anagram of brat

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.

HELLO.

Guys, I think I've found my calling in life, or something, because I apparently throw bitchin parties. 'Course with the crowd of people that showed up to our house to properly usher cell23's fourth decade in last night, it's quite hard to have a bad party. Hell even the people that couldn't come but sent well-wishes via twitter (you were there in spirit, Mr. Berube!) helped, so yeah. There were also Muppets, Batman, Castlevania, and Mario Kart assisting. :) Special guest stars: cell23's now infamous Gay Bar Dance while he beat the shit out of his princess pinata (aersi helped). The terrifying pin the tail on the donkey game that oneforellis brought that looked like a donkey staring worriedly at his ass as red liquid appeared to pour out of it (it was supposed to be a target painted on, but it looked way too much like severe intestinal damage). THE MOTHERFUCKING INDIANA JONES CAKE WITH WORKING BALL. That's right you heard me. That cake was BOSS.

But yeah, you know how you know it was a good party? 2 reasons: 1) I just stumbled downstairs in search of breakfast (by the way, aersi? you're a motherfucking genius, thank you for the bagels) saw the horror my living room and kitchen are after everything... and grinned my face off. 2) The part where towards the end of the evening, cell23 (who tends to detest having a big thing made of his birthday, so yes, I threw him a party cause I'm a bitch like that ;) ) was being glomphed by all the remaining ladies present, and while cackling maniacally, declared that he should turn 30 every year.

I clearly win at everything. Including hangovers. I had quite a bit of "kool-aid" (hawaiian punch, sierra mist, tangerine vodka and slushed ice make great punch, btw) and then another_murray brought over pomegranate liqueur and i was just done for afterward. but I only have a bit of a headache this morning and that may well be because I forgot to make/get coffee. Yeah, I know.

But yeah, thanks guys. And happy birthday cell23. I love you, and I think it's safe to say so does everyone who was in attendance. :)

Pretty much stealing this entire post wholesale from telepresence.

I don't know who this guy is or what he stands for but right now I love his ass.

I'm flagrantly stealing this from flutterbychild because GUH.

"On Saturday, October 30, 2010, the Opera Company of Philadelphia brought together over 650 choristers from 28 participating organizations to perform one of the Knight Foundation's "Random Acts of Culture" at Macy's in Center City Philadelphia. Accompanied by the Wanamaker Organ - the world's largest pipe organ - the OCP Chorus and throngs of singers from the community infiltrated the store as shoppers, and burst into a pop-up rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's "Messiah" at 12 noon, to the delight of surprised shoppers."



I WANT TO BE NEXT TO THAT ORGAN OMG.

Oh uhhhh, the surprise concert is also frakking awesome. :) I love it when people stage these sorts of public stunts.

Morgan's safe and sound and is going home.

Thanks to everyone who piggybacked the signal from me.

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

The big one, first of all is an update on nieceytee's request for help on behalf of her friend - she raised over $2000 in a space of 18 hours. It is so great to be reminded that sometimes the internet is full of wonderful generous people and not just those assholes that comment on news stories. Thank you for signal boosting and helping, those of you that did.

cell23 just sent me something that robbed me of powers of speech with its awesomeness. Someone wrote a python program that swings any standard 4/4 song... The four examples used on this link are "Sweet Child of Mine," "Don't Stop Believing" "Around the World" and "White Rabbit" and they all sound... actually pretty fantastic. My music theory nerd heart just exploded in squee, puppies and unicorns. There are also more "swing" songs to be found over here.

also in music news: head58 posted this cover of "Wicked Little Town:"



Meep. You want me to dissolve in music induced wailing in 2.5 seconds, play me this song in any incarnation. It's my favorite one from Hedwig probably because it's the moment in the entire movie that kinda tore my heart out and stomped on it several times before reinserting it - and yes, that's a good thing.

Lastly... wow. RIP Gary Coleman. You take a large chunk of 80s sitcom nostalgia with you.