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Thursday, November 5th, 2009
7:05 pm - a fuckton of text. for you!
vacation 2009: hawaii - big island

asterisks denote photos presented below, among others. i'm too beat to find links; you have enough information here to google for yourself if you want to know more about something.

wednesday - started preparing & packing right after work. joe only had a couple hours of sleep the night before, so he napped on the sofa while i handled most of the packing. i stayed awake, watching frasier & making a secondary bangs dread (for those of you who care about that sort of thing) until chris picked us up at 4am. got to the airport in plenty of time, but barely made it to our seats & i was sleeping on joe. half hour layover in san francisco, back asleep before the plane took off. i awoke an hour in to find the middle row of seats on our 2+3+2 plane deserted, so i climbed over there & slept the entire six hour flight.

thursday - left the airport around noon hawaii time, immediately found joe's desired apple bananas at a nearby grocery store, bought lots of sunblock, shared a local passionfruit soda. it's fun to hear the garmin completely mispronounce things in hawaiian... in an australian accent. at the honokohau marina, joe bought some marlin jerky (lemon salted) which was transparent & strange, but pretty good. drove to kona & had lunch at the fish hopper. we split both the swordfish with apple chutney & raisins, served with mashed sweet hawaiian potatoes, & the blackened opakapaka with rice & guacamole - both prepared perfectly. (swapping plates midway through means you get to enjoy twice as much new food!) shopped in the area, we ate a delicious dessert of shaved ice flavored with black cherry, lychee, & li hing mui (a plum flavor) around vanilla frozen yogurt, & i bought a tiny ojami pony bead carved from boxwood*. the beads are really cool - the shop had several dozen different animals & every one was unique.

checked in at the paniolo greens hotel, discovered that i'd somehow snagged us a fucking 1400 sqft VILLA with a bunch of free groceries (local fruit, eggs, bacon, wheat bread, milk, juice, butter & local strawberry-guava jelly). they tried to connive us into a two hour timeshare course several times, but joe & i have no problem saying NO & hustling them mercilessly for more free shit (coffee & restaurant coupons).

friday - joe was up early to run on the beach & do a bit of body surfing - the sea ate one of his bandannas, but none of his jewelry. saw wild turkeys run across the back lawn*, then i made us french toast which was excellent with the guava jelly. we had planned a snorkeling expedition today, but they rescheduled us to sunday, so today became The Day to Drive Everywhere.

headed over to the hilo side of the island, which has far more rain & thus more lush greenery everywhere. joe bought weird looking dried lemon rings & hot file fish jerky, & i picked up a bunch of lychee jellies, then we ate lunch at the hot bar/deli of island naturals (basically a hawaiian trader joe's). left with a truckload of rambutans the produce guy gave us for less than a buck, & also a fresh organic dragonfruit. split a yummy dr. tima's honey-sweetened blood orange soda & i overloaded on ahi. joe bought strange kombucha made in the store, bottled in a mason jar.

found some horses far off in a field & stopped to snag a few pictures* - they saw us & all four came galloping over. i fed them the same grass they'd been eating, but the pieces that were slightly out of their reach & thus still had the prized seed tips. drove through & walked a bit around kalopa native forest state park*, which was deserted, then down to volcanos national park & walked through the thurston lava tube* (oddly, the garmin knew where it was) as dusk hit. saw a mongoose run across the street. had dinner at the hokulani steakhouse - local grass-fed NY strip with roasted garlic potatoes for me, mahi mahi fish & chips for joe. continued driving to the literal "end of the road" (there's even a sign), but couldn't try to see live lava as we didn't have flashlights. aiming to avoid any snacks that can be bought at home, i picked up a bag of "hawaiian cookies"* at a gas station, which were actually pretty good. we then tried for hours to locate the hot ponds; found the general vicinity but were told we'd again need flashlights to get to them "in the jungle". flaked off & drove home around 1am, freezing cold & barely awake.

saturday - a second batch of french toast, with sliced apple bananas this time. the hotel staff & my garmin both told us to take the long way around & not drive on 250 to today's destination, but we took it anyhow & it ROCKED. it's the winding pass up between the two main mountain peaks, great fun to drive, & we saw a fat hawaiian rainbow on the way back*. fuck anyone who told us to avoid 250.

rode in a six wheel drive german vehicle* out to where eight ziplines & a suspension bridge traversed the forest at the northernmost tip of the island; awesome experience & highly recommended. the last zip gets you up to 30-50mph & starts with a running leap off a cliff - fuck yeah i took video. they also fed us several native plants - some kind of sour raspberry-looking thing they called a happyberry, a very green-tasting medicinal leaf supposed to help with memory, a guava straight from the tree - & showed us the berries that become peppercorns when dried.

afterwards, stopped at a liquor store where joe bought some east indian rum & i picked up some dark chocolate (70%) from o'ahu. went in search of sushi for dinner - the zipline folks told us to go to sushi rock, but the menu was dull; the internet suggested kenichi, & we were sold when we learned they were having one of their half-off-sushi saturdays. over-ordered by at least double. i enjoyed the kampachi, which is hawaiian yellowtail & very different from amberjack; joe's tsubugai was nice too.

sunday - breakfasted on my leftover NY strip & a bit of sushi while joe swam again. mistakenly thought hawaii observed daylight savings time; was worried joe wouldn't make it back in time to leave for the rafting trip. it worked out, though, since he'd allowed an hour for the sex we then couldn't have. heh. sped into town*, bought him some trunks & me some sunglasses, then stripped down to my newly tailored bikini & joe rubbed my every visible inch of skin with SPF 50. (i should mention at this point that joe has been very viligant about making sure i'm very sunblocked, & i thoroughly enjoy not having to apply that shit myself.)

the captain zodiac tour was fantastic - a long ride at high speeds on a pontoon boat out to a very secluded reef with a ton of fish everywhere; we also saw a morey eel. snorkeled for most of an hour (earskins stayed in just fine, but i should've put a retainer in my septum, as it messed with the seal on the mask), finally used the two underwater cameras i've had for ages for underwater dread photography (hopefully the film's still healthy; gudu post upcoming if so), & ate fresh pineapple & cookies back on the boat. rode near the coast on the way back & saw more small lava tubes, heard local legends about queen pele, & happened upon a pod of around thirty hawaiian dolphins (only 5-6' in length) who were being very charismatically in-character. joe said they were performing triple lutzes, heh.

zodiac was just across from where we were thursday, so we shopped more & revisited a couple places so i could buy a matau for chris. returned to the fish hopper where we split the crispy platter of mahi mahi, outstanding coconut prawns, & some of the best calamari i've had (cut in sheets, not rings), & the understandably expensive dish of blue nose sea bass topped with dungeoness crab, served with more of those amazing sweet mashed potatoes. found a VERY well stocked gem & mineral store where joe spent fifty bucks on two highly unique specimen of fluorite (an eight-sided block & a large dark obelisk), then i completely overdosed on urrrnnngh toooo much shaved ice. blue raspberry, cinnamon, & vanilla this time, SO good, could barely move on the drive back. never try to eat a small by yourself, it's not possible (& really i only managed a little more than half anyhow).

there's only internet access in a couple spots since the rooms here are so huge, but i was able to connect to some douchebag's unsecured linksys mifi hub while joe napped, then i lotioned his burnt back which will be a gorgeous toast brown tomorrow*, the bastard.

monday - mmmm, breakfast sushi. we ate the dragonfruit too, then went over to waipi'o for horseback riding. the owners had a couple of ridiculously cute koolie puppies who looked a lot like this guy with even more gigantic ears. we were driven in a four wheel drive van down into the valley on a 45-degree steep, winding, one-car-wide locals-only road with little to no guard rail. the whole area is privately owned or some crap, so no one's allowed to come down without a guide. it's beautiful & lush, with multiple waterfalls visible from the trail. joe rode "nitro", a bay, & i was on blonde "journey"*. we found a dozen wild horses* scattered about, saw lots of taro root, plus avocados, pomelos, guavas, castor beans & coffee beans growing on their trees, & waded through a river up to the horses' bellies. we were allowed to pick a couple of star fruit on the drive back, & almost took home a tilapia a friend of our guide's had JUST caught, but didn't end up bothering since we didn't have a fish basket (or even tinfoil) for the grill.

came back into town, spotting tiny wild black goats eating dry grass at the side of the road, looked around for a new restaurant for a late lunch; couldn't find anything worthwhile & didn't want to hit the fish hopper a THIRD time, so we stopped at the "monster burger" kiosk near the hotel. joe ordered the island burger with grilled pineapple, i asked for one of the eponomous burgers in a dimunitive size; however, they let us walk away with some other dude's very specific order (he'd shown up with a notepad), so joe ended up with a plain cheeseburger & i had a decent toasted club. (we're still wondering if duder had to wait twice as long, or if he took our bag & got yelled at by the picky wife.) we split a local pineapple soda & a "calamansi sweet lime" drink, & joe bought a bottle of dark rum made in maui.

tuesday - picked over the remaining leftovers for breakfast, then drove for the last time down queen ka'ahumanu highway (so fun to say) & hit a natural foods market. bought three ripe & three green apple bananas in hopes of smuggling the latter onto the plane (succeeded). joe also bought some weird acai & goji berry sambazon drink, & i got a made-in-store cinnamony fruit muffin for the plane (which turned out to be repugnant, but the airline gave us several snacks, so it was okay). drove around a bit more, dropped off the rental car, & were shuttled to the airport. tried & failed to brute force the secured airport wireless until we boarded. the flight was pretty bumpy but uneventful; ditto the bus train ride home once we realized the airport bus had stopped running.

it was an excellent trip & i'm pleased to report i'm completely without tanlines - or any appreciable tan whatsoever. also pleased to report i've learned the netbook's idiosyncracies & we have become friends.

( on to the pictures )

vacation 2009: extended cut

wednesday - still off from work, so i'd scheduled a rubdown with my fucking awesome masseuse. then joe was actually coming with me to see billy joel & elton john at the key arena - i'd been slowly indoctrinating him to joel's music from back when it was really good (ie, in the 70s, as opposed to the cheeseball era [which i enjoy, but understand when others don't] through the wtf "river of dreams" bullshit mostly heard on the radio) by playing some whenever he was a captive audience in my miata. eventually he was making requests for replays & even for a few select mp3s to be sent over to him ("the entertainer", "weekend song"). joe heard about the concert before me, a few weeks ago, & after i picked my jaw up off the floor, i found it was sold out. so i posted to craigslist & scored a $200 pair of tickets for $150. :D

however, we went to the pike for dinner beforehand, & ran into some friends who'd heard bad news - turned out the concert is postponed because elton has e coli from rimming some dude. or from recalled beef, whatever. anyhow, we've all been told to hold our tickets & for a possible reschedule, but our vacation ended there.

now to finish clearing the 4100 spam mails accrued last week, & perhaps even respond to some of these pushy assholes in my inbox.

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Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
9:41 am
compu-tech paragraph 1 of 2: i got the webcams working, got the printer working, swapped the hard drive in & copied over the rest of my world. still can't get the ide dvdrom working, but it's reading cds, which is even weirder. in the interest of troubleshooting but partly just for the upgrade, i picked up a new sata dvdrom & installed that... but something was still fucked. [info]testing4l finally realized through the magic of lspci -v that my sata card (since the second of my two on-board sata slots is busted) needs its own module. it was built, installed, modprobe'd, then the sata dvdrom was tested on reading & burning, & i am assured it is working fine. the ide remains as an interesting puzzle for some time when phil is bored, as do a couple of other minor system issues, but now the box is completely liveable. yay, finally.

compu-tech paragraph 2 of 2: the new netbook arrived. it's still kind of a question mark as to whether it's working right, but it may just be that the thing takes a longer time to finish booting x than i'm accustomed to. it also may be related to how hot it runs - when i gave it a cooler surface, it seemed to work better. that smacks of poor craftmanship to me, but whatever, it's still warrantied. it at least is picking up wireless properly & can get into my home box remotely, so it'll be fine for the trip. & the keymap is working this time. 9_9

photo-tech paragraph 1 of 1: i broke my camera this week - the hardware issues continue, eh? i almost never drop electronics, but i accidentally bumped it off the top of my dvd case while reshooting some pics. it landed askew against the zoom lens, which now won't retract. no popping it back into place, either; it's destroyed. the best part is that it happened while i was reshooting some pics, as i noted - reshoots because i'd accidentally rm'd the ones i'd just taken & edited & had all ready to upload to photobucket. so, in short, a typo broke my camera. sigh. the upside, though, is i found a used one of the same model on ebay for $65 BINOBO; i offered 50 & we agreed on 55. i was able to push the seller into shipping priority mail, & it arrived just a couple days later. everything's in great working condition (phew).

what the shit? paragraph 1 of 2: joe & i went skydiving again! i didn't expect it to be as good, but i actually enjoyed it more than the first time. we did "level 2" tandem jumps this time, so we got to do forward motions, wear altimeters, & pull our own ripcords. level 3 teaches 360s, which i already got to do on both of my jumps because i rock at sweettalking my instructors. :D

what the shit? paragraph 2 of 2: with hawaii quickly approaching, i realized that i don't have an oceanworthy swimsuit. i have a simple black one-piece which i bought a decade ago & can still be worn in hot tubs & such, but the elastic is shot in the straps & chest (go figure), so diving or even any minor current against it would likely result in surprise x-rated not-fun-for-lish. joe went shopping with me on sunday for this purpose, but it's not exactly easy to find a suit that fits me in the first place, much less to locate it in OCTOBER IN SEATTLE... yeah, that didn't work. i was about to hit ross in desperation when i realized i own a beautiful bikini, gifted to me a couple years back, which stayed unworn because it never fit me too well. so i called a tailor nearby, she said she can work with swimsuits, & for a quarter the price of a new suit, she's adjusting this one to fit me perfectly. it'll be done in time for the trip, too. woot.

on to: ( moonstones! )

& recent photo posts of my hair:
1. http://community.livejournal.com/get_up_dread_up/5974975.html
2. http://community.livejournal.com/get_up_dread_up/5988047.html
3. http://community.livejournal.com/get_up_dread_up/6006766.html

enjoy.

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Sunday, October 4th, 2009
3:08 am
it's computer stuff first, then things that might interest those of you who don't know what a linux is. skim appropriately!

of key importance: PHIL FUCKING RULES.

as you probably ignored in the last entry & are probably currently ignoring in this entry, video wasn't working properly despite phil's site visit. tonight, & the key reason he FUCKING RULES: he made magic happen with a splash of nvidia module, a pinch of v86d, & a dash of uvesafb - & not only did both X & zgv start working together, but my zeros with slashes even turned back into zeros with dots. *happy sigh* I'M DIFFERENT FROM YOU OKAY, SHUT UP. it was perfect timing, too - i hung out with [info]sic737 today, & was so frustrated about the new box that he brought me another new box to try a quick & dirty install on, just to see if svgalib would work. (it didn't, but chris still rules hardcore.)

since the last update: i copied over my website & fixed the cgi-bin programs (one little chmod 701 instead of 700, duh). once that was working, i swapped IPs between the old & new box so i wouldn't have to change my RDNS & dyndns pointers. i also moved the dvd-rw over (as noted in the last entry), but it's still not working. it's closer though - at first the bios didn't see it (until i swapped the IDE cable, go layer one), then my kernel didn't see it during boot (until a full recompile fixed the amd74xx module issues), & now i can hear the disc spin but the system can't read a dvd. efforts continue.

i'd like to state here that my brother, too, is awesome. i note this next bit mostly for 5-10 years from now when i have to go through it again. i had root on a separate & tiny hard drive in the old machine, & i wanted to copy the entire structure to my big drive so i could hang onto all my old config files for a couple months, should i need them. this little line of code allowed me to do just that in a very efficient manner:
tar --one-file-system -cvf - . | ( cd /big/drive/OLD_ROOT/ && tar -xf - )

& thus, back to annoying things from this rash of awesome - my netbook arrived... defective. X segfaulted at the third boot, & thereafter would take a full 3-5 minutes to load any program, including tiny games or a terminal window, with nothing else running. added to that, the dvorak keymap is corrupted - instead of printing 123456 as you type numbers, it literally prints [75831. if i manually loaded the keymap with loadkeys or setxkbmap, it went back to normal. what the fuck, dell. i even had to hack my own root, as it wasn't set to any known default or to nothing, & the root password wasn't included in the documentation. turns out they left sudo available to the primary user, so i was at least able to "sudo passwd root". 9_9 they really don't expect people to know what commandline is anymore, do they.

but oddly enough, the CLI is the only part that DOES work correctly. a replacement machine is on the way, & i insisted on keeping this one until it arrives. if they take forever, i can still use it to ssh into my box from hawaii - i just can't check lj while i'm gone. ...which isn't exactly a problem. (ok, i can check it with lynx, but most of the communities i'm in are image-based. let's not even get STARTED about svgalib on the half broken netbook.)

COMPUTER STUFF IS DONE. OH HEY! REAL PEOPLE STORIES START HERE.

the trip to silverwood last weekend was fantastic. [info]robinhoodvandal & i were pretty well concussed after riding this thrice & all of these & everything else non-little-kid-specific in the park at least once. i maintain that wooden roller coasters fucking hurt to ride. ([info]gorthok the headbanger was in a much better place than we were at the end of the day, & [info]impatient_hands barely went on anything above 20mph, so he was fine too.) this guy was a great piece of entertainment though, not painful at all; we went four times.

for lunch at the park, we went to lindy's, which was my choice as it was the only place on the park map that didn't specialize in deep fat frying. the menu had a ton of interesting sandwich choices, & i convinced the table to order three of the burgers to split four ways. we had a turkey burger with avocado, a bison burger with sauteed peppers, & a barbecued angus hamburger with grilled onions. there wasn't much left on the table afterwards, & nobody felt too overfull to go immediately back to the rides.

james had some interesting one-liners on the drive back, such as, "high colonics are like the aftershock of enemas," referencing the "aftershock" ride we liked so much. he also said, "jugs of milk are like poop," & i'm going to leave that to you to figure out for yourself. later, we stopped for dinner at the sawtooth grill in eastern washington, & it was all i could want in a cobb salad. the huckleberry lemonade was rather tasty, too.

anyhow, the weekend was great, & in total was only about seventy bucks a person including the hotel, park access, & meals. (joe & i split paying for gas since we were using james & jenna's car.) for those really interested, jenna went into greater detail (with pictures!) over here, & so did james here.

btw - squishy black earskins are the ONLY way to go to an amusement park. they're the only choice that's really safe. & now on to fancier choices:

( i didn't even order them! )


( silver chatoyance in green stone; more rainbow lab pron )


( the third of my three new relic pairs )


back to planning for hawaii & leavenworth now. the latter is turning into a much nicer trip since the addition of a night at a local b&b. we'll see if the breakfast is at all comparable.

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Monday, September 21st, 2009
2:12 pm - mostly more computer crap
i got excited about all the upcoming trips & bought a netbook. thanks to slickdeals, i picked up a dell vostro a90 for $199 - $75 off - making a new system with double the SSD the same price as the refurbs i was looking to buy. i'm glad someone has finally come out with an inexpensive machine i can use for web browsing & ssh'ing into my own computer, because that's pretty much all i need to do if i'm not at home. i had to call dell because their site wasn't calculating the order properly, & was able to sweettalk the guy into expediting my order for free. so here's hoping it'll arrive before the idaho trip, but it'll definitely be here before hawaii.

[info]testing4l was up this weekend with his girl, kami. skydiving was a bust - it was gray & rainy on our reserved day, & there was nothing available sunday, which was blue & perfect. ah well. joe & i rescheduled for october, & they're letting us use all four deposits towards our two jumps, so at least no one loses money. the bright side: perhaps qwantz, only four days previous, was trying to tell us something?

but aside from that, we had a great time during all the parts where we WEREN'T trying to fix two tiny little issues on the new box - ie while feasting. the food was awesome - we had lovely authentic dinners at rancho bravo (mexican, cooked by mexicans), ha na {sushi, made by japanese), & mirch masala {indian, cooked by indians}. we also hit glo's for breakfast saturday & the honey hole for lunch on sunday. yum. & i made carrot-apple-lettuce juice (with beet stems for a bit of color) for everyone, which led to an interesting conversation on what else we can juice. WAFFLES! no?

as for the aforementioned two tiny little issues: issue-the-minor where i couldn't run old 32bit programs on the amd64 was eventually fixed with a chroot of a 32bit system. i followed the debian.org directions exactly & it was a-okay after a minor kernel recompile; this despite phil's insistence that this way would be wrong & irritating & what i should really do is something completely retarded which had a high likelihood of rendering the system unusable. go debootstrap!

issue-the-major was what absorbed most of the weekend: i could not get zgv to run. zgv is my favorite commandline graphics viewer, & i've been using it for over a decade. i've tied it in to lynx & pine & anything else that says "oh hey, i have a jpeg to show you, how shall i do it?" we discovered before phil even arrived that it's not just a broken zgv - it's a broken svgalib entirely.

so after two & a half days of trying different chipsets in libvga.config, phil trying multiple times & multiple ways to hack svgalib, & the purchase of FIVE video cards from re-pc (all returnable within 30 days, & none of which worked - 80% failed because we were too stupid to stick to buying cards that actually fit my motherboard *headdesk*), we gave up sunday afternoon... until after dinner that night, when phil revealed there are actually other ways to see commandline jpegs than svgalib. hey, in my defense, there was only one way when i started with linux - & i never thought to ask if there were others since phil didn't suggest any others because i have an admittedly giant hardon for zgv. 9_9

sunday at midnight, with an AM departure, he finished a decent kludge using nvidia's framebuffer (which fortunately has zero visible change from a non-fb text interface; of utmost importance because i'm not going to use graphical fonts masquerading as REAL text, damnit) with directfb, fbi for jpegs, & zgv for gifs. fbi still isn't showing jpegs at full quality - i'm catching minute horizontal lines & a minor bit of solarization/pixellation, but everything *works*, including x & mplayer which look perfect, & even links2 which is okay. so this'll do for now. if i get very ambitious, i'll try another batch of video cards. sigh.

today i've brought mail completely up & running & everything for it has been properly moved over. i was even slick enough to transfer my inbox mail without having to overwrite anything annoying. i scp'd a bunch of config files too, though even through the same gateway it's too bothersome & time consuming to send a lot of things, so most files are waiting for the drives to be physically moved. things still on the necessary list which can't be configured & tested until they're moved: dvd-rw, printer, webcams.

if i can find enough motivation tonight, i might get the dvd-rw & older hard drives installed & the new machine settled under my desk... but no promises as the new seasons of "house", "how i met your mother", *&* "the big bang theory" all start tonight. now back to software configurations...

edit: oh damnit, i just crashed the old box's video ram. so now i have no excuse not to break down at least the dvd-rom, since it'll require a reboot anyhow. sheesh.

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Monday, September 14th, 2009
7:28 pm - kicking ass at work = more time to write posts for this silly thing
i'm encroaching on about 40% moved into the new system, i'd say - i've migrated irc, news, mail (outgoing not incoming yet), a good number of config files & all my custom programs, & have successfully set up a custom kernel, sound, & an x server (where i spend only about 5% of my time; i can do jpeg editing via commandline, but it's not exactly efficient, heh). [info]testing4l is coming this weekend, & he's got his work cut out for him as there are only a couple major amd64 vs i386 roadblocks that i don't know how to detour around &/or bash through. also: it's weird to see "forcedeth" in my dmesg.

fresh hot excitement this week is that we bought a juicer! we bought a really NICE juicer, which not only juices fruits & vegetables, but also does shit like parsley, spinach, & wheatgrass, & can make fucking cashew butter & pistachio butter, shaved ice, & sorbet from just frozen fruit. it's a masticating juicer, but joe calls it the kitchen panacea because it ALSO can shred stuff. yesterday, we put a bunch of organic produce through it that we weren't eating for various reasons, & it made us a lovely green cocktail. for the record, two red bartlett pears, a valencia orange (with pith but minus zest/exocarp), one fuji apple (sans skin as joe's violently allergic), a handful of spinach, & two celery ribs turns into two ~6oz awesome slushy juice drinks which smell totally like celery but taste sweet & pleasantly grainy from the pears.

both joe & i had a very strange reaction to this onslaught of nutrition: we got dizzy & had to sit down. i drank half, then ended up having to cut the rest 1:1 with water to finish it. felt great after that, though, & there were no further negative effects. (unlike our recent experience with 4oz each of wheatgrass - i'm good with 2oz, maybe 3oz, but 4oz gave me a queasy "nnnnrrrrgh toooo much greeeen" feeling for a couple hours.) tonight i juiced two oranges, two apples without skin (testing joe's tolerance), a handful of spinach & half a lemon for us. could've used the whole lemon, but it was delicious. also of note is that a little lish handful of spinach is enough to turn the whole thing pea soup green.

ok, as promised, upcoming fun listed in order of increasing awesomeness:

fun 1: we're planning to actually hit leavenworth this december. joe wants to see some stupid tree lighting. this is the least exciting (though still pretty exciting) because i have no idea what's going on with it & it's kind of joe's trip where i'm along for the ride. (this is highly uncommon for me.)

fun 2: skydiving! now we're getting into it. i got to do all sorts of crazy 360s & stuff last time & joe's tandem instructor didn't do that, so we plan on making sure he gets the whole ride this time.

fun 3: i convinced [info]robinhoodvandal & [info]impatient_hands to come out to silverwood with us. we're all taking off work early on a friday, driving out to idaho (6-7 hour trip), & staying overnight in a crazy good hotel deal i finagled. we'll be at the park all saturday, using half off coupons i stumbled across after we'd chosen the date (score!), & are driving home saturday night. there may or may not be a sleepover.

fun 4: hawaii! holy crap! it started because i was randomly searching vacation destinations one morning, & found we can get airfare to hawaii, a rental car, plus 5 nights in a pretty nice hotel for about $600 each. joe was immediately in. we'll be on the big island, since joe's already been to maui. we added a couple of extras to the expedia package, too, so we're pre-paid for a couple hours of seeing waipi'o on horseback & going on a four hour rafting & snorkeling trip. we're going to try to find some scuba action while we're there too, & i have two underwater cameras to use... underwater dreads photography? hell yeah! must remember to tailor my bikini so it actually fits since we're spending so much time in the water.

ok, that's done. oh right, now a couple of these things.

( a simple, expected match )


( red leopardskin jasper + DIY match + extras )


now get out.

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Friday, September 4th, 2009
2:09 pm
first, a quick followup to the last post. i called odwalla. they took the info & ran a test of the batch. it was promised that if the test found contaminants, then my claim would be escalated to their insurance company; if they found no containment, then they'd send me four free odwalla coupons to say they're sorry. i wasn't absolutely stoked on this, but i did have to admit it's fair. (the girl on the phone noted no one else had called, so i wasn't expecting much.) they did their independent testing & actually sent me a pretty detailed letter about it, but they found nothing. so i get four free odwallas, & oh well, gotta chalk it up to shit luck. (i'd go bitch at the place i bought it, but i actually really like their food, so i'm loathe to make enemies there.)

in geeky news, my main computer's secondary IDE controller completely died, killing off the access to my dvd-r drive. [info]sic737, being awesome, gave me a new machine to move into. ironically, this is just before [info]testing4l's visit, so he's retardedly excited about helping me to get it going. it's just as well i'm being forced to upgrade - the p3-600 with 320M ram i've been running (since [info]jesuscrux made me upgrade way back in 2002 with a machine he stole from work) has pretty much had it. it's been a great box, but it can't even do usb2, much less sata.

it's strange how much hardware has changed in six years - i don't recognize half of what's on this motherboard. even the power couplings are different. & i wonder when things changed from giving your friends pieces of hardware to upgrade with (which i clearly remember - most of mine came from [info]japolo), to giving your friends full systems. go progress!

so the new machine is an amd64, & it has some weird silver & black custom case with a clear window on the side & a blue neon light illuminating the internals. i'm of the mindset that computers should be either beige or black (or maybe have a unique paintjob like the most amazing box ever given to me, again from rj), so it's weird to look at this flashy thing with its useless plastic ridges down the sides & textured detailing trying to be all fancy. i will say though, the digital temperature gauge on the front - & even written into the bios - is really damned rad.

anyhow, chris gave me 512M of memory, & i bought 2G more for it from newegg. (boy has memory changed, too.) then when i was installing debian that night, i discovered the 80g drive chris gave me was toast, so i had to go spending again. funny how that night went, with joe & i searching for good deals on drives - in the space of an hour, i went from "FUCK. just find me something cheap as shit" to "fine, i'll pay $40 for a decent quality 80g" to "well if can get a 160g for $45, i guess that's okay" to finding out the deal on the 160 had changed & was now $55 total, so i may as well spend $59 shipped on a 640g. so i ended up with a 640g/7200rpm/16m sata caviar drive, again from newegg.

then newegg had another big dumb sale the next day, so i bought a spindle of dvd-rs for cheap too. that's three boxes all shipping from them at once, & they wouldn't combine my orders to save packaging. 9_9

but hey, while i'm at it, why not pick up a new pair of headphones too. a bit of a segue here, away from compudork & on to audiodork:

i have finally found a pair of high-end headphones which not only fit over my ears, but also over my 3/4" plugs: sony MDR-NC60. they're absurdly comfortable, fit perfectly on my head, & sound fantastic. plus they have a monitor button to press if someone's talking to you, which makes it sound like i'm not even wearing headphones. pretty convenient for me considering i generally only wear headphones on the bus to & from work.

i tested them in-store with 20mm plugs & my longest glass in 3/4", & they fit very well over both. i have to push my vertical conch bars up before i put them on, but that's something i usually did with my panasonic over-ear headphones too, & i could only wear those nude-lobed. i need to be VERY careful that my plugs aren't pushed out when i remove the headphones, but i tested removal multiple times & didn't have any fallen plugs.

anyway, here's the link to their description on sony's site. i bought a non-refurb, barely used pair cheap on ebay & saved 50% over sony's in-store 20% off sale. go me.

back to the computers then...

so i'm moving into it the same way i moved into the previous box - by setting it up to where i'm totally comfortable with how everything is configured & working, then doing the major move of my hard drives & peripherals into the case. (that last bit will probably be when phil is here to help with any blips.) i'll also finally be upgrading laterally-grading? to the new old M2 keyboard with the new machine - the y & backspace keys on my old old M2 are almost completely blown, the left shift & ctrl barely work, & i long ago had to remap my printscreen button to act as esc. (i forget who said they think they can fix it, but speak up now if you want a chance to try - it's all yours.)

so the move-in begins tonight, as my newegg stuff is all out for delivery & slated to arrive today. *excitement*

next post will be less geeky, as i'll probably write about our upcoming awesome events - skydiving as you all know about, but we're also headed to idaho to hit silverwood with [info]robinhoodvandal & [info]impatient_hands, to leavenworth in december, & i just booked a trip for myself & joe to hawaii in october...!

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Sunday, August 23rd, 2009
2:06 am
it's been a quiet month, aside from the fact that i've only had about one day off & everything's been completely insane around here. august has been the busiest month ever for my hair business; when i'm not at my day job or working on dreads, i've been busting ass on my [info]luciferins. everything's going very well with both businesses, so i can't complain.

as noted, the reservations have been made for skydiving v2.0 with [info]testing4l & his shiny new girlfriend. i haven't met her yet, but she's clearly a superior model to previous incarnations.

i also had time to see stellastarr at the chop suey. HOLY SHIT do they put on a fantastic show. [info]sic737 couldn't make it, but i took some cellphone videos for him, & grabbed shawn's setlist. i later recreated the show layout for him in studio versions. :D

oh hey, it's story time!

this weekend, i had a timebomb inside me. (nope, wasn't pregnant.) let's backtrack to this past tuesday: i ate normally, nothing bizarre or uncommon, nothing of questionable freshness. late tuesday night i woke up with a gut-braid, as my brother would put it, & felt so awful the rest of the night that i ended up staying home from work both wednesday & thursday. i basically slept through both days. i didn't get a good sense of what had poisoned me, but figured it might've been the chicken & bacon panini i'd had for lunch.

friday morning i returned to work, again ate normally... then after lunch, finished the half an odwalla smoothie i'd left in the fridge. i didn't give it a thought until i got home, when my guts started roiling in the same way as before.

odwalla had poisoned me. twice. fucking santa cruz.

i called my office & had a coworker pull the container from the trash. though i'm highly opposed to drugs - including OTC - i'm not crazy, & would seek to medicate against a repeat of tuesday night if possible. so i swigged some pepto, proactively took an imodium an hour later, & spent the next part of the night experimenting with what causes pain & what doesn't. if i sat forward in a chair or curled up on the sofa, no discomfort. if i stood, pain. most oddly, if i stood but stuck out my stomach as far as i could, all felt totally normal - except that i was forcibly sticking my stomach out, of course. (i naturally engage my core when upright, so it's extra bizarre to not only push my stomach out, but also let all the muscles there go slack.)

intestinally, i find i tend to be awakened about an hour after falling asleep with problems i didn't have before i went to bed. jessie theorized that my normally racing metabolism might go into super slow-mo when i sleep, so perhaps anything left in my stomach can then start to cause havoc. all i know is if i don't eat anything greasy too close to bed, i don't wake up in pain. but i didn't drink the evil odwalla close to bed - i had it with lunch, twelve hours before i went to bed.

so, figuring maybe twelve hours is the incubation period for whatever horribleness awaited me, i endeavored to outlast the gut-braid until 4am - that'd be thirteen hours after i drank poison-round-two. or if i couldn't outlast it, at least i could potentially attempt to medicate it if i'm awake to do so. an aggravating factor of having an issue creep up on me while asleep is that i'll continue to sleep through the early & midrange signs of trouble. only when the pain is fairly severe does it wake me - & i have a pretty high pain tolerance, so i'm pretty fucked by that point.

around 1am, rich returned my text, & we discussed the issue. rich is my most medically-savvy friend (with the possible exception of [info]liquordrums, who i refuse to believe was actually a nurse until i see him in the little paper hat & short white dress). he backed up jessie's metabolism hypothesis, & added that a lot of digestive changes occur while we sleep - in specific, the production of bile. he agreed with the pepto bismol & imodium i took earlier, & further recommended some maalox or alka-seltzer. i found the latter in the cabinet, & holy fuck i did not know how disgusting alka-seltzer is. i drank it though, still hoping i'd already become immune to whatever bacterial or viral agent i had consumed.

around 4:30am, i passed out on the sofa. i didn't wake until 2pm. guts were in their normal, non-braided configuration.

i felt a little woozy saturday, but nothing major.

you bet i'm going to call odwalla on monday & bitch them the fuck out.

ok, on to copies of community-locked jewelry posts. of particular note is the full collection post; it's been quite a while since i went to the effort.

( painted mirrorbacks )


( joe's noseskins )


( 'FRAAAAACTAAAALS!' they cried, from the heavens above )


( my amazing custom box! new collection post! six thousand pictures! so much text! )


( disappearing spirals )


( kaos DIY )


( heart plugs )


i also added a write-up/rant on scalpelling procedure to my site - it's linked on the front page of http://compunction.org. & for those interested in my dreads, you can click here & here for recent non-locked posts. there's also something sexy here if you have membership, & screw you if you don't. :D

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Saturday, August 1st, 2009
4:21 pm - joe's birthday 2009
[info]gorthok & i went skydiving this month. it was an incredible experience, as you'd expect. the best part was the initial jump from the plane - you know how you drive fast over a bump, & you have that weightless feeling for a moment before the ground returns? it's like that - except it's SO FOREIGN to NOT have the ground return a moment later. anyhow, we went tandem, & i wore ladybug earrings, butterfly panties, & a shirt with a hawk on it: all things that naturally fly, like me. :D

what's really funny is we had been RIGHT AT the airfield where i took joe on joe appreciation day - had we gone another third of a mile, we'd've run into signs for it. but yeah, it's absolutely spectacular & we can't wait to go again when [info]testing4l comes to visit in september. he's already agreed that jumping out of a perfectly good plane is something worth doing. :D

so yesterday, we celebrated joe's birthday. much like years past, i arranged a party & gave him a bit of amazing. this year is special because it's been way too fucking hot in seattle. he LOVES the cold, & though i prefer it warm, we've both been boiling hot this week. inspired, i made something happen...

only joe had the day off, but i happened into him downtown after i was off work. we rode the bus home together, & i mandated that he go directly down to my car & await further instructions. he was sweaty from stomping around town & wanted to rinse off, but i told him he'd rather just go right to my car. he consented, knowing SOMETHING was up, & i came downstairs about ten minutes later with a large paper bag of items. he couldn't see anything inside except for another paper bag & my pillow.

i made him hold the package on his lap while i drove him somewhere - he didn't know where or how far. he was sort of scratching his temple as we pulled into the parking lot of a hotel in bellevue. as we walked into the lobby, i explained that i'd invited some people over, & they were all chipping in to buy him the hotel room for the night - which i would let him make as cold as he wanted without complaint. he loves sleeping with blankets in a freezing cold room.

the room was large - i went for the kingsize suite - & i suggested he could have that rinse now. happy, he jumped into the shower. the room was already starting to cool off when he got out, & i showed him that i'd craftily packed him the things he'd need to stay overnight - contact case, deodorant, fresh clothes.

we hung out in the hotel for an hour or so before people started showing up. i had printed several sheets of a google search for food in the area, & he picked which places he'd like. i called each for a price estimation & such, & he eventually decided on z'tejas, where we'd never been. it had a good range of prices too, so we didn't have to force people to spend thirty a plate if they didn't want to.

i had arranged the whole hotel thing only thursday - joe was supposed to arrange his own gathering this year since several of my friends are out of town & i don't know all of his friends - but lazybones didn't, so i took over. it ended up being awesome, of course, & fortunately nearly everyone was free on friday. i gave them all the hotel info, had them each call my cell for the room number once they arrived, & by ones and twos they showed up & surprised joe. chris & katie came first, then sean & mika by way of several wrong buses, then andrew, raven, & nessa.

we were able to stuff everyone into a couple cars, & drove to the restaurant. it was actually very good, & they even brought joe a piece of their ancho chocolate pie since i wouldn't stop telling the waitstaff that it's his birthday. no one sung, oh well. ;D right as we were finishing, i got a call from the last person i'd invited, & one i knew joe would be stoked to see. directions were slyly given, & ten minutes later joe was thrilled to find tali hugging him, with jason v. in tow.

we all went back to a now frigid hotel room after this, & the presenting began. now, there's lead-up to this, just as there's been every year. about six months ago, joe opened the closet door to find four separate presents, wrapped & sitting at his eye-level, clearly untouchable. i taunted him for MONTHS. every time he'd need a towel, or a screwdriver, or sandpaper - there they were, staring at him. & if i didn't think he was tortured enough, i'd ask innocently, "hey baby?" "yes?" "what do you think is in the closet?" it drove him stark raving. at one point i let him feel one of the packages & sniff another. i kept him thinking by theorizing that they could be four parts of one present, or four individual presents, or maybe none of them are presents at all & i'm going to make him chase all over town on a treasure hunt trying to find his real present. it was grand.

so i set up the camera for this year's video (partly for jessie, who'd just left the week previous to graduate school & couldn't attend, but mostly because it's just so fun to record him being surprised), & started handing him gifts. from the depths of an opaque bag came the first two presents from the closet. he chose the first, one i'd let him touch before - & it turned out to be a small blank notepad. "oh, oops, that's mine. here, i'll just take that," i said, & handed him the squishy package next. one of my shirts. following that was a bag of glow-in-the-dark animals & an electronic timer. everyone was laughing at him, & he was trying to pout - unsuccessfully, because he was laughing too.

so i took out two more wrapped packages, new ones he hadn't seen, & let him pick. he took the smaller one that rattled, & it was... a package of denture cleaner. (works great to clean plaque off oral body jewelry.) he figured the next present MUST be a REAL present, because the bag was empty... & he unwrapped it slowly, starting at the sides. "it's got a zipper," he said, as he folded back the paper, &... it's clearly his own computer toolkit, covered in stickers.

so i said something like, "huh, the bag's empty... maybe i didn't get you anything? i thought for sure i did, though. maybe it's hidden in the room somewhere?" & he jumped up to open drawers & closet doors & look behind tables & lamps, & under the bed... & found the largest package there, about 16" square & a few inches thick. i noted that's why i wanted him to forestall his shower until we got to the hotel room, so i'd have a minute to hide it.

no convoluted packaging this year, just wrapping paper around some packing material - & he unwrapped a painting by the same artist i'd given him the past two years, much bigger than the others. he was amazed, & quite obviously very happy. as far as he knew there were only two of them, & he owned both. i said, "the first year, i told you the second painting had been purchased already. the second year, i explained that it HAD already been purchased - by ME. & i told you i didn't have any others... well, at the time i said that, i didn't."

i continued on that jessie had contacted the art gallery, who contacted the artist, who allowed her phone number to be given to jessie, who gave it to me. i called the artist, who was out, but i spoke for a half hour with her MOTHER who gave me the artist's email address. she wrote me, & sent images of the other three paintings in existence - she'd only made five because they take forever. so i looked at the jpegs, then waited a few days, & picked the one that was still in my mind: blue and brown inks on white paper, unique as joe's other two are single color - blue on white & white on black. she shipped it in, & i hid it in the dresser under my clothes for MONTHS.

what's extra funny, as i told joe, is that he'd SEEN the package when it arrived - we happened to be coming home together, & he saw it before i did. he didn't recognize the name on the return address, but i was scared he'd figure it out, so i told him it's just something i ordered from ebay... & the very next day, i put four wrapped presents in the closet to deter him further. needless to say, my ruse worked.

i promised him no tricks this year though, i'm absolutely not giving him a fourth one. threes are good, but he doesn't need to own the entire collection. he's getting something different next year, & i already have some ideas in mind... ;D

so we stayed up until 2 or 3 am hanging out, a bunch of friends in a freezing hotel room, telling stories & jokes & laughing & trying not to get kicked out for laughing so loudly. it was a great time, & everyone got out of the freak seattle heatwave for a while. i rule.

i'll link his reaction post here when he makes it. :)

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Saturday, June 27th, 2009
10:02 pm
i took joe to philly this month. we ate at mrs marty's deli & jim's, briefly hung out with [info]jesuscrux (who [accurately] compared joe to the microbes that live in radiation or acid for successfully being my boyfriend), met [info]splendidgeek & [info]sleep_monger (both gorgeous & so much fun to be around), visited the mütter museum, ate more at rita's, bought up a shitton of tastykakes (what hostess would make if they understood that flavor != more sugar; omg so good), & went to longwood gardens with my grandmother.

my grandmother is the most awesome being on the planet. this trip was primarily to see her. she's ninety-four this year (born in fifteen. FIFTEEN!), almost completely still with it, totally a fighter. she's been to fifty-three countries & has the motto of "i'd better not sit down too long or i might not get back up - so let's go!" my favorite story about her is from a few years ago: i usually call her every week or two, & i just couldn't reach her on the phone. i tried a few more times, then finally got her a week later. i asked where she had been, & she goes, "oh, i was feeling kind of down... so i went to poland." WUT. like, most people go to the MALL or go buy a SWEATER or see a MOVIE when they're down. she goes to poland. awesome. anyhow, gardening is her most beloved pastime, & she couldn't stop exclaiming how much she enjoyed seeing those big gardens again.

so joe finally got to have a real philly cheesesteak, & he immediately understood that the piece of sloppy, oily, overcheesed crap with giant hunks of fatty beef on a gum-lacerating french roll from the place down the street isn't it. joe liked jim's so much we actually went back later that night & bought a couple more sandwiches for the plane. we're bastards.

speaking of joe, we also stopped by infinite & installed some new jewelry. there're only a few spots i'm not comfortable making holes on a guy myself, so you can guess where his new jewelry is placed.

& he's out for the weekend on some weird revel thing, so tonight i made myself an "i don't want to leave the house" giant salad for dinner using all organic ingredients from last week's bin delivery. lots of spinach, an entire butter lettuce, two wiggly carrots which still crunch now that they're cut up, a bunch of halved cherry tomatoes, half a pint of strawberries & two big handfuls of firm green grapes. i always forget how good italian dressing tastes on a vegetable salad with a bit of fruit in it. i was considering putting some kind of animal in the salad as well, but that would've required leaving the house. half of it is left over & i'll probably have it tomorrow if joe isn't back in time to cook for me. :D

also, i found a mutant tastykake. i emailed them about it, & am hoping for hundreds of dollars in online webstore coupons to compensate me for the horror. now on to the jewelry.


( TRISKELION MATCH. )


( more on the DIY spirals, plus burnt emeralds )


( reshaped glass + another ridiculous match )


( a surprising match, overtexted )


my next post will probably detail the upcoming SKYDIVING ADVENTURE that joe & i have put a deposit on. :D

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Sunday, May 24th, 2009
11:58 pm
[info]splatterhouse came to visit this weekend from boston. barely. so here are the things that went wrong:

  • her 20 minute public transit trip from boston turned into an hour;
  • she thus missed her flight & had no protection for a standby;
  • she didn't want to pay another $360 for a nonstop jetblue ticket i immediately found which arrived an hour later than she should've arrived anyhow, so she dorked around at the airport trying to find something cheaper, & ended up paying $350 for a flight the next morning, plus $35 in internet charges to find it;
  • the bottom fell out of her backpack;
  • her pants had become slowly & slyly shredded from bicycling & chose this moment to bust open movie-style;
  • she got a fairly significant nosebleed;
  • all while not sleeping for two days because she was trying to make sure she could sleep on the 8 hour flight. which she didn't;
  • then the flight was an hour late arriving, & i still ended up circling the airport for an hour because HRH couldn't manage to find OUTSIDE where all the other millions of people were streaming to catch their rides, so like a salmon she lept upstream & ended up calling me from the parking garage while i'm waiting like a dumbass at ARRIVALS. (no, this still wasn't as bad as when jenna came to florida & waited for me at departures. DER-PARTURES.)

    but after that, everything went really well for a while:

  • i fed krystle at bagel oasis to start. omg so good;
  • i took her around to jewelry places all over town. she bought some satin eyelets, a pair of tiny anodized triskelion eyelets she may well be able to wear in her cartilage (this pic is of her ear, not mine, though i also have a pair of uncolored trisks), & found some honey amber with gorgeous inclusions. all items are attractive rarities, which was the point of the quest;
  • we took her to queen sheba for dinner & brought along [info]sic737, [info]robinhoodvandal & [info]impatient_hands, [info]miriena & her SPOUSE who it was lovely to finally meet, [info]cowgoesmootwice, [info]kaikea, & [info]gorthok of course, all of whom got along smashingly & we had a fantastic time;
  • after dinner, i fed everyone the horrifying cake that i made as a splat honorific/birthday thing for jenna. note icing circumcision scar. plus i made a jitty cupcake to go with it! (the writing is in reference to something jenna was called on the street once. i determined that she wasn't being insulted, it's just that she was in the international district & the guy clearly had mistaken her for his friend, trannie ho.) it was actually really good - i used a dark chocolate cake mix & chopped up a 75% cacao chocolate bar into it. the cupcake didn't have the extra chocolate, which is why it was just for joe - he's allergic. also, ookie cupcake?;
  • the next day i did some ear work on krystle, redirecting her lobes & adding a vertical helix (likely to become a curved industrial, but which may just be fitted with a little spike like i used to wear) while joe sewed a leather patch onto her backpack, repairing the giant rive;
  • we ate smoothies from emerald city & drove around to a bunch of other silly/fun crap where we bonded further;
  • we introduced her to the awesomeness that is shorty's;
  • we then feasted at marrakesh. holy shit i love marrakesh. ( marrakesh details behind this cut. )

  • after that, we went straight to the airport with plenty of time to spare... not realizing that things had gone wrong again, as she had inexplicably decided to leave her driver's license at the restaurant. no, we didn't find this out until i drove her TO the airport & we're standing at departures hugging. well, i suppose it's a good thing she realized it before i drove away. so she grabbed her boarding pass, threw her shit back into the trunk, & we raced downtown & then AGAIN to seatac. she had about ten minutes to make it through security, & i mandated that she keep me updated via text so i could pull over & turn around if necessary. the security line was huge but moved quickly, & i eventually received an exhausted message that she was ON THE PLANE;
  • then she was going to meet with [info]sleep_monger for airport bar drinks during a long layover, but someone broke into sarah's car & snapped something off in her ignition;
  • & while that wasn't happening, i was succumbing to some kind of summer cold which wrecked our fun monday plans;
  • splat also succumbed to the same cold;
  • she then realized she'd lost her phone charger somewhere;
  • plus i forgot to mention krystle had a mosquito bite right at her lipline which looked like, as she said, "a bug herpe".

    i think that covers it. phew. philly next weekend. in the meantime, here are more pics of stuff.

    ( updated pics of travel box, mirrorbacks, + silliness )


    ( more prizmatic cabs! )


    ( ladybugs! )


    ( lish's cartilage timeline )


    ( may - new dreads pics )

    & i just posted these three pics of joe & me, if anyone's interested. the third is SFW risque.

    also, i feel it necessary to share this spam with you. as jenna noted, "that is some awesome spam. I feel like i really know cate now." ( read this, seriously. it rules. )

    ok, off to watch the end of prison break. no spoilers!@ & oh hey, if anyone has any good movie recommendations for our flight next weekend, you should comment with a sentence or two in description.

    • (49 comments | comment on this)

    Sunday, April 26th, 2009
    1:18 am
    oh hi! let's talk about food & then about jewelry. YOU SEE HOW I STRIVE TO ACCOMMODATE ALL READERS OF MY STUPID LIVEJOURNAL?


    allow me to introduce you to a culinary delight: squashtatoes. jessie first concocted of these when we had some butternut squash delivered in our organic bin & no clue what to do with it. she boiled it & mixed it 1:1 with potatoes, & OMG. i didn't know anything except garlic could make mashed potatoes even more delicious than they are to begin with. a recent organic bin came with THREE butternut squashes, so i smashed those with a previous bin's two enormous idaho potatoes & a pound & a half of fingerlings with their skin, & i'm in starchy root heaven.


    i also earned a pie this week by doing a favor for a girl who works at three girls bakery in the market. she asked livejournal for a tech favor, i responded, & i've been homphing fantastic apple/cherry cinnamony awesomeness all week while converting a few audio dvds for her.


    otherwise, i've booked tickets for [info]gorthok & i to hit philly at the end of may, so heads up if you're in the area. OK NOW WHAT.


    ( tulipwood in ebony )


    ( another DIY painted match! )


    ( the red spiral dichro quest continues. )


    ( prizmatic cabs finished )


    ( moss agate inlay + match )


    ( supernova plugs? what? )


    ( lish's new travel box! )


    i also posted a new pic of my dreads for those interested in that sort of thing. click here.


    great, now go.

    (62 comments | comment on this)

    Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
    10:26 pm
    most notable this month: i'd posted about the flameworking lessons given to me for my most recent birthday, & jessie has finally had time to instruct me. it's been awesome. plugs are pretty well out of my abilities, but i've become a master at dread beads. i gave one to [info]kaikea on sunday for her wedding. :D pics later, maybe. or just come over.


    speaking of people coming over, [info]japolo & [info]daddykatt were both in town this weekend. we ate, we hung out, we ate more, wandered around town, ate some more, & i repierced rj's ear again. i'm still so exhausted & full that i'm only 95% looking forward to the fifteen-to-twenty-person corned beef st patty's party nina & joe & i are hosting here this weekend. we'll basically have an entire cow in & on our oven. this will be epic.


    also i'd like to take this moment to proclaim my love for the crock pot. omg, [info]gorthok.


    so in lieu of any more exciting news/events/happening, what follow are a shitton of posts about jewelry. this is what i'm writing when there's downtime at work, heh.


    ( neptune match )


    ( DIY dime plugs, DIY acid plug match, so much text you probably won't read )


    ( lish teeth plugs! )


    ( trichroic match )


    ( OMG MY MARS. MY MARS, OMG. )


    ( green ocean jasper! )


    ( spinal captives, un-anodizing work, TONS of pics )


    ( mirrorback porn )


    ( inlaid mirrorbacks, emblem lizards! )

    (44 comments | comment on this)

    Monday, February 16th, 2009
    2:32 pm - COMPLETELY AWESOME THINGS.
    CAT #1: another weekend at the blue moon beach house. we were supposed to go for our anniversary in december, but ended up frozen out - there was so much snow in the area that the beach house's pipes froze. so we rescheduled for VD & had a blast. since i know you're wondering: breakfast #1 was eggs benedict, roasted asparagus, & blackberry yogurt featuring fresh, plump blackberries & homemade oat crumb topping. breakfast #2 was coconut cinnamon french toast with blueberries, the best sausage ever (as before), & rounds of honeydew & canteloupe. plus sweet orange juice, real hot cocoa, & coffee for joe. we were also treated to in-house hand-dipped chocolate strawberries & sparkling cider when we returned from adventuring on sunday. & yes, we have pics to edit for [info]naughty_knotty.

    CAT #2, more deliciousness: lish-arranged pot luck dinner+movie nights. slices of broiled, seasoned chicken on salad greens, creamy mashed potatoes, garlic dressed kale, sesame pork & pasta, two types of potato salad, & homemade chocolate chip cookies. plenty for everyone, & food comas all around during the movie. you are jealous & wish you were invited.

    CAT #3: fat tax returns! plus it totally rules realizing the interest i made on my savings accounts last year paid in full for all but one sitting of the tattoo work i acquired in 2008. i think i'll make that my goal again for this year. :D

    CAT #4: i picked up a new old keyboard on ebay. as i predicted in april 2004, my current M2 has indeed survived "five or six years" - it's starting to get flaky along the top row, so i have a bit of time left, but it's great to have a fully tested & working M2 sitting in the shadows waiting for its call. i hope i can always find these. they're 25 years old now & i've still never used a keyboard which compares.

    amusingly, another sold on ebay a couple weeks later - for close to $30 over what i paid. HAR. i rock the snipe.

    CAT #5, so wrong: remember this? i got to playing it for joe the other day, & finally decided to tack the proper ending of the song on it. so it now has a natural fade at the end which inspires you to play it again. :D here's the link to just the looping version. & while i was at it, i made a much more evil surprise loop version where i tacked the original beginning of the song back on, too. click here & save it to trick/torture/emotionally devastate your friends. :D

    less completely awesome things: making the transition to digital tv. it wasn't tough to wire into the system, & i already bought a dvd recorder a few months back, but now it takes two remotes just to watch a friggin' show. some channels come in great, & we get more of them, but channels with poor reception go mute or stutter instead of just being mildly staticky. ah well. seems we now have until june to figure it out anyhow? fuck it.

    ok, on to some recent jewelry & hair stuff, click as you will. i have perhaps 483025 more matches/DIY plugs in the works, but the rest are all waiting for parts this week, so it's just the one for this post.

    ( butterfly plug match + jewelry pouch )


    ( dread pics - gifted hats )


    ( flippy dread pics )

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    Friday, January 16th, 2009
    8:59 am - that's a lot of text.
    last sunday, i invited a shitton of folks over so i could make them bleed & cry & such. [info]kattlady came from california, [info]kaikea & her boyfriend from their silly army base like three hours away, [info]robinhoodvandal & [info]impatient_hands from olympia, [info]miriena & [info]sic737 (who both live locally), & of course [info]gorthok was there too.

    katie's original plan was just to come up for dread maintenance sometime, but she jumped on making travel plans once i said i could scalpel her lobes for her, too (to redirect the holes). everything else wound up planned around her, since we're all lj buddies anyhow. in addition to katie's dreads & ears, i'm apparently now an aesthetist, as i also shaped her eyebrows. FULL SERVICE AT LISH'S PLACE. i took her loose 4ga lobes to 00ga (9mm) in one ear & 000ga (10mm) in the other.

    i cut one of amanda's ears from 0ga to 1/2" (also to move/redirect the placement, & to keep a thin spot from getting thinner), which was the full extent of what i'll do at one time. it went beautifully. she didn't have jewelry i could really use for the other, so we left it for now. with just the one scalpelled, they're about even on size, so that's good. this was the 4th time she's tried to get up here to do this; who knows how long it'll be until i can cut her other lobe, heh.

    lastly, i re-cut/touched up some lines on anya's chest scarification which had healed "too well". & while they were in town, i also tapered james's earlobes to 4ga & laughingly installed one CZ gem plug & one pink titanium plug, as that's what i had available to loan him. then i punched jenna in the face so she'd have something to heal, too. ok, not really on that last one. & i've done enough to joe lately. (i meant to his hair. (& his ass.))

    throughout the day, there was delicious food for all. anya made homemade borsch (& prevented our accidentally-attained cabbage from rotting in the fridge), katie brought french macaroons from some amazing place downtown which i clearly must visit, jenna & james made geshmak latkes, amanda baked OMGZ SO GOOD pineapple upside-down cake & a giant loaf of fantastic banana bread. i really, really love when i invite people over & they all end up bringing food, & i even more love when they leave the leftovers (which are pretty sparse by this point). :D plus chris brought us a LAPTOP, so he's off the hook basically forever.

    amusingly, all three people i cut that day - katie, amanda, & anya - are hair clients & are all still wearing the sets of dreads i started on them. actually, come to think of it, nearly all of the attendees are people i've worked on - all except amanda's military boyfriend. (i don't have a nifty link for pics of the mod work i've done on james.)

    plus, i had a new dread client in for maintenance on friday. his dreads had some interesting issues, & pics are here.

    the past weekend, i also finished the 4ga match for my 3/4" IS red rock candy plugs.


    ( pics! )


    ( & now, an almost completely unrelated story. )

    & finally, a wtf: this is a friend of mine. cripes.

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    Friday, January 2nd, 2009
    10:54 pm - tough love wins again
    so the married-too-soon friend referenced in this post has come back around. she's divorced now. she sent me an email on myspace apologizing for the past year, & saying she'll be staying at her mother's place for a while to get her shit together. she asked to come hang out with us when her head is right again, & i told her we'd be glad to have her.

    it's not empowering to hear "you were right" in a situation like that. there's nothing good about finding out your suspicions & paranoias about someone's fiance' were correct, that you didn't get the joy of being proven wrong. but it is good that our friend is trying to come back - we missed her.

    the weirder part, though, is that exactly seven days later, i received a second, almost identical "you were right" mail from another friend who was in a similar situation. he's recently divorced, too. & both mails were sent through myspace. wtf? clearly myspace makes divorces happen.

    & since i haven't done any "ex stocktaking" since way back in 2004, i figured it's time for another round of that. let's see, new totals... eight have gotten married; of them, four are divorced. three now have herpes. five have made babies; of them, three have made MULTIPLE babies. gross. seven have gotten significantly fatter - & i don't mean ten or twenty pounds here, i'm talking significantly fatter. five are, by all accounts, miserable. awesome (not really awesome).

    it's really easy to find out how many people have bred, by the way. all you have to do is find their blog & look at the latest entry. if it references something with a cutesy name ending in -y or -ie, they have a parasite.

    anyway, on a less intense note, here're more stupid matched jewelry posts i made on [info]stretched, & another from [info]get_up_dread_up.


    ( over a dozen more matched plugs, omg! )


    ( painted opalites )


    ( dreads in a pigtail hat )


    & simply to spite his backdating-avoids-the-friends-page trickiness, here's a direct link to what joe posted about our anniversary in december. also a link to his very disgusting deep clean post (also mirrored on his page on my site). love it up, bitches.

    (57 comments | comment on this)

    Friday, December 26th, 2008
    3:02 pm
    today is my & [info]gorthok's two year anniversary. you may recall that we met on [info]get_up_dread_up - my dreads community - which leaves kind of a cool record of our first conversation. the good things are much the same as last year, which is awesome to report - we have a THIRD annual full week+ off work together, our friends are still together, & we're awesome. the only semi-bummer is that we scheduled another trip to the b&b we visited last year, & they just called to say their pipes are frozen solid & can we reschedule. sigh. so we moved that to VD weekend, & we will celebrate joe's snip in great style. :D

    so as part of my present to joe (i may post about the other part later), i compiled a big montage of cam pics of us together from the past year (half year really, i didn't set up the webcam until june or so, heh) & gave it to him. as i've posted some webcam shots of us previously, here's the highly edited version. it's worksafe; those are just belly kisses. ;)

    ( click for cuteness )

    also, here's the composite image i made to say happy holidays or whatever. it's a wreath (original pic) made from tiny pics of my hair clients.

    ( card from lishbiz )

    & now i return to vacation, which was extended from eleven days to seventeen by the shitton of snow which landed on a very unprepared seattle. go snow days on the 18th, 22-24, & half of the 15th. :D

    (57 comments | comment on this)

    Sunday, December 7th, 2008
    2:56 pm
    now that everyone's finally digested everything, i feel i can make my thanksgiving food post. as you know, i really like food, which is why it's fortunate that i'm tiny.

    joe & i have organic fruit & veggie bins delivered every other week, & received a special thanskgiving-centric bin for the holiday. so we (myself, [info]gorthok, & [info]sic737) made everything, & everything we made was organic & fresh & full of delicious. there was more delivered than what we used below, but we decided against multiple potato dishes & making a pie crust for the apples. i ALMOST used the pomegranates for the stuffing, but joe convinced me that juicing pomegranates was the last thing we'd really want to spend time doing. anyhow, here's our spread. i asterisked what we used from the bin:

  • delicata squash* with lime butter & coriander
  • garlic*-cream mashed russet potatoes*
  • glazed cinnamon carrots*
  • garlic* almond green beans*
  • rock cornish game hens packed under-skin with garlic*, fresh rosemary*, sage, & thyme, & filled with celery* stuffing
  • salad mix* with joe's olive oil & lemon dressing
  • & i made the cranberry* sauce myself.


    • we laid everything out on the carpet & basically sat around eating for several hours while watching movies & being generally slothful. it was lovely.

    speaking of horribly slothful food choices, i've become somewhat hooked on "mint crisp m&ms", which are the crispy m&m inner with dark mint chocolate surrounding them, & shells of various greens & white. they were out for a limited time for the alien indiana jones movie. i'd bought one bag, then went back for two more... & by the time i went back a third time, they were gone. a friend finally found a local outlet-type grocery store which still has them, & i now have a stockpile of several thousand m&ms next to me. you guys. they're... so good. so good. buy them if you see them, or come over & beg me for a handful. & I DO MEAN BEG.

    in other news, i actually used my power of looping for good instead of evil. (that link, of course, leads to evil, though the mp3 link itself is dead. email me if you want it, 'cause i still have it!) anyhow, joe, the metalhead, loves to listen to fucking annoying final fantasy music. wtf, right? several times now i've come home to find the title screen music just cycling at full volume. yesterday, joe was making us a shitton of food & listening to the thing, & so i couldn't just turn it off... but i WAS annoyed enough to find the track online, convert from midi to wav, concatenate the wav into a half-hour loop, convert it to mp3, & put it on his ipod for him. & blissful silence has thus returned to our home. :D

    & now back to my breakfast sushi. mmmmm.

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    Saturday, November 22nd, 2008
    1:56 pm
    so, my birthday was the twenty-first, as many of you know, & i'd say this was my most presented birthday ever. it started on thursday, when i had the opportunity to buy myself two guitar hero controllers & three games for only fifty bucks from a chick at work. i love when coworkers need cash fast. :D i came home that afternoon to flowers (which were really bizarre to find on the doorstep) & a garmin c580 from a relative of mine (which i had to wait until midnight-oh-one to open, heh). & that was just the beginning!

    joe & i had both taken off from work on friday & monday. friday, after joe & i had been out wandering for a few hours, jessie, chris, & joe all made dinner from scratch for me - jessie's fresh egg noodle pasta, chris's delicious blush sauce, & the organic, free-range chicken joe had been marinating for a couple days in the fridge. (how did i not realize that was part of my birthday dinner?) it was all very full of yum.

    then the three of them gave me a pretty stupendous gift: glassworking lessons with jessie, totaling sixteen hours of shop time with her plus a hundred bucks in supplies. i've been Really Really Wanting to take her class, but time had been an issue, as i was working when she was teaching. we're trying to set up my first lesson for monday, & i have a bunch of ideas i'd like to try (many of which, if successful, would create awesome things for my ears, of COURSE). they made me five little construction paper cards with googly eyes & pompoms glued to them - four cards each good for four hours of studio time, & one for the supplies. presentation: A++ extra credit.

    plus joe also gave me a ZIPPO HANDWARMER. um hi, amazing? who knew these even exist? he's such the best for always making sure i'm toasty. :D

    jenna & james finally made it over later, & we all watched a movie jessie introduced with the following:

    jb: "lish, i have a special birthday surprise for you. i called your mother..."
    me: "um funny joke right?"
    jb: "...& she sent me a videotape of your birth..."
    me: "um."
    jb: <presents the movie "alien" with a florish>

    so we watched that & "aliens", & i assigned roles to everybody. i let joe be bill "game over, man! game over!@" paxton, jessie was sigourney, & jenna got to be "everyone that has died", which meant a lot of other people's characters eventually became jenna.

    jessie also made a lovely fruit tart in lieu of cake, at my request. jessie, you may recall, also made me this cake a couple years back, & made chris's "giant swiss roll" cake for his recent birthday, using mint ice cream. she is awesome at food, i swear. joe had purchased the strawberries, grapes, blueberries, & apricot jam jessie used for this, & had somehow also sneaked those items into the fridge without my noticing at all. which is particularly impressive, really, as i tend to homph fruit with a quickness.

    jenna & james are too broke for presents, so they instead did a horrifying & thankfully clothed rendition of lesbone scissoring. i have pics. i'm not sure i should post them.

    thanks also to the weird anonymous lj-gift giver who put sushi on my profile page. though, i think this was probably [info]greenwellies accidentally logged out, as he later paypal'd me a hefty sum to take joe & myself out to sushi, which i'm very much looking forward to this weekend.

    i'm off to the post office now, to swap some jewelry with my friend [info]splatterhouse - a shitton of pics are coming regarding that once everything's done, & it'll end up here much like the last post. i consider this part of my birthday happiness since she finally agreed to the swap on my birthday. :D i leave you with this geeky thing that happened at work the other day. i thought a couple guys in my department kept talking about me, & i turned around:

    me: "do you guys keep saying my name?"
    them: "we keep saying 'lich', as in 'lich king', not 'lish'. but i like that you respond to it."
    me: "well yeah, it's a combination of the two things i'm called most often."
    them: "a wizard & the undead?"
    me: "no, 'lish' & 'bitch'."

    :D

    ps. anyone who wants to play guitar hero with or against me should come over like now. :D

    (40 comments | comment on this)

    Sunday, November 9th, 2008
    12:06 pm
    here are some copies of recent picture posts about things i've been doing to myself. all cuts are photo-heavy & strictly regard my dreads & piercings, so just skip this entirely if you're not interested.


    ( 11 month old dreads )


    ( matching lobe jewelry )


    ( more matching jewelry )


    ( a few more )


    ( some matches i made )


    ( one year old dreads )

    (68 comments | comment on this)

    Thursday, October 2nd, 2008
    3:30 pm
    it's been a while since i updated. have some paragraphs.

    it's bittersweet to find a tribute cd put out in benefit for the mounting medical bills of one of your favorite artists... but only to've discovered this album after the artist in question has already died. RIP lance hahn 10-07. i bought the CD new nonetheless, sigh.

    i held Joe Appreciation Day a couple of weeks ago. i stuck him in the car, didn't tell him where we were going, & drove an hour to lower wallace falls so he could stomp around outside of the city for a few hours. i then took him to what i hoped would be a you-pick farmer's market, so i could get him either a pumpkin (he'd just bought a carving knife for halloween) or a bushel of apples (as he's allergic to them raw & has been wanting to make a ton of applesauce), but it ended up just being a normal fresh market. i instead got him a jar of local bee honey, which he loves. then the restaurant i'd researched was closed & gone, so we meandered until we found something else, & i bought him dinner. it was surprisingly tasty.

    there were two points of rescheduling on the fly, but he was so happy to just be out of seattle that it didn't matter one whit. amusingly, after i started organizing the day, i checked weather.com - the site noted i should "plan a scenic trip" on that day, heh. OK! anyway, here's his brief writeup if you'd like to cross-reference.

    elizabeth & geoff came to visit all last week from chicago, which was awesome. this is the girl i surprised the hell out of several years ago. it was a grand time & joe made sure they got to see lots of silly seattle touristy stuff. more people i like need to move here, i swear.

    i also rediscovered that ups.com will send email notifications on shipments. additionally, they allow you to add a note to each email, so you can say "tracking my new tv" or "pile of dogshit packed in styrofoam peanuts for my ex*". i found that this is a great way to amuse yourself while waiting for your shit to arrive. case in point:

    From: UPS Quantum View <auto-notify@ups.com>
Subject: UPS Tracking Notification, Tracking Number 1Zxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

At the request of your mom, this notice alerts you of the status of the
shipment listed below.

Message from your mom: FUCK MY TIGHT CUNNY

Tracking Detail
Your package has experienced an exception.


    fun@!

    i'll have a couple new picture posts to link soon, so those interested in that sort of thing can hold off on suicide for a little while longer.

    ok, you're done now. go read elsewhere.

    * this is awesome because the first thing anyone does upon receiving a box of styrofoam peanuts is to dig in with both hands.

    (20 comments | comment on this)

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