Yatsumi v 2.0 is officially spreading the gospel of her boot up someone's ass. Aion released today, and so I was able to put in my awesome serial code, my digital collector's edition upgrade (suck it, Game Stop), and set up my payments so I don't have to keep mucking about with game cards. Yats is ascended and level 12 and OMG I MISSED BEING ABLE TO PWN THINGS. Gladiators kick ass.

There will probably be screenshots and other sundry images later when I'm done drooling.

Symantec has also generously let people beta test Norton 2010 for free, so I'ma go install that. Booyah.

And then I shall knit!

The Crud is mostly gone but now I have post-nasal drip on a scale I haven't had since I was a little girl. I'm seriously staring down the barrel of at least a week of hacking cough. NOT FUN.

And now I'm going to bed because omg tired. Stupid hacking cough.

Dragon chart, homes.

OMG GAIZ I OFFICIALLY HAVE A FEVER.

So I am officially STAYING THE HELL HOME tomorrow with this crud thing. Since usually when I get sick my temperature goes DOWN and not UP.

And my brains always goes first, which is why I am LOVING THE CAPSLOCK RIGHT NOW.

Peace y'all.

I've managed to completely destroy an attempt at making the "easy" french apple tart in the Barefoot Contessa book I have. It's my first actual total destruction of a Barefoot Contessa recipe-- I've managed to screw them up, but at least the screw ups were edible.

My apartment smells of burnt sugar and I am zapping a TV dinner for dinner. (Thankfully, that was my plan to begin with.)

I do believe I might have to leave the complicated stuff to the pros, at least until I can get to a place where the oven/stove is not freaking tilted.

Seriously, it's not level and all the butter and sugar in the tart ended up sliding into one corner and turning into gunk. I didn't notice how much of it had migrated until the end since I've gotten so used to the sight of something gooking up in one corner of a pan. I may in fact need a new baking sheet if all that carbonized sugar can't be removed. :|

On the plus side, I have ice cream still and the local store of grocery does have a mean baking department so I might be able to fulfill my cravings for something appley after all. Maybe I'll even go all out and get an apple pie.

I am taking the plunge and posting pictures of myself on the internet. In my Flickr of all places!



It's a year old since I have very few actual pics of myself, let alone ones that turned out fabulous. I'm usually behind the camera annoying the crap out of everyone.

On the other hand, I got rid of my Facebook a couple of days ago. I made it back when Facebook first started and was limited to people on college campuses, went through the obligatory rush of friending and joining groups, and then proceeded to ignore the thing for years since I had other things to do besides yawp around on Facebook. And then I deleted it since I couldn't remember who half the people I friended even were and most of the people I did know hadn't updated in a couple of years either.

I am considering creating a brand new account and going from there, just because it appears to be a pretty big shiny deal these days, but we'll see. I'd rather whine about my life in my journal most of the time like I did back when I was a stupid young thing. (Though admittedly, I didn't even start online journaling until I started college, so I managed to skip most of the worst of the Teenaged Angst phase.)

Anyone else on Facebook and actually use it? I could use some of the down-low.

Also: the floor at work is killing my feet. Man what a difference being on the ground floor makes!

• 21:21 I can has bugbite on my foot? WTF?!
• 23:09 I just finished the 50 book challenge! And it's only August!

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• 16:55 is.gd/2CyIG In case anyone wonders why I changed the licensing on my flickr, the link is why. No assholes allowed to use my pics!
• 18:40 So I made pork chops. And they weren't cooked through. And then I zapped them. They were tasty.

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Hi, I am still alive!

Work is going worklike. I'm staying late most days finishing things, since there was some wonderful copier drama that's still sort of sorting itself out.

I am going to knit myself a new scarf. I bought yarn and needles today and I'm partway through making yarnballs. If I'm lucky I might get things cast on and get the first row done tonight.

Had a minor scare with the heater, so I ended up doing something grownup and getting myself renter's insurance finally to cover my stuff. Everything's fine-- it was a non-gas weird smell that the maintenance guy said was most likely some dust or something falling and getting toasted by the pilot light. Which has, by the way, been shut down until I need it when it actually gets chilly, just to be on the safe side. The smell's gone now after I aired the place out, but it was still quite a bit of a scare.

Renter's insurance is actually remarkably cheap, though I am probably going to cry when I see my credit card bill at this rate. :|

And now I am going to go play with yarn and sleep, since tomorrow is another day.

• 17:43 ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzz I wish I could get my sleep figured out already.

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• 17:00 I got about five hours of sleep last night. D:
• 17:04 Watching a cat take a nap is one of the sleepiest things in the world.
• 20:43 Just bought books for my class. Barnes and Noble is awesome. I get free expedited shipping and a discount!
• 21:41 I'm reading a knitting wank and kind of wanting to knit something.
• 22:44 Here's hoping I don't end up staying up stupid late again tonight.

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• 20:28 I came home and made fruit salad. Now I am sticky.

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• 00:29 is.gd/2sSpk TOE SOCKS! That is all.
• 13:42 @holyjezebel Yay!
• 13:43 Going to head for the Great White North for laundry and tomatoes. Ciao.

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• 01:35 #howmanypeople copypasta the same nonsensical stuff to get their names in a trending topic?
• 16:25 Ow. Thunderstorms! D:
• 16:39 @rinbunny Been going a couple hours, but I was at work w/no twitter to complain about 'em.
• 16:40 @holyjezebel yay?
• 16:42 @holyjezebel I like thunderstorms but they make my ankle hurt. D:
• 16:52 Ohgod the Cataclysm leaks were true. So glad I'm switching MMOs.
• 17:13 @holyjezebel is not too bad-- it's been like that for ages so I'm used to it.
• 17:24 is.gd/2spiO I made a Tasty Kitchen. ok so it was a couple days ago.
• 19:09 braaaaaaaaaains
• 19:33 @holyjezebel Aion. There's even a #Aion hashtag and the open beta info is going to be out sometime in the next week or so.
• 19:47 @holyjezebel I pre-ordered it a few weeks ago so I got to do CB. It was awesome.
• 21:21 is.gd/2sBlC I had a good rant and I feel a bit better now.
• 22:25 Miso has figured out how to jump on me in the computer chair. This can only end in tears.
• 22:26 @holyjezebel *hugs*
• 22:33 @holyjezebel D: I can't imagine how much that sucks. I use a calculator all the time and I still sometimes screw up.
• 23:06 @holyjezebel I spent two months trying to figure out what was up with my account once. B| So you are not alone there.
• 23:12 @holyjezebel Yeah, the month after everything balanced ok. But I was paranoid after that.

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• 00:02 YAY I am doing Rifftrax Live tomorrow! ^_^
• 00:34 bit.ly/2VOlo Rep Ben Frank, ILU SO MUCH.
• 01:26 Tasty Kitchen is interesting to play with.
• 23:27 Rifftrax Live = Teh Win. I hope they do another sometime.

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• 00:52 LOL RT @BadAstronomer: Congrats to @scalzi for landing the script deal with Warner Bros for "Bacon: The Musical". Awesome. #annoyscalzi
• 12:33 Killed morning sleeping and having crackdreams about cell phone calls. Also got called a lot. O.o
• 13:59 YAY CRABS!
• 23:34 Yay crabs and ice cream for dinner. My hands are cut up and I'm half food-comad.
• 23:45 bit.ly/6dcWT I waaaaaaant to goooooooo. It's at a nearby theater!

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• 00:03 I love tea. I'm drinking chamomile to offset the chai so I can sleep tonight. XD
• 09:21 Braaaaaaaaaaains
• 13:55 I think I've almost gotten the brew for the chai tea down. You def need a tablespoon per cup, not a teaspoon.
• 15:08 @holyjezebel I'm of the impression that the teavana teas vastly underestimate amounts/brewing times on the packaging. YMMV, tho.
• 15:10 I totally forgot how completely random Adam Sandler's Turkey Song is. Don't ask.
• 15:16 WTF random mentions?
• 16:18 @holyjezebel If it helps, I used a tablespoon/8oz and brewed it for a couple minutes more than the package. Was subtle not overpowering.
• 16:20 Discovered program setting on camera. Never going back to auto.
• 16:44 Douche brings gun to Obama town hall in AZ: is.gd/2nfH4 I remember when Dubya arrested people for wearing the wrong shirt.
• 17:06 is.gd/2nheF Bouncy balls make it all better.
• 19:29 I hate power blips. It's been storming a couple hours out here already, and almost stopped dinner. (lectric stove grrr)
• 19:35 Yay new people. Hello, new people.
• 19:40 @holyjezebel Obviously the answer to #howgoodisgod is 42.
• 20:06 ARGH electric spikes meffed up my interbutt. D:
• 20:07 #howgoodisgod The answer is 42, duh.
• 23:30 Wow, twittenesis really works. Only it totes messes up the timestamps on my tweets. I think it might be on GMT.

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I hate it when I get a good buzz going from tea. It makes me want to do crazy things at stupid o'clock at night.

I want to cook something!

I actually have planned a pasta dish for tomorrow. Bowties and vodka sauce and chicken and peas. I kind of want more peas than the small amount of leftovers, though. I figure I might pick up some frozen ones since they're just going to simmer in the sauce once I get the chicken cooked up. I should also probably drink the wine we have sitting around with it, since otherwise it'll go vinegar again.

I have nearly mastered the art of egg-in-a-basket. I think I need to let the bread toast longer next time, but I actually got cooked eggs with runny yolks this time without a mess. I love runny yolks. And the cage-free eggs I found at the grocery were totally worth the extra money-- they went down smoooooth.

I also kind of want to make Thanksgiving dinner. Which will be interesting considering I'm also considering moving at about the same time assuming the rent prices are decent. We're really hoping The Girl has her big job down by then so we can move in together, despite the extra headache that would be with juggling all her crap and all mine. I was thinking of making chicken instead of turkey because really everyone loves chicken better. I bet if I got switched to cooking a couple hours in advance I could get us Thanksgiving dinner and get moved! (Heck, I could probably pull it off in my stupid tiny kitchen if I stay stuck in my crackerbox.) I am ridiculously enthusiastic about this.

It's the tea, man.

• 01:55 I love random twitter following, really.
• 19:02 I am the most boring person in the universe. XD
• 00:03 I love tea. I'm drinking chamomile to offset the chai so I can sleep tonight. XD

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It's been one of those lovely whirlwind weekends.

I got to see Ponyo on Friday night, in a teensy little projection room with a bunch of other hardcore Miyazaki fans since it was the 9 PM showing.

Saturday was mostly spent cleaning and trying to assemble a bookcase. Moose ended up called, and so I took us out for dinner at Applebees and had a pretty nice few hours chattering.

Sunday was spent shopping. I started out being good, since the whole reason we went out in the first place was so I had a chance to trade in a bunch of DVDs for some cash. Then The Girl and I both got dresses for katimus_prime's upcoming wedding, which then led to me needing dressy shoes. And then I remembered that I had my birthday gift for Bath and Body Works, so I got myself another bottle of perfume (I love the neroli jasmine). And since I wanted a bigger teapot we impulsively went to the other mall and got a teapot. And about a pound of whole leaf tea (split evenly between a mate/chai blend and a really fruity roobois blend for iced tea). And since our tea guy knew The Girl, we scored a tea blossom~! And I went by the Lush and got another face mask and a new bath bomb. And then we went home and I made us a steak dinner and taters and the iced tea. :D

I'm kind of grateful it's a quiet Monday. My last for a long while since work finally resumes next Monday, but yay for paychecks! And I've decided I'm taking my vacation days this year. So I'll probably sit down with a calendar and spread them in there so I can get the paperwork up and done. (I'm trying to be good and not take a day off after the Aion release. I did actually get a chance to play some on the beta and it was zomg fun.)

The rest of the family might be up this week and I have laundry to do. And more iced tea to make. Ah chores.

Via jadey via Random Interest Search:

A brave blogger has been tirelessly working to uncover the horrific child abuse behind Attachment Therapy which is often prescribed for Reactive Attachment Disorder, a real medical condition that a lot of quack therapists have jumped on as an excuse to exploit parents and children who are in the middle of a rocky relationship.

This blogger is a survivor of Attachment Therapy and she seeks other survivors as she tries to make her blog the first thing someone googling the terms finds so that parents can learn the truth before they get suckered into paying thousands of dollars for the privilege of letting some sadistic asshole torture their children. (I shit you not, this stuff kills kids.)

She's recently been locked out of being able to post to her blog after one of the quacks went after her for copyright infringement.

Do your part to help, and spread the word around, yo. Even a simple Googlebomb on y'all's part could save the life of a vulnerable child and the soul of his or her confused and hurting parents.

I changed my layout again. It's purple and argyle now, and by cimorene which is awesome if only because Cimorene is the name of the princess from The Enchanted Forest Chronicles and thus one of my role models growing up.

Actually, she was the topic of the essay I wrote to get into undergrad. Funny how small the world is.

CDs come in an awful lot of packaging.

In part eleventy-billion of the housecleaning wars, I tackled the mass of CDs I have managed to stash everywhere. All but two classical sets and an audiobook went into the massive CD keeper I got while in high school, since I didn't have room for a lot of CDs when I was living with my parents.

Holycrap what a difference. Though now the junk box is full of plastic CD cases. The CDs and the little books they come with are in the keeper, which still has several sheets worth of room for more should the mood strike me.

Ponyo opens tomorrow and we have plans to go see it. The latest Aion beta weekend is also starting tomorrow, so I know how I'm going to spend my morning, especially since we tackle the big closet and some minor furniture assembly on Saturday. I will endeavor to take some screenshots and/or pictures.

I started reading The F-Word the other day and I'm enjoying it a lot. It's got a nice mix of positive news to go along with all the bad news that tends to float around the fatosphere, as they call the fat blogging community. I will probably write a bit about it, since it's a topic near and dear to my heart, but I'm not going to get into it now since the condition of Being Fat in America is one that occasionally sends me into profanity-laced ranting. (I refuse to call it obesity. Fat, no matter how negatively it's connotated with some people, is still just a descriptor. Obesity makes it sound like my body shape is a medical condition akin to cancer. No. Thanks.)

I've been having some lovely boring days lately.

Cleaning things out has been going at a relatively steady sporadic pace. I'm down to just a couple of zones that need looked at so stuff can be thrown away and/or re-organized.

I've been having fun with my cute little teapot. I already want a slightly bigger one-- the capacity on my hotpot is 32 oz and my cute little teapot is only 24. IKEA actually has a really lovely looking glass one with what looks like a good infuser for loose-leaf tea.. but it's 2 quarts and my hotpot is good for only one. Teavana also has a couple of teapots that would fit the bill nicely, but they're on the pricier side. Alas.

I went for a walk in town today on a whim. It was hot and sticky but not as hot and sticky as it's been lately. Only I was out when a lot of the neat little boutiquey places were closed, either due to the hour (a surprising number are 9-5) or because the owners are on vacation (which was the case for a neat little yarn store). I have some pictures I will have to put into flickr and post.

I think one of my "things I want to try and do this year" is to take and post more pictures from around. Not sure on what basis yet-- I usually have some pictures by the end of every month, but I don't always find subjects I like every week or even every two. Maybe I'll do a "month in pictures" thing and post my favorites at the end of every month.

Another "thing I want to try and do this year" is give up drinking Coke, mostly because I'm just tired of it. (Though every so often I try to cut my sugar intake a bit and cutting the Coke is one of the easiest ways to do it.) I'm not giving up ginger ale, Orangina, or the occasional root beer or other outre soda, though. (I've never been a gigantic fan of Pepsi and less so since I've gotten older.. about the only Pepsi products I'll drink are Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew, and even then it's rare because Mountain Dew is too damn sweet.) I kind of like the idea of steeping big jugs worth of iced tea on the stove every once in a while and having that, though I'm going to need to figure out how I'm going to rig an infuser/craptastic homemade teabags for a big pot of tea since I have been seriously enjoying the whole leaf tea I've been having lately.

I usually tend to time my resolutions with the beginning of a new school year since working in academics tends to send your whole schedule dancing to a school year's tune anyway. Much easier to change when work resumes than to form your habits all through that fall and then try to change in the middle of winter! I started bento last fall, stuck to it except for a few days here and there, and am quite looking forward to doing it again this year. I even have new boxes I got at Otakon and an octodog cutter since the ones I make my hand are invariably lopsided. I probably won't start obsessively taking pictures of my lunch like some people do, but I might take a few of something especially creative or pretty.

I am mildly bummed since it appears my extended family forgot I had a birthday last week. This is not the first time I've been snubbed by extended family on my birthday (this is in fact the second year running my grandpa has ignored it) but not even getting a phone call or printed-out generic card is kind of like the last straw as far as my not-particularly-great-but-not-antagonistic relationship with them has been. I think it's perfectly fair that I totally forget their addresses and whatnot for Christmas. If they bitch I can always say their stuff is with my birthday card from this year. :|

I am half considering switching to tea from soda. Partially because I just really like tea and go on long jags of drinking it, and partially because soda is getting too expensive/pain in the ass to store. I also wouldn't mind cutting my sugar intake since I'm starting to wonder if it's been contributing to my periods of feeling like a slug, but I can't drink diet soda on account of aspartame makes me feel like I want to hurl. (Yeah, they make Splenda Diet Coke now, but I dunno, it tastes just a little off compared to both regular and diet. I do like Splenda as a sugar sub in other things.)

I have started reading through Alinea at Home which is the sequel to French Laundry at Home that I was reading back in July. The art deco food is kind of scary, but it's neat reading the stories about trying to make these insane preparations in a normal kitchen. I'm in the food-that-looks-like-actual-food camp and I prefer the simpler side of cooking because it tends to really showcase your yummy stuff's natural flavors and I've never been a big sauce/added salt/ketchup person. Or at least I haven't been since I was a tiny thing in elementary school when I tried to put ketchup on everything.

The last couple of days have been fun. On the 6th The Girl and I went out to The Melting Pot and ate fondue. It took about three hours and it cost a pretty penny, but it was totally worth it. We are at least going back for The Girl's birthday in March somehow. XD Since I got boozeahol and it was a late reservation, I spent the night.

So on the 7th I drove back home and the rest of the ol' nuclear family drove down. I asked for a wireless router for my birthday since I'm going to need some kind of networking set up when The Girl finally gets around to moving in.. and it gave me the chance to finally rearrange my apartment. The place has been in the same awkward arrangement since I moved in since it was the only way to have a decent wired connection on account of the totally awkward placement of the single phone jack.

The boys picked out router equipment, I found a copy of Nausacaa and a couple of Modest Mouse CDs (one of which I lost in the Great Mouse Disappearance of 09). We got dinner and then I got to listen to Moose complaining about how dirty the inside of the computer case was. Mother fussed until she managed to convince Dad and me that it was a good idea to just go ahead and rearrange the apartment, rather than go with the original plan of just setting up the router and letting me and The Girl do it the following weekend.

The final results are very satisfying, since the apartment now finally has clear traffic flow (aside from the junked up entryway, which is a victim of my efforts to clean out all my junk).

It also means I have a long list of things to pick up at the store, since I need a new small bookcase (the cube bookcase Mother picked out last year or whatever it too flimsy) and a bunch of little odds and ends. This looks like a job for another trip to IKEA, since the small Expedit cube case fits perfectly in the spot where the flimsy cube case is and it's much more rugged in terms of how much it can hold.. and the price is right, since IKEA dropped the small case's price to about $50~! I should also measure the space on the loveseat, since it desperately needs new cushions. If they have a set that fits at IKEA, I might go ahead and grab 'em since the loveseat itself is in fine shape aside from the thirty-year-old cushions.