anagram of brat

Oh man, I hate visitng Dad when the interballs is broken. Hence the no posting - while I had Squeee with me, there isn't any point in using him with no connectivity and it's annoying enough keeping up with FB and Twitter on Dad's iThings. I hate borrowing other people's computer type devices.

But yeah, it was a Thanksgiving weekend. Had it's ups, had its downs, had its surprises and moments of pure rage.

Thursday:

• Rode down with esotericscribe early in the morning, and took the train down from his neighborhood in Queens to The House (had about $25 worth of metrocards with me that had been sitting on my desk all year - glad I remembered them!). Dad didn't bother saying hello upon my arrival, but began fussing at me for breakfast and wedding pictures. Sigh. I made him breakfast after scolding him for being chauvinistic and lazy. I also managed to catch the last half hour of the parade so I didn't have to go into full on twitch mode, but I may well torrent it tonight and watch the whole thing tomorrow morning. Traditions must be kept however they can.
  
  
• Dinner with the family was small (half of us were missing) and by contrast quiet and civilized. It was good though. And the FOOD. Dad's housekeeper did 90% of the cooking for us, and wow. That woman can seriously make some collard greens. And turkey. And Ham. And them heathens ate an entire loaf of the pumpkin bread BEFORE we said grace.
  
  
• We set the table really pretty too:
  

Friday:

• Spent an hour on the phone with Verizon about the internet. Hopefully they send a new router this week, because that situation in there is untenable. To me anyway. Dad has cellular service on his iPad and an iPhone so honey badger don't have to care. Bah.
  
  
• Ruthy and I had to run some financy type errands for Dad in downtown Brooklyn. In the process I got to briefly reacquant myself with Mom's actual jewelry collection (I have a fair amount of her vintage costume jewelry). Damn Mom. That lady loved herself some jewelry. Ruthy offered to let me pick out one or two things, but honestly, I have no place to really wear any of that stuff, though if I had to pick she did have some rather gorgeous Iranian filigree pieces. Or her charm bracelet - I have pretty strong memories of playing with that as a small child.
  
  
• Ruthy also hooked me up with this holiday deliciousness:
  
  Sweet delicious pepparkakor nom nom nom.
  
  
• After dealing with that pain in the ass, we went to BAM to see Lincoln. I did enjoy the movie, but I have Opinions about it. They may have to wait until a long overdue Media Consumption Post.
  
  
• In the spirit of AAAAGH QUIT BORROWING MY PHONE Dad straight up offered to frog march me to AT&T to buy me an iPhone5. After being utterly floored by this offer, I asked him to delay it until January when I have a regular paycheck and can support a data plan. So that's gonna be my Christmas present, which means soon The Precious can finally go quietly into her retirement. I may wipe and jailbreak it and give it to Kidzilla as a music/game player. Also, I CAN GET ME ONE OF THESE SEXY SEXY CASES. Because my wallet is my ipod case and that very badly needs to be retired as well.
  
  
• Went to sleep aggressively snuggled by Dad's cat.
  

Saturday:

• Got up early, went to the store, and got eggs and potatoes for Dad's breakfast. There was one spoiled West Indian afterward.
  
  
• Was considering going up to AMNH to visit Alejandra's spider exhibit, but couldn't get a hold of either her nor her mother in time, so instead I went up to the Garment District.
  
  So glad Tohoshoji is still there!Amanda (who got me into beading) and I used to go up here and get bulk bead stuff all the time. They still have decent prices too - not as much markup for a 20g box of delicas either. So now I have all five of my main colors plus a few others in good supply for now.
  
  
• Watched Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope) on Spike. It had been long enough since I'd seen it that watching it again was actually fun. Kinda striking how different Mark Hamill looked between Star Wars and Empire, but car accidents'll jack your face up, alas.
  
  
• More kitty sleeps. She snores. And kicks.

Sunday:

• I'm usually tired of being back home after two days, let alone three, so you can imagine I was rearing to get back to MA. Except that didn't happen - I showed up at Port Authority two hours before my bus was to leave expecting some holiday craziness, but not the magnitude of crazy that greeted me there yesterday wherein no tickets were being sold or printed "until further notice" police were trying to control fourteen lines of very annoyed people and apparently none of the buses were leaving on time. I later found out that all carriers had massively oversold almost all of the departures out of new york. I waited for about four or five hours, gave up and went back to brooklyn in a state of massively thwarted anxiety. Note to self - always buy my tickets ahead of time from now on. Seriously I've travelled through Port Authority for many a Thanksgiving weekend for almost 20 years now, I had never seen or experienced anything like the zoo that was yesterday.
  
  
• Least dad and the cat were glad to have me around for an extra evening.
  
  
• Did laundry and watched horrifyingly bad TV while doing so, including three minutes of Liz and Dick than made me run screaming like I'd seen a moldy sandwich.

Monday:

• Took NO chances and bought a Megabus ticket this morning. Mostly becuase they only require a confirmation number to board and you can wave an iDevice at them with it showing on the screen even. Wasn't risking having to buy OR print a ticket at Port Authority. Fuck all that noise.
  
  
• Spoiled Dad with breakfast. Again.
  
  
• Rather more successful in making it home this time, and while Manbeast was quite effusively glad to see me, the cats are still being hard to get little fiends. They'll forgive me eventually. I was, after all, cavorting with GASP another cat all weekend without their permission.
  
  
• Left my iPad charger in Brooklyn. Dang it.

In beading news:
No internet in the house == I BEAD LIKE A FIEND. It's also an excellent thing to do while waiting in line for a bus ticket line that's never going to move, but hey.



It's starting to actually look like something now. And you can almost read the badge on the right.

Still got a loooooong ass way to go though. And there was a copious amount of swearing this morning when I dropped a container of beads on the dining room floor this morning. Le sigh.



And that's my weekend.

Little known fact about me - I love sports jerseys. One of my secret selfish desires is buying one and lounging around the house in its broad shouldered, breathable folds. Problem is I'm not that hardcore of a sports fan and I never felt like enough of a fan of any team or any player to ever justify getting one, and somehow the effort of following a team for a season seemed too much like work. So I resigned myself to admiring jersey designs from afar.

Yeah, I'm a little weird. You all know this.

So this morning I saw this:



Well. Those are a couple teams I know I support. Leaning towards the Ally jersey, a) because I'm not a fan of the Horde design b) Eh. I like the Horde well enough, but at heart, I've been an Alliance girl from day one.

Course, it's not like I've even been playing lately. Hell, I still have paperwork I gotta fork over to Blizz to prove I wasn't gold farming while not subscribed. :P Stupid account hackers.

In other WANT news, htl_1126 sent me this this morning:



Wellp, I had no reason to go to Portugal until now. Seriously, I'd go just to spend an hour goggling at this bookstore. Yes, it's a bookstore. Gifuh.


* * * * *


Somewhere in me is an extended essay about Livejournal, why I still post, and why I'm one of those who will be going down with this particular ship, but I can't write it right the fuck now. But since I know people have been asking, Dreamwidth does allow you to import your entire journals over (I may have invite codes, though I never use any of the accounts I have over there - username parking being what it is.) Also I personally use and love LJArchive to back up my journals periodically, and since it allows you to index and search your entries/comments, I occasionally use it for that as well. But back to the main point, considering I just realized as of tomorrow I will have been on LJ under various usernames for for eight years, maybe that's an entry for then.

While doing some quick internet research to feed a cranky plotbunny, I ran across this.



Coolest. Play structure. Evar.

ETA: actually since I'm feeding the bunnies, what was your favorite playground as a kid? Was it wood, metal or plastic? some combination of both? What was your favorite playground equipment? was there any you were scared of? played on/with in a not necessarily authorized fashion?

( my own tl;dr romp through nostalgia )

It's good to be home.

A large window, overlooking a swath of street well trafficked by both pedestrians and cars, mounted high on the wall.

Warm red walls, a six inch sill by the window.

A raised table flanked with high bar stools, level with the windowsill, tucked around the corner from the door, protected from the draft by a glass box vestibule, creating a sort of alcove for this table by the window.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and maybe if my phone camera had been working or I had brought the Hatemonber with me as I waited for grinninfoole to arrive for our lunch date, I would have captured this empty spot at Bueno y Sano in between its lunch rush occupants. It's a prime people-watching spot, so catching it empty is a rare thing indeed. Likely I could use far more words to describe it - the beige, evenly spaced slats on the chairs, the green cushions, the speckled, faux-stone plastic inlay on the top of the table. But I won't. I only know that I spent about five minutes staring into that corner, caught up quite powerfully in a very pleasant memory of another time, another lunch date, and catching myself smiling. Funny what will do that to you sometimes.

I need to go back and take that picture sometime.

It's been a long tiring day, and lunch with the Foole was one of the two high points of it, the other being running into Phil driving the B43 and catching up with him after not seeing him for a year. One bad thing about driving so much last year is that I miss all the PVTA drivers, so it's nice to see them when I do have to head to Northampton for something these days. Alas, the day post-lunch has been meh at best, due to being somewhat under the weather, intestinal cranky, and learning some sad news affecting friends. But I've been home for about an hour or so, and I'm about to head downstairs to make dinner for myself, the Manbeast, and the McGurk (see, it's alliterative!), who is coming over for Smallville shenanigans later. So I am not writing off the day just yet.

So in other "I want to go to there" news:



Yeah, lets talk about how this building is TWICE AS TALL AS THE EMPIRE STATE. And Dubai seems like a really neat city provided you don't bring any prescription drugs with you or kiss anyone publicly.

Pretty much, if it involves very tall/pretty things or trains I'm so there.

Since I made the tag and I unexpectedly have a little time to kill this morning owing to car trouble, lets talk about some droolworthy places I want to see someday. Or at least, one collection of places.



...That's a subway station. GFNUGWADS.

So I finally offloaded the pictures from the Hatemonger, which is doing nothing for my desire to spend the remainder of my life in the Rose Reading Room, cause GOOD GODDAMN.



Just... jesus christ, guh.

( lookit this sweet ass motherfucking library omg. )

The rest of the album is mostly just subway nerdage, but feel free to check it out if you like.

( Cut for gigantic fap-worthy bit of architecture/book porn )

Next time I'm in NYC, me and the Hatemonger are totally going here. I can't believe I forgot about the place the entire time I was back there last year!

If I were a rich girl... lala lala lala lala lala lala lala laaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Also a bit of a PSA... I might go into a bit of lockdown mode for the next few days. I have a to-do list a mile and a half long and the usual not enough time to do it in, so if I get quiet and unsociable and offline it's because I'm doing my best to take care of business and quite possibly failing miserably. Think finals week, only IRL. We'll see where I am by Monday, but yeah I think at least for this week, if the question is "Can Andee come out to play" the answer is no. :(

Now THAT is a treehouse.

Yeah, I'd live here. Though I mostly posted it so I could use the Pornographic Real Estate tag.