time, however, it also means he spikes his hair. And not your normal little emo-kid mini-spike. We're talking all-out, electrocution-style spike, hair sticking out like four, five inches from his head all over. Sometimes with a long bang combed diagonally down.

This works in drawings, and it works in anime. It's a bit of a shock to walk into the Fredonia Applebee's, and see this skinny but muscular 21-year old boy leap out of a booth, literally bouncing in place, waving like a maniac, with electrocuted hair, "TOM! TOM! I'M RIGHT HERE! TOM!!!". At a distance of maybe six feet from you.

That is DJ.

He's an incredibly sweet kid, but he is also somewhat insane. Half puppy-dog, half hummingbird.


SO, to finish the story I actually meant to tell. While sitting at Tim Horton's, I get a phone call from my mom. She just got the shawl I made her for her birthday, and absolutely loves it, which makes me really, really happy. :) After talking for a few minutes, she tells me she and grandma went to Mel's concert today. "Oh, and I got to meet DJ."

Mom. AND GRANDMA. Met DJ.

Apparently, they saw him before they met up with Mel. (DJ is rather hard to miss.) Grandma spotted him, and said "What is that???"

This is where I started totally losing it in the middle of Tim Horton's.

Mom rather calmly explained that well, they were on a college campus, kids do all kinds of crazy things... And then Mel came over. And then DJ came over, and she introduced them.

Oh, that poor, poor boy... but I've been giggling to myself every five minutes for what, the last two, three hours now? just trying to picture Grandma seeing this kid. oh my dear lord. I called Mel after talking to Mom, and suggested that she call DJ and reassure him a bit, because I can only imagine how totally freaking panicky he'd get from meeting a girl's family like the second time he even saw her. She told me that she actually had left him some kind of message already, which eased my mind a bit.

On Tom's dinnerbreak, we traded the sides of the story we'd each heard. I freaking love stories. Between that and just a touch of facebook-stalking (I refuse to feel guilty if people have things posted right on their walls - there are options for private conversations, if people talk in public, and I happen to read things sometimes before I even realize what I'm reading...), it looks like all is well so far. And I may actually get to see my sister a little more often thanks to all of this. :)

Labels: being social, family, life in general, nanowrimo, silliness, storytime, writing

 
DEEENNY'S LEEEEAVES THEIR WIIIIIIFI OPEN, DEEEEENNY'S LEEEEEAVES THEIR WIIIIIFI OPEN!!!!!

(And they're JUST close enough to Tim Horton's, where I am curled up with coffee and much novel to write, that I can jump on their signal. mwahahahahhaha.)


...admitedly, this is freaking crazy. I'm in Fredonia, the back-end of nowhere for tech things. And yet here there are like SIX OR SEVEN wifi networks, most weak, but within range of my wimpy lil laptop. Most are locked, which is a surprise, but something I have to approve of. They're not stupid people.

But Denny's... Denny's I can borrow. I feel like Tom. ^~_~^

Labels: nanowrimo, silliness, technology

 
Kellie wanted to hear the costume-theft story. :)


So, it was either Halloween or the day before Halloween, I forget which offhand. Both days were equally nutzoid at The Paper Factory. I was behind the register at the time, helping the kids running register keep up - checking to make sure all the costumes we sold had the right parts in the package, bagging up rental costumes, running off copies of paperwork. It was during the afternoon, so eeeeveryone was working, all the adults and experienced people were in the basement - even Chad (who rarely works up in the front of the store) was going between the registers downstairs and upstairs, directing traffic when needed.

At one point, I heard someone near the check-out line being rather loud, and looking up, I saw Flyer (one of the grown-ups) standing beside a rather large black woman, who looked defensive. I heard something like "don't you touch me!", and next thing I knew, the woman was running up the stairs past Chad, with Flyer not far behind her, yelling for Bruce to call the police, telling Chad to follow her - "she's got a costume".

There was a good bit of confusion for awhile, everyone wondering what was going on, and half the grown-ups disappeared. Five minutes later, Flyer came over to the desk and asked if any of us had the keys to the dressing rooms. "No... Mac had them."

Sue Mac (another grown-up), in the heat of the moment, had gone after the woman with the costume.

Sue Mac had, in her hands, the keys to the dressing rooms. Halloween afternoon. One of the four rooms was unlocked, the rest locked to prevent college girls from going in unsupervised and snagging costumes.

As you can imagine, mild panic ensued.


Later, I got the full story:

Flyer had been by the dressing rooms at the time, though Mac had the keys. The afore-mentioned black woman had gone into the dressing room with I believe three costumes - some of which were obviously not the right size for her. (This is never a good sign, we had another incident this season with customers taking wrong-size costumes into the dressing rooms, but we watched like hawks to make sure nothing vanished.) When she came out of the dressing room, Flyer noticed that, while the woman handed back one costume, she was still carrying two packages - and they were empty. The bags had the cover-sheet, showing the picture of the costume, facing out, so it wasn't immediately obvious that the bags were empty, but Flyer is sharp. :)

She walked up to the woman, and asked where the costumes were. She made some excuse, her daughter had them, or she'd given them back, or something, but Flyer demanded to see the costumes that went with the empty bags. Seeing that the woman was getting antsy, Flyer put a hand on her arm - this was the part where I heard "don't you put your hands on me!", but apparently I missed the "bitch!" that was attached to the end of the exclamation.

Obviously, this set off alarm bells for Flyer. The woman pulled away, and took off up the stairs. Mac took off after her, and Chad followed as well, while Ann found Bruce and they called the police.

The next parts, I never heard told consecutively, but as near as I can make out:

The woman took off running across the street. It is not a quiet street. Just as she ran across the road, a giant truck came barrelling out of the intersection, around the corner and onto the street she was running on - it honked, and wasn't that far from hitting her. Mac, not far behind, apparently flung her arms out to the sides, gesturing for traffic to STOOOOP!!! as she jogged across the road.

Rumor has it that people leaned out their windows and cheered her on.

The woman kept running down the road, pausing briefly at Burger King, then seeing Mac was still following her, kept going. The two of them ran all the way down to Denny's... (According to google, this is just shy of half a mile. The black woman was..fairly hefty. Mac is not exactly a skinny teenager herself. I know I'd have been seriously winded myself.)

Meanwhile, in our parking lot, a subplot developed:
Unbeknowst to me, a day or two before, Flyer and Mac had been keeping an eye on some sketchy looking customers in the basement. They were suspicious enough about something or another to follow the customers outside, and take a peek at their car's license plate.

Once this woman took off, Flyer went out to the parking lot, to see if that car was there - some of the girls in the group looked familiar. The girls that had been with the woman came out of the store, and Flyer confronted them. "Were you with her?" "No! No, we don't know her at all..."

There's a Wendy's right next door to us - the girls took off toward *that* parking lot. Flyer followed, and sure enough, the car with that license plate was there, and the girls piled into it, then took off after the woman.

Chad, meanwhile, having a slightly saner mind than Mac, had gotten into his truck to follow the woman.

When he reached Denny's, he found Mac screaming at the woman, and claims he had to physically haul her back before she did something really rash. The police had caught up by this point, and were not at all surprised by the situation (everybody knows everybody in this town).

...I'm not entirely sure the resolution of the story, but we did indeed get the costume back, and Mac and Chad reigned as heroes for the rest of Halloween. At Dave and Buster's, the story was the highlight of the evening, with Ann pantomiming Mac stopping traffic, and Chad mimicking her shouting match with the thief.


The most ridiculous part of the whole thing? It couldn't have been more than a $30, $35 costume.



I find this totally not worth an arrest. We had so many cuter (and more expensive) costumes! wtfh.

Labels: life in general, silliness, storytime, work

 
Posting this here so I can find it later to show Tom. (And on the off-chance anyone else is geeky enough to get it and have a few giggles.) The Babel Fish on my laptop [the program is called Wanda I think, but I re-named the fish - it's a random fortune/quote generator for linux] spat it out at me while at Starbucks novelling, and I had to be good and not giggle out loud, and risk scaring the swarm of music kids at the table next to me.


      Seems a computer engineer, a systems analyst, and a programmer were driving down a mountain when the brakes gave out. They screamed down the mountain, gaining speed, but finally managed to grind to a halt, more by luck than anything else, just inches from a thousand foot drop to jagged rocks. They all got out of the car:
      The computer engineer said, "I think I can fix it."
      The systems analyst said, "No, no, I think we should take it into town and have a specialist look at it."
      The programmer said, "OK, but first I think we should get back in and see if it does it again."

Labels: silliness, technology

 
KEEPING THIS SHORT, I swear, I'd like to get some writing done at least before I conk out tonight.

Today was the Paper Factory trip to Dave & Buster's, which was freaking amazing. Ann and Bruce decided to treat the entire Halloween crew, which was absolutely incredible of them. So after the store closed up at 4 today, we all gathered in the parking lot, and piled into the balloon delivery van and A&B's SUV. Those of us that had worked today were struggling to stay awake on the drive up, but I managed to get some work done on a rush crochet project.

Most of us had never been to Dave & Buster's, but, it was pretty darn awesome. Even more awesome, because Bruce was ridiculously generous. We had a whole little party room for just us, they gave us surprisingly yummy food (chips and dip, chicken fingers, these amazing mini-pizzas, that sort of thing). Bruce specifically told us that anyone legal could have whatever drink they wanted - poor Sam, who's newly 21, begged me and Ashley (the only other two "kids" who are legal) to sit with her at the young'ins table so she wouldn't feel so awkward. I had no idea what to ask for, since I'm not big on beer, but Sam saved me with the suggestion of a rum and coke, which Tom and I have found we really like.

Through most of dinner, the grown-ups involved in the costume-theft bust told a very dramatic (and hysterical) version of the story, which was awesome. As one of the other girls pointed out to me, Halloween stories are so much better outside of the store, and after the fact. (Not quite so kosher to be THAT blunt about your customers when you're in the store. ;)

And theeeen, there were the games. HOLY CRAP. I haven't been in a place with that many games...probably since Chuck E. Cheese. Sam and I were totally psyched to go find DDR... but it was awhile before we spotted it. And then! It wasn't DDR, but... crap I've forgotten already. I have a hunch it was a version of "Pump it Up" (the thing looked pretty much like this), because the arrows? WERE ALL ON THE CORNERS. Diagonal arrows. I was confused as hell, I've neeever played one of those before! The first few tries were pretty atrocious - but I was still better than poor Sam. ;) I played a few more solo rounds, determined to get my head wrapped around it, and after a few songs, I had it down fairly well. Managed an A on a 5. :) 6s were iffy, and one 7 that I really liked the song to, I think I managed to pass. Played again later with one of the new boys, and he actually did pretty well.

But Mac took pictures of me playing. I am freaking terrified. I had a whole little crowd of onlookers, the grown-ups were all totally bewildered by my ability to play this thing.

I did have one of the Guitar Hero obsessed kids run me through a game of that - and once I got the hang of hitting the strum-button at the same time as the fret-buttons, it was actually pretty fun. The way the sound in the game is manipulated, getting *so* much louder and fuller when you're playing correctly, is absurdly rewarding and goes a long way toward making it addictive I think. (The theory, though, is DDR, only without flailing like an idiot. I understand why it's as big as it is.)

Lots of Skee-ball, some other random games... lots of the silly "stop the light at the number to win buttloads of tickets!1!!" games, which I always fail at. Ashley and I played a round of an alien-shooting game - and were glad that a) we could tell our gamer boyfriends we played something they would find fun, and b) that said boys were NOT there to witness the atrocity of us playing. It was freaking bad.

BUT, while everybody else was playing those silly games where you drop a coin in, and hope the moving metal shelves push coins down into the basin to get you tickets (which they were MASSIVELY addicted to, though watching, I couldn't quite see why)... I found the retro games. ^_______^ Sadly, not the original arcade boxes, but a re-release of them, bundling 2-3 games in each case. But! I GOT TO PLAY SPACE INVADERS. On an arcade machine. It was AWESOME. (And seriously freaking difficult!!! I tried like six times, and the closest I got to beating the FIRST level was like, four aliens left on the screen.) Also played some Pac-Man, which I was totally rocking.

When I mentioned to the grown-ups later that I'd found these, they all flipped out and were upset that they hadn't seen them (we'd all cashed in our tickets and were on the way out at this point). Chad used to play Centipede obsessively, and Ann was addicted to PacMan. Ann! I would never have guessed.

...so, end of the evening, everyone was piling up their tickets. They give out these oversized paper cups to carry your tickets in, and everybody's was overflowing. One girl had two cups, both overflowing. (Bruce... had been more than generous in buying all of us game cards with a looot of credits on them. And then gave out second ones! Absolutely amazing of him.)

Everyone else had totals in the thousands (each ticket was 2 points) to spend. I think the evening's record was 18,000, by Eric, who was massively determined to amass tickets. Me? I had 102. lmfao. It was ridiculous. But the DDR game and retro games didn't give out tickets! And the games where you have this iiiitty bitty chance of scoring big just don't interest me, I so rarely win. What I did win, for the first time in yeeeears, was the crane game. So while all I could afford in the ticket redemption area were two tiny pieces of candy, I have myself the most adorable little frog plush. (It's definitely supposed to be a baby toy, but I refuse to care. He has overalls and he's adorable.)

We all played the name game the whole way home (me giving "Micky Dolenz" was followed by a grown-up giving "Davy Jones", which so made my night). And then a few of us girls swung by Burger King, where they currently have BIRTHDAY CAKE SUNDAE MILKSHAKES which are freaking amazing. On the drive from there to my apartment, Sam cranked up "Mmmbop", and we both sang along at the top of our lungs, which was totally the perfect end to the evening. (The one bizarre part though.. also in the car was one of the new girls. The song started playing, and she wasn't sure she knew it. "Oh, you've definitely heard it before... though you might have only been like four," I told her. Once we reached the chorus, she answered, "Oh yeah, I've heard this... but I really do think I was about four." OH GOD feeling so old.)


So, it was a veeeeery good day, but I am tired as hell. I don't think I'll write much today - my whole getting-ahead of schedule was intended to cover me yesterday (when I had to go to sleep early) and today. But I might try to write a little bit of my scene with the semi-crazy psychic. :)

Labels: being social, ddr, life in general, product whoring, silliness, travel, work

 
Oh, Sigur Rós, I forgot how easily you make me cry...

Flipping through a few songs on shuffle on the iPod, I landed on a live version of "Viðrar vel til loftárása" (which, hey! I still spelled right on the first try! but I don't know the codes for special characters on linux...), a concert I downloaded ages ago but had never listened to.

It starts out so light and sweet, there's a long silence before the piano gently comes in... a verse or two is played, a sweet purity in the song, and then the band goes silent. For a long, long time. The crowd stays silent, then applauds, then is silent...

And the band suddenly flies into the second portion of the song, the part where everything opens up and expands, the strings rush in like waves on the shore, and everything just soars up into the stars...

And then it closes with just a few strings, gently playing, as a lullaby.


...I sat there for a few minutes afterward, tears in my eyes, asking myself how people had found themselves able to applaud, to yell approval, when all I could do was sit here stunned and breathless, crying at the sheer ecstatic beauty of the song.


I haven't watched the video in a few years, and it's stunning, so heartbreaking and haunting... and I need to go watch it again now.

(And then I'll churn out today's 1,667 words. promise.)

Labels: art, music, sigur ros

 
Cross-posting from the NaNo blog, because I don't blame anyone for not slogging through that blog, and I think the content is relevant to everybody. :)


I love Chris Baty.

For the uninitiated, Chris Baty is the crazy who started this whole whirlwind adventure that calls itself NaNoWriMo. And every week, of every November, he sends out pep talk emails, which always lead to both giggles and warm fuzzies of camaraderie and encouragement.

Closing this week's:

"I didn't say this in the Week One pep talk because we'd only just met and there's really only so much cornball sentiment from a random guy on the internet that anyone should have to tolerate in one month. But here's the truth: You have a book in you that only you can write. Your story matters. Your voice matters. The world will be richer for you seeing this crazy creative escapade through to 50,000 words.

This may be hard to believe given the craptastic state that many of our manuscripts are in. But there are great, unexpected things ahead for you in Weeks Three and Four. And there is someone out there who has been waiting their whole life to read the book you're writing now."


That... is exactly why I drag myself through the slog of 50,000 words every November. Because I think (I hope) he's right. And not just about me, but about everybody - everyone views the world from a different place, with different eyes, seeing different hues of every color in the world.

So, yay for Chris Baty. <3

Labels: art, nanowrimo, navelgaze, writing

 
My brother was on the news! They show him designing parts and it's pretty awesome.

(...just look for the kid with the beard. ;)



link to the article

Labels: family