anagram of brat

It's certainly coming along! With any luck (and hopefully a minimum of wrist breakage) hopefully I can get this done by next weekend? Maybe? We'll see.

Life has been... well. Pretty much this, and podcasts and TV and will likely be that until I finish this. Hence the lack of postings. The two kind of major bits being dealing with Moonbeam's recovery, since he spent the better part of the week shut in our bathroom, to no one's enjoyment - the other two cats were freaked out by their comrade being trapped in there, Moonbeam HATES being shut up away from people, plus the inconvenience of not really being able to use the bathroom effectively. But thankfully Moonbeam is on the mend, is once again continent (thank fuck) and there is no longer kitty litter all over the bathroom (yay) so there was that. He's still on antibiotics for another week and on the urinary tract food at least until we finish the bag/cans, but at least that bit's not quite as gross. As an added perk, his general smellycatness seems to have gone away as well, so maybe the hideous breath was a sign of something else going on that the medicine is taking care of. Either way win.

Not much else to report other than attending a lovely party at renegadethumper/deliriumdeva's new place in CT. Those two do love themselves old converted factory spaces. Also I have various home improvement/cat amusement projects in the works for when this thing is finished... they mostly at this stage involve lots of measuring and discovering that I have pretty much forgotten all of my middle school trig except for the Pythagorean theorem. >_< Meanwhile I am terrifying the husbeast with murmurings on twitter about possibly needing 1500 feet of sisal rope and a whole lot of PVC pipe. Hey, I said they were projects. :P

But... first things first. Let's finish this one first.

Tomorrow, much to my surprise, I have off for MLK day. I will mostly be spending it going in for my annual as well as making a crock of stew for the week, and maybe not pissing myself off with tumblr: land of social injustice, to mark the holiday? :/ And of course, the beading. All the beading.

I dragged out the breadmaker last night and cranked out three loaves of bread - one for us, two to take with us to NY. And I'm not done - some whole wheat and pumpkin are also planned. There might have been cackling and repeated exclamations of BAKE ALL THE BREADS while I did so.

Drew and I are heading down to NY with esotericscribe tomorrow. Prayer circle for us, lol.

Can't see the forest for the trees. And the glare. Taking pictures of this thing is a right bitch.

Seeing as November ends on Sunday and this weekend is bound to be nuts I'm revising my goal count down a bit - from half done to 45%. I probably could bang out 18 more rows by Sunday, but I'd have time to do nothing else. 10 seems a bit more reasonable, though what will probably happen is I'll land somewhere in the middle. I'd be ok with that. Regardless, its still going MUCH faster than the Tetris one did - I didn't hit 39% on that until February. I mean I started it a couple weeks later in the year than this, but still I'm kinda boggled that I've managed to do in a wee bit under a month what took me twice as long last year. What a difference determination and a few improvements in technique make.

Anyway, time to fill my house with the smell of baking holiday stuff.

While looking at the calendar this week I realized to my horror that next Thursday is Thanksgiving. I... what? Already? Where the hell did the year go?

I'm generally not a fan of Holiday Creep, except for the fact that it allows me to buy Halloween stuff on clearance three days before Halloween. However I'm horrified by the prospect of Black Friday creeping into Thanksgiving day. Some people like having dinner with their families, you know. Not everyone, mind, but some people. I suppose my level of care is at best remote because I neither work in retail nor ever shop on Black Friday (prefer making humungous Amazon orders the monday afterwards, thank you), but that just seems wrong to me.

Still, there are things to be said about the upcoming holiday season, since it's apparently sooner than I thought and thus I can allow myself to enjoy it in a week. Nyaker's Pepparkakor is available again, for one. Talk about a ridiculously delicious way to get fat. Overabundances of pumpkin desserts, turkey and ham. Wow, I haven't made pumpkin bread once this year, I should fix that. The Hess trucks are out, even though I'm kind of underwhelmed by this year's. (Honestly, the remote control helicopters at 7-11 look like more fun, but me being a collector I'll probably acquire this year's truck at some point anyway.) And I do rather unabashedly love holiday music - though four notable exceptions to the usual holiday rotation should be noted:

"Baby, It's Cold Outside" - Because every girl wants some roofies and date rape for Christmas.

"Wonderful Christmastime" - This one is just stab-everyone levels of annoying.

"Mele Kalikimaka (the Hawaiian Christmas song)" - Cultural appropriation much? Also every version I've ever heard is just so SMARMY sounding!

"Christmas Shoes" - just... fuck you. Pretty shoes so your dying mama can look stylish in her casket? Hate to tell you kid, but they weld the bottom of the coffin shut before the service and don't bother putting shoes on the corpse anyway. YOUR HOLIDAY SENTIMENT IS WASTED.

But yeah, everything else? sure, bring it.

We have a tree this year too, though I got it on post-Christmas clearance last year, well before we brought home Monsieur Mangetout à Poil. I guess we'll see how he does. May have to soak a ghost pepper in water and spray it down before I plug it in.


In non holiday related news, I saw Dr. Tassoni today for the first time in over a year, fully expecting to get yelled at for letting that long of a gap exist between appointments. I instead got more of a guilt trip and an admonishment to consume more iron (yay chronic anemia). No change in meds for now. Whee blue horse pills. :P Also big ups to deliriumdeva for saving me after my PVTA fail today by running me to Florence and back and then later finding my misplaced wallet in her car. Oops, lol.

bloodandsmoke, thedavin and I met for a long delayed Drinktank, which I always do enjoy. I seriously need to sit down with the various pieces of Guardians and Gods scattered around my computer and stitch it more or less in order so I can see what I've got and what gaps need filling in. But the guys have been enjoying the bits I've brought in so far, so I'm encouraged. I'm also slightly less worried about how to get the plot to its next point, which I've been stuck on lately. Most of the bits I've been writing are still very much Introduce These Characters or These Settings and I've been feeling very much lately like I should be getting on with something, plot-wise. I feel like the guys gave me the outside permission to roll around in the world I'm building some more and not worry too much about plots going splode, though some hilarity may ensue with at least two characters and a stolen baby.

While I'm not doing NaNo, the counters work just as well for bead counts.


Not taking or posting pictures for a little bit because nothing interesting is happening yet - I'm 50 beads into row 3 and it's still just solid uniform yellow.There's not even enough in there yet to keep the thing from twisting up on itself into a strange U shape. It'll stiffen up the more rows get added. But yeah, it's slow going. I can't even think about this piece in terms of rows really - I'm mostly just taking it ten beads at a time and then breaking it up frequently to go do other things. This keeps me from getting overwhelmed by the sheer size of the project, and also since I've started to notice a little soreness in my left shoulder and wrist, heading off the repetitive stress injuries at the pass. Hopefully anyway. But yeah... this is going to take forever. Tentative goal is to be done by New Years. At least the next row I actually get into the actual pattern instead of solid blocks of color so that should liven it up some.

and now bed, since I have to get up, look pretty and drive down to Holyoke for office skill testing. Yeeeesh.

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Hiding, honestly. MA is like KISS ME I'M IRISH WHOOOOOOO epicenter between Boston being Boston and the 2nd biggest St. Pat's parade in the country happening a couple of towns south. Hopefully it'll mean a quiet day with the kids, some corned beef brisket later (yum!) and after the kids go to bed something thick and sweet containing a whole lot of Duggan's Irish Creme.

I did most of my "celebrating" by putting on Flogging Molly, Dropkick Murphys and Solas at the store. Because nothing sells iPads like some rowdy folk yelling about going to Boston to find a randomly missing wooden leg right?

Seriously, though, I'd make some crack about DO I FUCKING LOOK IRISH but the truth it there is likely some back there for all I really know. Not enough to excuse drinking a Shamrock Shake by choice though, much as whatever Native American I know for sure is mixed up back there doesn't legitimize me doing whatever Generokee crap is fun and popular at the moment. I mean, could you imagine a First Nations/Native American Day? It'd be nothing but war bonnets, eagle feathers and fringe fucking EVERYWHERE and people would be UNCOMFORTABLE.

So um yeah. Not really so much with the Green Holiday.

As an aside, MY BROTHERS, MY SWEET NERDS OF COLOR. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, BUY ANOTHER GREEN T-SHIRT. I mean, it's embarrassing enough that y'all even wear green today, but cool as the idea of an army of John Stewarts is, it just looks like all y'all showed up at the prom wearing the same dress. COME ON.

It is Martin Luther King Jr's birthday today.

I keep meaning to read "Letters from a Birmingham Jail" since I don't really want to be one of thse people that can quote the Dream speech in its entirity (though honestly, I like his last one about seeing the promised land from the mountaintop much better) but don't know much else about the man. And I feel he deserves to be known in a greater way other than a few familiar warm-fuzzy soundbites, groundbreaking though they were at the time, and excuses for chicken joints (and apparently schools?) to have specials. Yes, this happens. The ads are out there. I'll let you google them.

The thing that gets me at this point in my life was that MLK was a human being, not much older than I am right now, who helped fundamentally change the world. Saying he did it singlehandedly discredits all the rest of the people who participated in the civil rights movement, but he seems to make a... friendlier? figurehead than his other contemporaries that got themselves shot for their trouble in the sixties, so I do understand why he gets the holiday. Plus the man gave some excellent, resonant speeches that we all need to review and take to heart if we're going to rescue this world from the shambles its in.

So yeah, I'm taking a moment to acknowledge the man, his oft-quoted Dream, and reflect on the huge debt I owe him and the other freedom fighters of his time. Goodness knows I wouldn't be sitting here in this spot and in this moment, having my life and typing this tribute without them.

So these kids are members of STARS (Students Teaching About Racism in Society) at Ohio University, and their campaign for Halloween is on point and awesome.



The rest:





Source: saucy-sarah's tumblr, which I'm not linking because she's getting slammed by responses to these.

Haven't done one of these in a while. But I didn't really like my other Lana icon much. I'm a lot happier with this one.

Happy April Fools. Or, if you're like most of the grouches on my f-list, including me, Let Me Know When It's Over April Fools!



I'm rather glad that the April Fools snow we got was nowhere like as bad as the April Fools snowstorm of 1998 (I think) where after a mild, snowless winter OMGSURPRISE 3 feet and Smith wasn't gracious enough to close campus, even through none of the professors bothered to show up. Fun shit.

Youtube's viral 1911 vids are pretty cute, as is Google's Helvetica gag, Wikipedia's front page, and the Dragon Cave turning all its dragons to carrots. WoW's Crabby the Dungeon Helper got an actual audible snort out of me (but I'm one of those people that were amused rather than annoyed by the Office Assistant). Less impressed with Gmail motion. bellarisa's troll on facebook was actually really funny once I stopped having a heart attack. Otherwise, April 1 this year is kinda bleh, which is fine; anytime anything of note happens on this date it tends to not go well for me, so I'm genuinely okay with bleh.

In other news surviving the first day without coffee with lots of water, a cup of tea and extra strength tylenol. Getting work done and planning projects for the weekend, and since the weather's finally eased up, trying to psyche myself into getting laundry done, though that will very likely fail. Whatevs, not like I have to have anything nice clean before Sunday morning.

I'ma go find and hug a kitty now. She will hate it. I don't care.

~~

Speaking of upcoming holidays:



...

Yay it's the green holiday!

There's a part of me that only recognizes holidays by their colors, so today I'm all GREEN and next major one I'll be all YELLOW PINK AQUA AND LAVENDER. Actually that's the only part of Easter I dislike... the attack of the pastel. I'm more of a jewel tones and black sort of person.

But I digress. Happy St. Pats to all my Irish, be ye actually Irish or just in it for the fun/green beer. What the hell, my green turtleneck is clean, I'll throw it on. Maybe with the Green Lantern shirt over it for good measure. :)

Not much to report on today other than the news out of Japan is making me all kinds of D: D: D: (Thankfully everyone I know personally's all right and accounted for.) Also I woke up with this song stuck in my head.



Possibly nsfw due to footage from Silence of the Lambs. Usually a harbinger of an interesting day. Hopefully not in the "Chinese" curse sense, considering my plans today includes MOTHERFUCKING ADULT things like pre-kids weekend cleaning and work, with some 4th season Buffy for seasoning.

Hatch my eggs, I want more new ones.

~~

And that's all folks. My life really hasn't been terribly interesting of late, lol.

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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. :)