anagram of brat

Cold has progressed southward. I now have a chokey, phlegm-y cough to contend with. Yay. At least it goes away if I'm warm, but the trip to work was miserable.

Mood seems to have broken for the time being. Not sure what changed, but not knocking it.

By request, I baked the cheese biscuits again last night for the monday night gamers, to much appreciation. Combat is funny when everyone including the GM has their mouths full. Again, the main pain in the butt with this recipe is grating the cheese. Also remembering to set our oven 25 degrees lower than directed. It runs hot.

Odd desire to pull out the sketchbook and start drawing again. Not that I was ever all that great at it, but sometimes I get this urge to sketch things and it's on me now. I kinda want to do a series of pictures of characters I've played in various games in the past year, especially since the last regular one I've been in seems to be going on indefinite hiatus. But yeah, I kinda want to sit and draw my favorites. Anita and Mare, definitely, and possibly also the De'ath girl (I forget her first name) I played in the steampunk adventure with Lori's gang. I liked her a lot. Hell, even Sara Morgan from the SODA Vampire run has been up and wandering through my head lately. I also want to draw out the characters for SQWRRL, since currently I've got other people's images up on the site and I want to fix that at some point.

Other things I want to draw if this mood stays with me - I need to find the original vector files for the chibi pirate and ninja in my icon and see if I can either update that picture or do another one in the series, possibly for use in save-the-date cards. (cell23 requested shooping in a wee TARDIS in the background of whatever picture we use. His random attacks of fanboy are pretty cute, ngl.) I also have a sketch of 11th_letter among my papers that I've meant to flesh out and finish up for a couple years going I should tend to.

Who am I kidding, between all the stuff that needs doing, when the hell am I gonna have time to fucking draw? lol. Why can't these things just manifest, fully finished, from my head?

Fehh speaking of creative imagery, I'm about a week behind on my 365. Need to get back on top of that.



Not much else going, in other news.

Contrary to the icon used this post has nothing to do with porn, except tangentially by way of making it easier to obtain it. Theoretically, anyway.

I have this tendency to order shit online for myself and then clean forget I did so. This is only bad if I fail to budget for said purchase, but if all's well on the money front (in this case the purchase in question only cost me $5 in shipping) having the UPS guy knock on the door is a total shock followed by the "ooh, what did I order again?" excitement. Which sometimes is compounded by the box contents being orders of magnitude smaller than the box.

Anyway, Squee's new 2GB RAM chip showed up today (size of box: 11"x8"x4.5". size of item shipped: 3"x1.75"x0.25". *facepalm*), and after probably the fastest chip swap I have ever done in my life (seriously, that was it? it took all of a minute and a half!) Squee seems to be doing much better with double the RAM. Not ludicrous speed by any means, but at least he can now play youtube vids without hiccuping (testing this by drooling at the men in red heels again - that vid never gets old).

So. Epeen's happy, Squee is happy, The Preciousssss's retirement is in sight so its happy, and provided the cat doesn't kill my iPad trying to dig virtual mice out of it (yes, we found an app or three designed for cats last night and ridiculous cute and hilarity ensued), I would say that barring major disaster I'm pretty all set on the tech front for a while.

ETA: oh yeah - have a dumb cat video. I have a feeling with the iPad my youtube channel is going to very quickly fill up with Lily being a doof and Lil'beast arguing with people.

April Fools Day sounds like a great day to give up caffeine. At least the stuff by way of coffee and soda - chocolate and Prince of Wales tea is a bit much to ask right now. Still considering how much coffee and soda I knock back, that's a severe reduction in my whole being one with the caffeinated cosmos thing. I'm also not fool enough to think this will be a permanent take (I do love my coffee and Pepsi so so much) but I should be able to get through a month without it, right? (...right?) We'll see where we are on May 1.

Oh god what am I doing?


Naw, seriously, it'll be okay. Gonna have a nice bottle of Wild Cherry Pepsi at D&D tonight, and that'll be it. This will be good for me. Really. (Right?)

~~

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Once upon a time I would have said yes. But I find that these days I don't really mind it and am more annoyed by OMG IT WAS TOTALLY INVENTED BY HALLMARK. Really? If you believe that you probably also believe that Coke and/or Macy's invented Santa and that Hannukah was hyped up from a minor feast into a major thing so that Jewish kids could have a "Christmas." This is totally my judgey face. Sure it's over-hyped and commercialized (so is Christmas), but under the diamond ads, florists losing their shit and heart shaped boxes of chocolate what on earth is wrong with dedicating one day to love, and how can people object to that?

I realize my entire view is colored by the fact that Valentine's Day has never really been a super-romantic holiday for me. Sure, I took valentines to school (and I made them for everyone long before school ordered you to), but for me, Valentine's day was a day that Dad would often take off from work so he could come home and spend the evening with Mom and I and whomever of the siblings were around, since usually he was working 4-12am and I didn't see him much during the week. Sure, there was the ridiculous flower arrangement on the dining room table for Mom that she would audibly complain about but secretly loved, and sometimes a trip to the Godiva store for me after school (which was awesome because I got to pick out my own truffles... I'm extremely picky about them), and funny oversized cards for everyone (Dad always had a knack for picking out cards). But it sort of was beside the point. It was more... I don't know. Dad's ways of showing affection came in odd fits and starts and he only loosened up as he got older, which makes a bit of generational sense. But Valentine's Day was always the holiday when he was always no holds barred all about being with and spoiling his wife and kids. I'll honestly never forget my amusement/horror/squish when I went to the mailbox my first year of college to find Dad had sent up a box of chocolate big enough that my entire floor at Lamont had to come help me eat it. It's gotten less so since Mom died and all of us are gone, which I kinda miss. But I plan on calling him and the sibs today to wish them all a happy VD day per usual. Well, I won't wish Dad one. :) He'll get a regular Valentine's day greeting.

Also Valentine's day was really really fun at school too. There was usually some kind of hearts and cookies festival being thrown every year for the smaller kids and the high school had the Valentine's Day Assembly, which were the teachers in each department putting on skits, and it always culminated in the Media Lab's big production of the year which was us camera and computer nerds running around interviewing kids and staff about love and friendship and Valentine's day and some of the teachers answers to things were just off the frakking wall. It being UNIS it was interesting getting a bit of a not-US perspective on the whole thing, which is probably why I came away with the idea that it's more about all kinds of love rather than just the romantic type.

I guess with that sort of upbringing, it's very hard for me to be cynical about it. Sure, I audibly disdain it as much as the next devotee of the First Church of Cynical Hipster, but really? Life is hard enough as it is, and I'm totally about a day to celebrate love, be it romantic, filial or even just friendly. So no, I wouldn't get rid of it. I'd like it a little less sponsored by DeBeers and Zales maybe (not gonna happen), but the holiday itself can stay.

No, cell23 and I aren't planning anything too special other than him cooking dinner and us playing with the cat. After the craziness of last week and the past weekend, that is just about my speed. :)

Guys, The Guild is TERRIBLE. I just tried to watch it on Netflix with cell23, and man I've never cringed so much in 45 minutes before now and I think I need a double shot of vodka to deal with that mess. Seriously, any liking/respect for Felicia Day I had going from Dr. Horrible has been thoroughly canceled out in the space of an hour. "Date my avatar" was cute, but everything else out of this project makes me twitch on some visceral "what is wrong with you people" level.

Yeah, I'm done.

Ever since the move there's been a hair across my ass poking out of my jaw.

Not a huge deal, right? these things happen. EXCEPT IT FUCKING DRIVES ME CRAZY WHEN THEY DO. It's like I'll be casually going about my business la la la and playing with my chin and suddenly there it will be.

On my face in particular, there are two types of these lovely little stray chin hairs. One type are those creepily long stealth hairs where I swear it has a powerful cloaking device activated until it reaches precisely three inches long and then all of a sudden it pops out of your face yelling SURPRISE like a stripper in a cake, complete with microscopic g-string to tuck teeny tiny bills into.

...that's the second time stippers have come up in my journal today, incidentally. THEME SENSED.

This week's source of offense was the other kind. Not the gloriously long, rapturously curly in a way that would make Pantene models' lips curl with envy sort. No, these are the short stubbly motherfuckers that never get more than an eighth of an inch long and poke out of your face like the worlds' loneliest porcupine quill. The ones you cannot see in a mirror no matter how bright the light or how great the magnification but yet every time you run your finger down your jaw there it is, waiting to stab you. The kind that will make you (or at least does me) claw at your face in frustration trying to extract the demon hair from your face with your fingernails even though you know it's futile.

No big deal right? just go after it with some tweezers, problem solved. Except we haven't located cell23's pair, and I didn't take the pair I had from Boobyhaven. So I've pretty much had this thing mocking me for a week. I finally broke down and got tweezers tonight after a week of throwing every other utensil at it (scissors, razor, nail clippers, needle nosed pliers) and having it defeat them all. A couple of hot pinches to the face, and the hair is gone. Andee's sanity is preserved for another day.

Yeah yeah first world problem, I know I know. I admit it, I'm a wuss and it wouldn't take a lot to have me whimpering DO IT TO JULIA in a corner somewhere, but seriously, somehow inducing several random spiky hairs to sprout from my jaw/chin, make sure I can feel them and know where they are and deny me access to tweezers ranks up there in effective methods of making me lose my mind, below locking me in a moldy wine cellar, any kind of dentalwork that involves Novocaine needles, and trapping me in a car with Nuke if she feels like cranking the Jesus music and singing along.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH. I need to have a craft-related first world snit for a few minutes. Here's my problem. See this picture?



Yes that's me five and change years ago. Egads, my face was round. ANYWAY. Beside the point. Look at my hair. I really really REALLY want that particular sort of red/orange/purple multicolor again. It was kind of my signature color. Trouble with multicolors is it seems every time I really like a set of colors it disappears. This happened with the rainbow Red Heart I started initially braiding my hair with back in high school. (And don't get me started about the closest one they make now, 'Mexicana.' IT'S NOT THE SAME OKAY THE COLORS ARE OFF.) It happened with the green/blue/purple lots I used to wear a lot too (the skein I've got is too desaturated for my liking. ETA: that one was called "Gemstone") And now I can't find this. It used to be friggin' everywhere five years ago - Caron made it first (that's it in my hair, I think) and then Red Heart made a not quite as good version and then it vanished. Back when I had dreads it didn't matter so much cause I wasn't braiding yarn into those. But now? I can't find it and I'm LIVID. I even hit Webs this afternoon cause they're open late on Thursdays. Believe it or not I found ONE hank of yarn that was PERFECT... but it was baby alpaca and while that would feel amazing in my hair, I don't feel right about dropping $12 on something that's going to eventually get thrown out. Plus it was one skein in an entire warehouse - once I get through with it, I'd be back to square one.

ARGH.

If any of you "I make things with string and needles" folk spot anything similar to what I'm describing, holler, cause yeah. GRR and stuff.

Was not a totally wasted trip to Webs, even if I didn't buy anything. I did have to research an upcoming project and I ran into an old friend while I was there, so meh. But I am MAD with the FRUSTRATE right now.

It's been a rough few days, headspace-wise. Doing my best to truck through it and distract myself from blue funks when they threaten, but it's been a process. Some of you know more than others what all's going on, but honestly a fair amount of it's just being tired and not feeling well and stressed about stuff. It'll pass. Hopefully sooner rather than later, but I know it will be exactly when it needs to happen and not a moment before or after.

Yesterday had a bright point in that I visited grinninfoole for dinner last night after he shamelessly tempted me with farmshare steak. What carnivore in their right mind would turn down such an offer? :) This was also a good excuse for me to come over and pick up the Diamond Comics boxes I'd asked him to start collecting for me in anticipation of the move, and gracious, there were a lot of them. Thankfully Hanzo has a 6 body trunk. But dinner was lovely and we spent the prep time catching up and bitching about life, as we do when we get together. I do rather enjoy friends that make me think about stuff, and since both he and I contend with similar issues pertaining to the easily distracted and also toward letting life drive us instead of the other way around, it's usually provokes good thinky things afterward.

Course, I nearly blew the evening by mooshing the lamp at the end of grinninfoole's driveway while backing out. The lamppost seems okay. I thought Hanzo-san was too, until this morning when I discovered he has a rather fetching dent behind his driver's side headlight. I suppose it had to happen sometime, but argh. It's the first time I've ever hit something (we won't count the snowbank I sideswiped while I had my permit), and it happened while I thought I was being super careful, and even though I know on most levels it's no huge deal, I'm still a fair amount of upset about it. That on top of everything else has kinda shot me for driving as I'm noticing that things that I was fine with a week ago are starting to freak me out again this week, which is a pretty good indicator that I need to concentrate on taking care of myself and my brainmeats for the next couple of days and be extra careful if I do have to go out there. Also it's a drükids weekend and I know contending with them when the wiring's crossed upstairs is a big bucket of not fun.

Off to finish my coffee and see about dropping my stress level to points where I can function like an actual human being, if not a RESPONSIBLE ADULT.

Dear 222 Elm St,

Oh, baby, how is it you are still on the market after two and a half years? You are large, beautiful, historic and $400K cheaper than your original asking price. I realize it's a nasty market, but I am surprised that you're still out there. I would have thought that at least some horrible person with no appreciation for your multitudinous charms would have snapped you up and unceremoniously gutted and restructured you into ghastly condos by now, like every other nearby house that once had your stature and magnificence. Don't get me wrong, I'm really happy you haven't been. But I'm also saddened to know that no one's done the equivalent of fall madly in love with you and sweep you off to a wonderful happy life... or whatever passes for such if you're real estate. Believe me, I'd have you in a heartbeat if money were no object. I can just see the fabulous salons and soirées I'd throw deep within your cavernous Victorian era rooms. But one thing I wasn't gifted with in this lifetime is insane wealth, nor the power to generate anything like it. Ah, if only I had been, I'd willingly spend a lifetime curled in the embrace of your delicious curved window seats contemplating the comings and goings of Elm Street from your graceful apertures.

Some small part of my mind would love to think that maybe you're waiting... waiting to find the special person or people that will walk through your fiendishly elegant double doors and be enveloped by you, that you will do everything but whisper "Welcome Home" in their ears. An even smaller part of my brain that likes to believe in utterly impossible things entertains the fancy that just maybe the person you are waiting for is me. Who knows, maybe if I'd gotten my shit together and dared to dream and do a little harder when I first noticed you were available... but playing what if never got anyone anywhere, did it?

I do hope someday soon you'll find those perfect people to fill your rooms with joy and sorrow and purpose and just plain old life again. And I will always love you from afar, for you are a bloody fantastic grande dame of a house and if I gotta have one pipe dream (one that I'll publicly admit to anyway) I'm glad its you.

Love always,

Me