anagram of brat

Safe for work (and the sound ain't necessary), but probably not safe for the cohesion of your brain.

Thanksgiving day

• Was up at eight to bake loaf 2 of pumpkin bread and to make breakfast before turning into a parade zombie for three hours and then running out the door. Managed to do all of it and my butt was on the couch with a plate of pancakes and a mug of coffee precisely at 9am.
  
  
• Watched the parade. If you read my tweets from the 25th you'll know that I completely FAILED to resist the temptation to livetweet the last 2/3rds of it, but there was so much to squee and snark upon this year.
  
  Two special things of note: This year's Rockette tallies - 1 Asian, 2 Black, and one Latina girl this year, all shoved to the back of formations while the blondes got to be in front. Also I feel the need to mention this guy, his outfit (it looks like the Grinch, Flavor Flav, a Muppet and the NBC peacock had a bastard furbaby), his scary balloons, and the fact that I realized last night that he's the same guy who did this particular $15M statue (not safe for work OR life). *dot dot dot* well, at least he looked both warm and like he was having the time of his life, but I'm still kinda surprised (in a sort of good way) that they let a guy who sold a life size hentai statue of a boy wielding a cum lasso design (creepy cute) balloons for the parade. Either that or Macy's parade committee hasn't figured out how to google yet. Still, oh, Japan.
  
  
• I joined cell23's extended family for Thanksgiving, much to everyone's apparent delight. We met up with the kids there, pictures were taken, whack a mole was played, and I discovered that Kidzilla likes to giggle over silly pictures of her father as much as I and her grandmother do. Dinner at cell23's grandparents was delicious. I failed to weigh in on the Great Stuffing Debate. I liked both of them, sorry boys. The pumpkin bread I brought seemed to be a hit, and there was pie and the carrot cake cell23's mom made for my belated birthday. So NOM NOM NOM. We also had an entertaining round of Apples to Apples which Kidzilla did quite well in despite us playing the grown-up version... this led to some hilariously awkward moments.

Black Friday

Y'all saw the pictures. Fuck your Black Friday.

Saturday

Other than the movie and poop debacle at the end if the night, lol, Saturday was kind of an easygoing, visit-the-other-grandparents kind of day, which we did - we spent a quiet afternoon over at the Geoffroys (and had another Thanksgiving dinner/lunch that couldn't be beat). Shortly after we arrived home The Internet pounded on our door baying for cell23; he later spent a little time hanging with them while me and the kids had movie night (ha ha ha ha ha). After they got put to bed, lysscat pinged me asking if she could escape The Internet's invasion of her house, so she came over and we chilled and bitched and ate leftover pumpkin bread. I need to hang out with her more often. :)

After cell23 came back, Lovebug woke up wanting a glass of water. Not sure what happened then but cell23 ended up bringing him into our room to fall back asleep; I spent the night being adorably snored at and snuggled by both of them. *squee*

Sunday

• Dragged myself out of bed at ass-o'clock for bell rehearsal at 8:45 and got a warm welcome back from everyone. I guess they missed me! We played some kinda expansion on "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" which came out quite nice and I hummed carols on the quick drive home.
  
  
• Which was just as well because LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, TIS THE SEASON FOR ALL DAY CHRISTMAS CAROLS ON THE RADIO.
  
  
• oh my god you guys, so to celebrate (and catch up!) with cell23's, aliwings', and my birthdays, cell23's family treated us to buffet brunch at this place. Yes, go look at the menu, I'll wait.
  
  Done? Yeah. I ate myself SILLY to the point of actually being too full to breathe properly. Don't care it was DELICIOUS. And then there were birthday cards, presents (belated birthday money and the last two books in Scott Pilgrim for the win) and these individual chocolate cakes that were so rich that once we cut up enough to let everyone have a slice there was still a cake and a half that went home with us afterwards. oooof. So yeah that happened.
  
  ALSO SO MANY DUCKS. I should have brought that end of a stale loaf with me. Though I imagine those ducks are fat enough from all the kids feeding them.
  
  
• After taking the kiddos boot shopping with Grandma, cell23 and I drove them home, came back and hung out at deliriumdeva's and renegadethumper's for a bit and watched their cat valiantly try to eat their Christmas tree. We returned to find we had no internet. OH NOES. After doing the usual swearing and router cycling and cable jiggling and checking if the TV still worked (it did) we gave up and tried to piggyback one of the networks in the general vicinity... to find that they weren't connected either. So I wandered over to verbena76's and aersi's to confirm that yes indeed, pretty much everyone we knew had lost their internet. I'm honestly surprised that the outcry of deprived nerds wasn't louder. *shakes fist* COMCAST. Apparently they had a DNS server fail that took out a good chunk of their East Coast customers. O_o Wow. FAIL.

Anyway. That was my weekend. Now I feel all caught up in LJ (publicly, anyway, lol). Time to go catch up in other departments.

Reposting for a number of reasons; part stormy weather in the head, part it being bluewindkitsune's birthday and I think he'd like this.

If you are a monster, stand up.
If you are a monster, a trickster, a fiend,
If you’ve built a steam-powered wishing machine
If you have a secret, a dark past, a scheme,
If you kidnap maidens or dabble in dreams
Come stand by me.

If you have been broken, stand up.
If you have been broken, abandoned, alone
If you have been starving, a creature of bone
If you live in a tower, a dungeon, a throne
If you weep for wanting, to be held, to be known,
Come stand by me.

If you are a savage, stand up.
If you are a witch, a dark queen, a black knight,
If you are a mummer, a pixie, a sprite,
If you are a pirate, a tomcat, a wright,
If you swear by the moon and you fight the hard fight,
Come stand by me.

If you are a devil, stand up.
If you are a villain, a madman, a beast,
If you are a strowler, a prowler, a priest,
If you are a dragon come sit at our feast,
For we all have stripes, and we all have horns,
We all have scales, tails, manes, claws and thorns
And here in the dark is where new worlds are born.
Come stand by me.

"A Monstrous Manifesto" by yuki_onna, yoinked from harmanhay

So there's a new Hyperbole and a Half post up. I highly suggest y'all go read it. After doing so, my ribs are killing me. And I want cake. Well, more cake - we just finished up the last of the birthday cakes yesterday.

CAKE.

Every so often the world reminds me that it is not, in fact, full of asslemurs. Only mostly so.

extrajoker and inle_rah have both posted their pictures, so I can write up Sunday now!

So sneaky random Andee fact? I love museums. It doesn't matter what sort of museum it is, the prospect of going to one makes my inner six year old do her best impression of a severely hyper dog upon hearing the word "walk." Granted it's extra super duper fun if it's a science museum (hands on sorts of things for the win), or a museum of something or other I find interesting (The American Museum of the Moving Image is like my personal Mecca - someday I will go), and I get super crazy about natural history museums (AMNH in New York of course being the alpha and omega of that sort of thing for me) because Dinosaur. Skeletons. Are. Fucking. Awesome. I like the ones that just have paintings and sculpture and odd things consisting of a single gear caught in a net of string too. Even little topical exhibits of things like the history of... I don't know, farm equipment, I find really neat and interesting. Blah blah blah. Long story short, me, museums, we get along.

Perhaps not so oddly when I think about it, I had never been to the Springfield Quadrangle before. It's not so oddly because, well, there was the whole not driving thing up until last year, but also, it's Springfield, which in some ways is kinda the armpit of Western MA. That said, there are some really neat/interesting things in that city if you're adventurous enough to find them, like the Quadrangle, CityStage/Symphony Hall, the Memorial Bridge, the basketball hall of fame, the Forest Park Zoo, downtown... yeah. Its just most people don't really bother with finding them. Believe me, I get it - I grew up in Brooklyn in the 80s, no one wanted to go there either, even though there's some seriously neat stuff there. (Still can't quite cope with the idea that Brooklyn is like... hip now. WTF.)

Anyway. Point being, I'd never been there before Sunday. The main thing that lured the three of us there this weekend was The Art of the Brick exhibit. I am a lapsed devotee of the Church of LEGO, so when extrajoker told me about it I was all OMG OMG OMG YES LETS GO.

( I was not disappointed. )

extrajoker's pictures: http://extrajoker.shutterfly.com/1743
inle_rah's pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/inle_rah/sets/72157624590170280/

Like I said, me forgetting my camera = you actually get to see me in some pictures for a change.

Doctor Hoo by ~pu-sama on deviantART

Okay, that right there is made of giggle and squee. Click it; its worth seeing the big version.

I think my favorite is Nine. That owl kinda captures Christopher Eccleston perfectly. Also *dead* at Four's neverending scarf.

I really wish he'd done the whole song. Goddamn, Lazytown, you are one fucked up little show.

am I bad for thinking they both look hotter in this cartoon than in real life? I mean love me some gagacrazy but... Yeah this cartoon is teh sex, and I don't think it would have had nearly the same effect as a photograph.

Pimping elf_fu's Etsy shop REALLY REALLY HARD right now because I WANT THESE EARRINGS and I shouldn't spend money so y'all should buy them instead if you can/want.

...JUST LOOKIT THESE FUCKING MUSHROOM EARRINGS THEY ARE SO AWESOME THEY BLEED CUTE.