anagram of brat

I had planned to take a break from beading after I got done with the Tetris Dance, but this past week it became apparent my brain has other ideas regarding break taking and also other projects. >_< I may have to get froggy with myself to ensure the needle does indeed get put down for a while, because yow, my wrists. (Really need to invest in some squeeze balls and braces at this rate, ugh. I will not be defeated by tendinitis.)

But yeah there are now a couple of projects on the docket for the future. One is a tube necklace/torq/wrap based on the Fourth Doctor's scarf, along with figuring out a pattern for making the TARDIS out of beads. The other is, well. Between calling up the Lost Projects of The Beforetimes and Kidzilla suddenly discovering Actual Honest-To-Goodness Pokemon, something like this was bound to happen at some point:



Sorry about the fuzz, I committed the web developer sin of displaying them at 3x their actual size. :P The patterns resolve to a square just about coaster-sized. I have a feeling these won't be the last I'll see of these particular patterns. If I do go ahead and do this I'm probably going to start with Snorlax - something about that particular pokemon never fails to make me smile. Maybe it's because he looks so fat and happy, like a slumbering Totoro or a Budai figure.

I'm thinking maybe during the proposed and HAPPENING (she sternly told herself) break I might hunt down one of the Pokemon Chromatics and actually give them a try - I keep saying that it's exactly the sort of game I would have been rabidly into had it been released a couple of years before it actually had been (I was already in college by that point), but due to prejudice and Previous Associations I never really let myself explore it. Also since the plan at this point is to get Kidzilla a (3?)DS and whatever edition is currently out for it for her birthday at the end of the summer, I feel like I need to catch up a bit (LRN UR HSTRY) before I start playing with her. Also I seem to remember my sister promising to send me G's old DS... hmm. I should get on her about that.

I also find it funny that I'm still firmly stuck about 5-20 years behind w/r/t gaming. I have about zero interest in the new generation consoles - hell, we only use our Wii for Netflix, which will probably stop once I figure out how/get enough scratch to hook up our blu-ray player to our wireless network. But yeah, everything I've been reading about the Xbox One has been NOPE NOPE NOPE DNW and I've been really Meh on the Wii U. I rather doubt my opinion'll be much different on the PS4, especially since I'm still not really interested in the PS3 even. Oh well.

Overall it's been a reasonably low key weekend - both kids were a little stir crazy yesterday what with the cold and the rain, so we spent part of the day at the Jones (deliver me from laissez-faire hippydippy parents not actually parenting their children - ugh), and then drove into Northampton so I could grab some thread and show off a little to the staff (the appropriate ooing and ahhing was had) and then had dinner at Sam's pizza, which both kids seemed to enjoy. After which we came home and watched "The Name of the Doctor" with Kidzilla, which, surprisingly, improved a bit upon the second watching, despite Moffat clearly Moffatting down the Moffat in a few places. I'll never forgive him for ruining River Song, man - I loved that character (and the actress!) when she was first introduced, but her plotline later... *smh* Alex Kingston deserved so much better. Well, in my ideal world, she and John Barrowman get that spin-off where they adventure around the 51st century together. I'd watch the hell out of that, I won't lie.

Vaguely toying with the idea of forming a Pioneer Valley GOC (geeks of color) discussion/meetup group. Between listening rabidly to TWiB and Nerdgasm Noire podcasts for the better part of the month, I'm discovering the lack of that going on in my life and that it's something I'd like to have happen, especially since I can count the area black gamers I know of on one hand and the ones of other non-white ethnicities on two, and that's ridiculous, there's gotta be more of us around here. I'm a little twitchy about it because I know it's something J would love to join if he heard about it, but if he also hears I'm part of it, well... That's on him, yes, I know, but I still feel bad. Meh. Still might be worth reaching out to George and Neal about it and gauging their interest level, seeing as both of them are way more connected than i am at this point. (and by connected, i've referred to both of then as the Kevin Bacons of the Valley at varying points.) The summer is for projects, right?

seems like the rain let up some today. maybe Frosty later? Maybe?

Yesterday was at times awesome, sad, uncomfortable, exciting and amusing. Overall, it was busy. Lots of running around to be done.

Anyway, gyn appointment was uneventful, and hopefully will remain so after the vaginapocalypse of 2010. (Okay it wasn't that bad. But colposcopies are a bitch and I do not want another one.) Other than the fact that he has to do uncomfortable things to my ladybits every so often I really like Dr. Patton. Also man, I tell you. You mention that your marital status has changed recently and you get entire offices of people in scrubs fawning all over your ass, if yesterday's and the day before's shenanigans were any indication. Wellp.

Aside though - I wonder what inspires a man to become a ladybits doctor this day and age? I'm not trying to be sexist here, though I'm aware there's a bit of bias coming through. I suppose there are lady urologists who get the same question. Really anyone, honestly - I just sorta want to walk up to folks and be all like "so, what was the moment you decided YES I WANT MY LIFE TO BE LOOKING AT PEOPLE'S JUNK ALL DAY EVERY DAY?"

For the record, I could never be a urologist. Don't get me wrong, I love your outdoor plumbing and what it does for me gentlemen (and a few ladies) but on the grand scale of all the beauty in the natural world, the male genitalia is maybe a notch or two above the duck billed platypus.

Also picked up my meds on my way home for the first time in... wow, almost a year now? Oh, medical insurance, you are wonderful. Hurray for being back in the land of $15 for a scrip instead of ten times that, and that's for a generic. We won't talk about my brand name gut pills.

Since I was super excited about getting my test beads yesterday I found a little change purse to slip the vials, needles and thread into and actually started/made a surprising amoount of progress on my test pattern while jumping various buses to and from the doctor. Between snatching beading time on the while, a bit during the opening acts at the concert (more on that later) and a little bit before bed, I got about four rows done.



I've gotten one more done since this morning and so far seeing the colors "in action" so to speak, I'm super in-love and excited.This is going to be an amazing project. It's also going to be a mind blowingly LONG project. At the rate I'm going, the fastest I can get a bead in is 50 seconds. Even if I get my pace up, once I get up to the full sized patterns, that's going to be 2.5 hours-ish per row. Yikes. Here's hoping my usual problems with attention don't kick in once I get started on the big project.

I haven't forgotten The Witch either. Been making myself work on casting her off this week during TV/movie watching tiem. It's slow, but it's happening. There will be pictures once I get one side off.

In supply news, I heard from Northampton Beadery yesterday. The Beadery prices are about in the neighborhood I'd expect after last week's online comparison shopping. A little on the high side, even, but you have to factor in a) no shipping b) local indie business. And I like them, so I'm okay with tossing them the occasional bead order instead of popping online to do it. (I'll keep delibeads bookmarked for emergencies - I was very impressed with their order turnaround.) However I apparently won't need to be placing any bulk orders for a bit because harinezumi went to the fucking Miyuki FACTORY yesterday. O_o Yeah, you know what, I have awesome friends.

Midway through the day I got a text from my sister, apparently sent to all of us, reminding us all to celebrate and cherish Mom's memory. She passed away eight years ago yesterday. I had a rough few moments, but mostly of the "wow... it really has been that long" variety and not of the "I miss my Mommy" sort. I mostly shook it off and went on with my day, but it did drop my sails a little bit.

After bells, I went down to Northampton with cell23 to see Electric Six at the Iron Horse with omgwtfaninja and his Manzypants. I like Electric Six well enough - not enough to call myself a super fan or anything, but I've got ten or so of their songs on semi-heavy rotation on my iPod and most of the other stuff I've heard of theirs I like. Well. While the boys say it wasn't their best live show, I enjoyed them immensely and after experiencing Dick Valentine shenanigans in person, I can kinda see what is is on which omgwtfaninja and cell23 base their "stage personas." (Example, lol.) I was kind of expecting to not recognize most of their set seeing as I don't think I've heard any of their more recent stuff, but they decided they were going to play straight through their first album and meader around in Greatest Hits territory, so it turns out that they did seven out of ten of the songs I have of theirs and all of the ones I really like. Win. Bonus to getting to watch cell23 and omgwtfaninja (who really do have the most adorable bromance I've ever seen) rock out for the entire set (cell23 has been complaining on twitter about how he isn't 20 anymore and Dick Valentine broke him) and getting to hang with the adorable Manzypants for a while. (oh, head58, not that you read LJ anymore, but Neal says hi.) And as always I left the Iron Horse with the self-admonition that I really need to get out and see more concerts. Not only do I love that particular venue, but they have a knack for booking people I actually like. Alas, I never manage to go, for whatever reason - $$ and lazy mostly. Need to fix that. Not now, obv, but down the line. Kinda like I'm always saying I need to go to the movies more too.

Still a mindfuck to me being introduced to people as cell23's wife. An enjoyable one, no mistake (public recognition, y'all know I love that shit), but I do wonder when and if that "Wait, what?? OH YEAH" reaction goes away.

Bah, why is it almost 1pm already? I HAVE THINGS TO DO and I haven't started any of them. >_< BAH. Oh, well, I don't need to sleep, right? :/

...there really are not enough ellipses for this.

It seems I only had spoons and brainspace for the cooking bits of my aspirations for this weekend, but that's okay. After the frenzy of chopping and cooking tornadodom early yesterday afternoon I seemed to need the downtime and rest while stuff was actually doing the whole cooking thing, so I have no real regrets other than the usual nagging "I have to work tomorrow and the house is a mess and I haven't gotten anything done!" litanies, and since the last item is blatantly untrue (WTF, brain, were you absent all weekend?) and the house is actually better looking than usual owing to cell23 and I cleaning the kitchen, picking up around the living room and getting the bags of recycling out of the house yesterday, I'm cheerfully ignoring the little voices and resting on my laurels.

The tomato sauce came out the pot this morning after seventeen hours of cooking (!) and was quite yummy, though had more of a chili note than a pasta sauce underpinning to the taste. More wine, garlic and sugar needed I think. A jar of it is in the fridge in anticipation of a pasta night later this week (maybe) and several containers of it are in the freezer. I then cleaned out the pot and filled it with the split pea soup components I'd assembled yesterday, three large smoked pork neck bones (yeah yeah, insert your favorite southern black stereotype here) and a couple quarts of chicken stock; eight hours later there was some seriously delicious soup waiting to be boxed up and frozen for lunch. That came out perfect - other than swapping out turkey neck for pork, it tastes pretty much exactly like Ruthy's. (Maybe better, but don't tell her that! Or Dad for that matter!) Even dinner last night was damn tasty, being my usual OJ chicken fancy dinner standby, and I think I've finally solved the dilemma of getting the gravy for that to thicken up in a reasonable amount of time (how long have I been making that? five years? sheesh) and since I made a whole tray of breasts a couple of those are portioned out and boxed up for lunch too. My goal really is to quit nickel and diming money on food, be it lunches, dinners or snacks; it adds up alarmingly fast (I do like to eat when intestinal drama permits it) and when I do the math at least 3/4s of where my money disappears is down my throat. (shut up.) Need to cut that shit out if I'm ever going to a) save b) pay down anything. Hopefully between the split pea and the potato leek soup, the chicken and pasta, I'll get that in better control, at least for the next couple weeks.

Still need to figure out what I'm going to do with the last few tomatoes, cause I need to do something and no bites on anyone possibly taking them. I ended up freezing the carrot greens; maybe I'll just blanch, puree and freeze for later? I suddenly wish I'd paid attention when Carole was teaching herself to can vegetables. :/ A project for next summer maybe, depending on whether I decide to do the whole tomato vines in pots thing again. Also kinda wish I had a juicer.

I wasn't cooking QUITE the whole time this weekend - cell23, deliriumdeva and I did make a trip down to the diner late last night for coffee and light fare and shooting the shit with lysscat, which there was plenty of because the diner was dead for a Saturday. You guys, there's this Greek coffee frappe on the menu that not only is delicious, but had so much caffeine that I was sorta seeing funny auras around stuff after drinking half of it. *chuckle* not that lysscat didn't try to warn me that I'd probably start vibrating after drinking one, but at the time that seemed like more of a recommendation than a deterrent. Still is. Whee.

Speaking of interesting effects on brain chemistry, I am current buzzed nigh unto tipsy; in celebration of getting a prodigious amount of slow cooked stuff done, I cracked open one of the licor43 nips and had that celebratory cocktail I'd been craving since first having this stuff at Christmas. And oh.... dear fates, it's just as good as I remember. And as potent. I now know why two glasses at Stanley's had me more than a little wobbly for a while - this sweet sneaky shit is 62 proof, which is murder to a lightweight like me and yeah, I notice that my already miniscule tolerance to alcohol has vanished along with my weight so I'm being good and only having one tonight. I'll save the other nip for when I need a treat with a punch.

cell23 seems to be on a "so many drugs were involved in the making of this movie" jag on Netflix - over the past few days I've sat through most of both Hunter S. Thompson movies (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Where the Buffalo Roam) and today, Cannibal; the Musical. (I don't necessarily blame drugs for that one - Trey Parker and Matt Stone kind of naturally excrete crack into their bloodstream from some gland or another.) Also rewatched Hot Tub Time Machine, since cell23 had never seen it and it's just amiably silly enough to survive a second watching a year or so later. Currently behind on all of my TV watching other than Doctor Who. Still need to make a media consumption post at some point. Argh.

I think right now I need to eat something to soak some of the Cuarenta y Tres out of my blood though.

• I'm getting better. The whole forcing myself to eat until my body stops treating food with suspicion seems to be working. Balancing it with lots of fluids, which seems to help. Small snacks instead of actual meals also seems to be the right way to go, especially since my stomach still likes to be all like NO after ten bites of anything. Not exactly 3 meals a day friendly right there.
  
  Surprisingly so far what has been pretty well accepted right now is cheese. I would think it would be something that would make me feel horrible but apparently this is not my week to be dairy-sensitive. So the last few days one of my primary nibbles is chunks of hard sharp yummy. grinninfoole treated me to a small brick of Gruyere on Thursday and today at the farmers' market the lady at the Chase Hill Dairy Farm stand gave me the remainder sample chunk of her sold out Queso Veijo, so for right now at least it's an easily indulged craving.
  
  
• Speaking of which, I did indeed go out to lunch with grinninfoole on Thursday, though considering my digestive issues I opted to have chicken noodle soup instead of Bueno y Sano. I do enjoy our lunch dates, it seems to be a nice check-in/how are we doing for both of us and have some frank discussion about depression, recovery, efforts at being more social/adult/goal oriented and how all that's going for us. Other than my health issues, we both seem to be on an upswing at the same time, which is excellent.
  
  
• D&D went decently on Thursday night; after a group consensus that combat and general gameplay needed to be tightened, I think overall we all did better. Apparently putting a chart down on my combat cheat sheet listing all my dice roll values helped me a lot - a fair amount of what slows me down during game, believe it or not, is trying to figure out what 17+26-4 is. We seem to be approaching the end of our campaign, and while I like playing Mare and enjoy the band of characters we've got going, I think I'm in agreement with avalon616 here - epic tier is kinda rough and aspects of it are starting to poke me in the "this is why you never liked endgame raiding in WoW either" place. Starting to. They haven't quite gotten there yet. We'll see how we progress.
  
  
• Work is actually pretty good now that back to school rush is over and the work study minions are starting to know what they're doing. The bad part is that my layout's been accepted so now I'm on the profoundly unfun bit of website design where I have to translate pretty shit in photoshop into CSS. Eugh. And I still have Other job stuff to do so if I can find a bit of time to work on that this weekend, next week should be nice, money wise.
  
  Oh and yesterday (well actually today, but never mind) was my boss's birthday. Apparently most of a slice of red velvet cake doesn't disagree with me either, go figure. ITS does not scrimp on the baked goods, seeing as besides the red velvet there was this cake called "to die for" that looked too much like diabetes on a plate to even want to get near, but damn. Also ITS has a fair amount of Polish folks. There was a rousing chorus of "Sto Lat" as the cakes were getting cut.
  
  
• Kiddos are here, and for the most part, behaving themselves. Kidzilla's missing front tooth is ridiculously cute when she giggles:
  
  
  
  See? Oh here, since Lil'Beast decided to butt into the picture taking have a bonus.
  
  
  
  We had a nice visit this morning from their grandparents (chirping_monkey's side) who dropped off a kitchen playset for them. Lil'Beast kept coming down the stairs and serving us invisible cakes. These are the moments that keep me from eating him, I swear.
  
  Every so often I have an "AAAAH TOO FAST STOP GROWING" with them. Between Kidzilla's facial window, having to raise her bike seat this afternoon, and the fact that Lil'beast is now too big for his PJs, tricycle and almost his sandals... yeah. They've both changed so much in the two years I've been regularly part of their weekends on this end of MA. And yeah, I realize it's what kids do, lol, come on, I'm still having issues with my nephew being legal to drink and getting tattoos and macking on women cause he tall and cute. Somewhere in the back of my brain he stopped growing around 12 and his siblings and Alejandra all stopped accordingly as well, no matter what their facebook statuses say. One of those things, I guess.
  
  
• We also managed to make it out to the farmers market, as I mentioned earlier. Came home with ingredients for some ghost pepper chili (which I will not be eating, thank you) and I've been bugging cell23 for two weeks to make potato leek soup, so he got stuff for that too. Noms are afoot. And the kids got maple candy and cheese and cookies so they as usual made out like bandits. I didn't personally get too much this time around, but I'm thinking next week I'll stop by the astarte farms tent, buy up a whole big bag of their end of season tomatoes as well as any I get off Icky and Sticky in the next week or so, plus a few other bits and pieces and try my hand at making an army sized batch of tomato sauce in the crock pot.
  
  
• New eggs in the cave today! I know I know "you still play that game? lolwut?" yeah yeah shut up.
  
  
  

Yeah, that's kinda life as I know it right now. In a few hours it'll be time for me and some of the crew to head down to Northampton for burlesque, and then tomorrow I think there's apple picking happening since we didn't get to go for Kidzilla's birthday. Definitely creeping on up to Fall... cannot wait...

Not what I wanted to have to hear about in my twitter feed today. Boosting the signal to all my Smithies cause this shit isn't okay.

http://gneissguy.tumblr.com/post/4539855184/eve-before-battle
http://gneissguy.tumblr.com/post/4555557924/of-ultimatums-at-smith-college-and-decisions-to-be-made

TL;DR version: Smith Admissions told a male-identified transgender student they could not host prospective students. I really have no words other than

We took the bus down to Umass today to feed the ducks at the pond. There were a LOT of ducks. As in we were completely mobbed by waterfowl.



I think I successfully dodged Kidzilla's question as to what the original lyrics of that song are, lol.

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.

Geist tonight was not spent playing Geist, as two of our players were missing; the remaining four of us instead shot the breeze for four hours, which turned out to be incredibly fun, interesting and oddly therapeutic.

Also? I am boggled anew by the crazy web of interconnected, interlocked, richly layered and sometimes boggling incestuous craziness that is the Valley. I'm also at times incredibly O_o that I've spent almost a decade and a half kind of orbiting its edge. I mean, lets be frank, most of that time I spent kinda crawled up the ass of my own relationships and not doing much else, so I missed pretty much everything directly. But I know, at least at the acquaintance level a few people present at each so I've heard about everything at least once. And y'all know how I live fitting together puzzle pieces of people and stories and situations. The Valley is a neverending geyser of puzzle peices to a giant four dimensional puzzle that I'll never solve in my lifetime, but it's fun pulling patterns out of the pieces I have.

Also? I find it funny that I seem to have this pattern of encountering people throughout my life who eventually become close and/or important to me, and yet when I first meet them I don't remember them (but they remember me!), the next time I meet them I hate/am annoyed by them, and then one to four years later we're either really close friends, in a relationship or both. Life is weird. *shakes head*

Okay, now that I'm less pissed off about it and since antiviral pills are apparently made of miracles and fairy farts in that while I still look like a gross rashy swamp thing, I am blissfully itch free for the first time in a week, the amusement at my situation is setting in. And there is something amusing about having something that typically lays low most five year olds. Also yeah, I have an update to my "I am medically weird and possibly not human" file.

Funny story. I did end up driving down to Amherst to get my medicine last night a few hours after my doc appointment. She'd given me valcyclovir to try to help clear this shit up faster. Valcyclovir is the generic form of Valtrex. As in the meds in those ads which feature attractive people in dewy outdoor settings staring into a camera earnestly and saying "I have herpes... and I'm okay... thanks to Valtrex." Those commercials make me facepalm every damn time, by the way. Especially since I could SWEAR that entire campaign financed Rock of Love singlehandedly judging by HOW MANY TIMES it would come on.

ANYWAY, so yes I went down to the Amherst CVS (one of two in Amherst that serve the three colleges in the area, including UMass Amherst) ...to find once I got there that I was picking up 1/3 of my prescribed amount owing to the fact that they had run out of both Valtrex and the generic. I have to pick up the rest on Monday.

College town pharmacy runs out of herpes meds. News at 11.

Anyway yeah, I still look pretty disgusting (I don't want to talk about what's happening with my lower lip, ugh) but like I said, other than the bits where I scratched myself raw, I'm remarkably not itchy two doses in. Mostly just sore and a little on the tired side, despite going to bed at 10 and with a brief awake spell around 2, sleeping like a log for 12 hours. In typical me fashion I am absolutely freaking out about missing the two bell performances tomorrow, especially as I have a pretty audible melody bit in one piece and trying very hard to be all NO YOU CAN'T GO ANYWAY THERE ARE IMMUNOCOMPROMISED OLD PEOPLE IN CHURCH at myself. Still, the guilty, it is very present. But I'm okay. And cell23's been taking really good care of me, when I'm letting him. You know me, I'm not good at being sick. Despite that, he's done a heroic amount of fussing, cooking, cleaning the kitchen, and more fussing and generally not treating me like the monkey from Outbreak so that's something. Pretty much nothing for it at this point other than rest, try not to scratch, take my meds, and use the downtime for good instead of evil. Reading and web work, I think.