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Monday, May 21st, 2012
4:12 pm
the major news in may is that i started going to the gym with joe. the reasons are multiple, but centered mainly around physical upkeep & a continued ability to eat desserts without repercussions. i began training on may first (coincidentally; i don't do resolutions or "ok the diet begins the day after thanksgiving") & have taken to spending 30 minutes (plus five cooldown) on the elliptical daily minus sundays. i'm now able to keep my heartrate at 145-165 with RPMs at 50-65, i'm regularly hitting 1.8-2 miles by the end, with my fastest one-mile time at 16:15. this is a pretty big deal as i've never been very physical (partly due to my scoliosis) & certainly have never had an active physical stamina. passive stamina, sure - eight hour tattoo sittings are no problem - but i call this an achievement.

i'm proud of my consistency, & am being rewarded with mild enjoyment - the more i go, the less i hate going. i'm still well in the "not happy to get started" zone, but it's becoming easier to actually get started, & less torturous to complete. it definitely helps that the folks at this particular gym all seem to avoid eye contact & therefore avoid leering, & are clearly there to work out, not hook up. after the first week, i was comfortable going on my own, though i think it's great that joe & i use each other for motivation & generally go together.

i started on a 2-week free trial under joe's account, & this deal came up just as i was discussing membership. so i'm able to put off actually joining for another month, & i like having a couple training sessions to use if i decide to do more than run the gerbil wheel. it'll only be $25/mo when i do join, since i've been promised the same promotional rate that joe snagged, so that's reasonable - a buck a day to use their equipment isn't bad.

on to nutrition. to clear up a misconception, i log my food daily. i simply feel better when i'm getting the proper amount of fiber & other nutrients in a day, staying within sodium & carbohydrate levels, et cetera. using a tracker site makes that easy. i don't, however, always photograph what i eat - that's only done for fun. without further ado, quite a lot of recent ( food logging is under here. )

regarding the grammy tattoo project - i've chosen an artist for the memorial tattoo: joshua carlton. he does a lot of gory work, but it's pieces like this & this that make me think he'll be great for the goldfish. plus he's nearby in eugene, oregon, so it'll be an easy weekend trip instead of the flight+hotel+rental car+vacation days i was expecting to invest. i actually didn't know he'd moved to the west coast from indiana until i started checking the extra-high-listed artists on my approved artists list!

i REALLY wanted stéphane chaudesaigues, who apparently works in philly a few times a year, but neither he nor the shop in philly have responded to my repeated inquiries over four months. i loved the idea of having a french artist start the piece, since france was grammy's favorite country, & especially having it done IN philly where grammy's from... but it's not like every tiny aspect of the memorial has to be replete with ~deep meaning~. the lifelong additions to the piece are the most important part, & i'm okay with just making sure the fish is as beautiful as she was.

so that's scheduled for the end of august. i'm pleased to get it done (the image part, that is) within the first year of her absence. joe & i will be driving down to eugene & potentially staying overnight to make a fun weekend of it.

other neat things:

( andromedas! )

( a couple more videos )

( hawk update, 8 months )

( 4.5 year old dreads )

( hawk update, 9 months )

& also this silly milestone. that's all for now, for there are two people who will be thoroughly ripped new ones if i don't stop typing soon. with luck, i'll forget who i'm referencing by the time i reread this in the future. HI FUTURE LISH, HAVE YOUR SELF-DESTRUCTIVE PSEUDOFRIENDS WISED UP??? I AM SURE YOUR LIFE IS STILL AS AWESOME AS EVER, TTYS

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Monday, April 16th, 2012
4:21 pm - amazing food, RIP brian, movies, free money, & did i mention life RULES
joe & i got tickets to the voracious tasting & food awards via a half off voice daily deal, & it was pure fucking joy. it complied with exactly what i enjoy at a hot bar or pot luck, not to mention why i'm always up for any kind of tasting menu: tiny portions of EVERYTHING. favorites were:
  • baked grits with hedgehog mushrooms & house-cured shaved tasso (where ya at matt)
  • smoked mackerel on crostini with pickled red onion (tavolata)
  • passion fruit custard with strawberry rhubarb compote (the coterie room)
  • crispy breaded pork shoulder meatball with hot red pepper jelly & a cornichon (no idea - no one's copping to this amazing thing!)
  • stinging nettle soup with smoked salmon & crème fraiche (skycity restaurant, i think)
  • sriracha tempura prawns (ponti)
  • snack waffle with berry compote & fresh whipped cream (sweet iron waffles)
  • two-bite coconut corn muffin (island soul)
  • slow roasted duck with fava & sheep's milk spread on brioche toast, topped with white balsamic & pine nut gremolata (volunteer park cafe)
  • smoked chocolate & scotch milkshake (hot cakes)

    but beyond all of that, the liquid nitrogen basil meringue from spur gastropub was the most awesome thing ever. it's a little hershey-kiss-sized meringue frozen in LN2; the chef says it's "one bite", so you pop it in your mouth whole & bite down with your molars. the frozen meringue chips apart, & as you feel the light basil sweetness hit & begin to chill your tongue, you breathe out through your nose - & it's a cloud of COLD FIRE. you laugh delighted at the surprise of being a dragon, which causes more vapor to steam from your nose & mouth as the meringue starts to melt. further chewing keeps the effect going for about half a minute until the bite is gone; only then could i stop giggling & jumping up & down to tell the chef that i love him for doing this to me.

    we also ate house-made mortadella, duck prosciutto, heirloom pork head cheese, venison sausage, & boudin blanc, & we are absolutely going again next year.

    a week after that, an old friend of mine killed himself. i'm not going into detail here, but i will say that it fucking sucks that he didn't know how much love there was for him, & how many people would've helped had he given them the chance. brian gilliam was a good guy, funny & crass, & i'll miss him. ask me (in person) to tell the "pie" story (after some time has passed), & you'll get a good idea of who he was.

    YES. SO. moving on, the movie marathon was super fun! i showed all three - YES, THREE - neverending story movies. of course everyone had seen the first one. i saw the second in the theatre when it came out, & i didn't remember any of it; i figure it probably affected my emotional development in some way. (& apparently the main actor's as well, since he offed himself a dozen years later. oops.) i didn't even realize there was a third movie until i went looking for the second - it featured jack black actually taunting the childlike empress. i hate jack black, but that was awesome... in a "if i weren't surrounded by clever & smart friends then this would be an awful way to spend ninety minutes" sort of way. related: TERRIFYING.

    in attendance: i & [info]gorthok, [info]sic737, [info]girlgoth, landon & madeline, west, travis, christopher, & stephen. madeline surprised us with a dozen cupcakes from the fancy cupcake place where she works, & obviously earned herself a permanent invite to all future events. after dinner, we chopped them into quarters & assigned rations; during the third movie, lily noted it was too dark to tell the flavors apart, & i whipped out the flashlight i keep at hand for under-desk computer fiddling & finding dropped jewelry. i spotlit the table, which led lily to remark, "now they look like emergency cupcakes." could NOT stop laughing; later, discovered the webcam thought it was funny, too:


    oh, & i made one more modification to the stereo. recall that the xbox360 is wired hdmi right to the tv, so we can choose to use the tv's speakers alone or the stereo system if i'm playing too. that way, joe & i can share the front room, as he can play a game on the tv while i watch a movie on my computer. but since the playstation2 is component (plus wired through a switchbox), we couldn't treat it the same way - it needs the receiver to be set, which cuts off my computer's audio out. i have an 1/8" extender at my computer desk, aligned so i can easily plug in headphones... & i realized that i could split the ps2 audio at the switchbox & run another cable over to my computer desk, making shared audio during ps2 use as easy as moving one plug (an easy-to-access plug that is not in the depths of cableland behind the stereo, too). so now we can share the front room regardless of game system, & this also allows me to once again play bubbleface with my choice of music, which is imperative. (this will all become irrelevant when we upgrade to a ps3, which will have an hdmi port right to the tv like the xbox, but that's a ways off yet.)

    the storage hassock is holding up well & hiding our cluttery game controllers & such very nicely, but there's a 3" square pressure mark on the front that didn't pop back out. you can actually see it on the picture i posted last update. the options on amazon were to return or exchange it, & i didn't want to deal with waiting on ups again or lugging the thing out, so i sent a separate mail asking about a partial refund. they offered us 25% off, which i was quite pleased to accept, especially since it was 44% off in the first place. :D

    additionally, my first-purchase points came back on the new credit card i mentioned. when i went to redeem them for the promised $300 cash, i found gift certificate options on sale. so ridiculous, haha. i ended up using all but one point by requesting $250 to amazon & $80 to AMC theatres (no expiration), thus stretching my free $300 into $330... & when they arrived, i found someone had miscounted & sent two extra AMC cards, which brought the grand total to $350. HAH!

    so i went right to amazon to re-buy some vhs/avis on dvd. it's funny - avis i downloaded (totally legally, of course) used to look on par with vhs, & both only slightly worse than actual dvds. on the new screen, vhs is nearly unwatchable, 700M avis look like i expected vhs to look (ie tolerable, but not fantastic), but dvds are beautiful & finally worth buying. fortunately, this has happened for me eons after it did for everyone else, resulting in the ability to amass a great collection for, on average, less than $4 shipped per movie. :D so far, i've spent just under a hundred free dollars on twenty-five movies in my infinitely-rewatchable list, most of which are special edition &/or two-disc sets, & many have my very favorite special feature: bloopers. i'm celebrating by throwing weekly movie nights in may (just simple evening showings; it'll be a while before we recover from the NES marathon, haha).

    other exciting things upcoming: paragliding; prosperity (for joe it's exciting; i enjoy having the apartment to myself for a long weekend, haha); [info]jesuscrux visiting for a wedding; seeing nomeansno on their only washington stop this year; tattoo appointment with [info]quarex; a special trip to silverwood with travis; & soon enough it'll be time again for joe's birthday! YES YOUR PRESENT IS ALREADY IN THE APARTMENT, MUAHAHAHA

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    Thursday, March 29th, 2012
    9:10 pm - say, i'm really turning this HOUSE into a HOME*
    so the usb 3.0 flash drive could be read by computers but not by the tv or xbox. oddly, it had arrived partitioned into four 4G segments, one of which was flagged NOVELL NETWARE. wtf? i fdisk'd & mkdosfs'd, but it still failed. turns out the block device was fucked, so off it went back to newegg. the replacement drive had only one partition & worked perfectly out of the box. obviously something was very wrong with that first drive, but all is well now. (why do i always have issues with pen drives?)

    since it's working, i've found having a 16G drive is SO handy. between the tv being able to play 1080p mp4/mpg/wmv, & the xbox happy with 1080p avi, i hardly need to plug the zen (composite out) into the tv anymore. the less i use RWY cables, the happier i am. i even made a little black duct tape sleeve for the pendrive so i can't see its lightning bug ass flashing bright blue during movies, haha.

    thankfully, the new component switchbox integrated easily, the storage hassock is beautiful (& can hold up to 225lb, so most of our friends can sit on it), & [info]sic737 came through (no surprise there, good pony) with the ideal speaker shelf. we also finished sanding & painting the extra shelf for the stereo cabinet, so that looks great. it's actually relaxing to be in the apartment again, not annoying that we can't read subtitles or that the picture's so small or that we can't plug joe's psp into the tv because the cable is component only. the last thing to add is a long-assed vga cable to my computer, but we have to finish sorting out my video modules first.

    with everything in place, here's a pic of our new front room wall:

    this, of course, is the best pre-giant-tv front room pic. XD or maybe this one is safer. i don't have a pic that also shows the 75gal aquarium, though you can see a glimpse of it in joe's 2011 birthday video, or you can imagine it was where the black dvd cabinet now stands. & it's also thanks to chris that my parking meter has a sturdy new base. ^_^

    i still want to hang a few small floating shelves for the glass sculptures i acquired when i was working at the gallery (original sarmiento, beck, & walentynowicz pieces that i dearly miss seeing; i also have a gifted hora, though it's not as exciting), but they may wait a bit longer. for now, i placed my favorite, the walentynowicz, on the center speaker. & yes, those are my rainbow labradorites being shown in 1080p direct from youtube. i was scared to give the tv internet at first, but now it's SUPER AWESOME.

    speaking of super awesome: for no particular reason, joe decided to surprise me with a dinner date to flying fish! they were running a special groupon a month or two ago, & i asked if joe wanted to split it. he gave me this big rigmarole about how he doesn't like seafood & why would he want to pay so much for three courses of it & he has other things to buy... & it turns out he'd already bought it for us by the time i'd asked. :)

    so we did that, & it was wonderful. ( some food logging follows. )

    oh hey, it's been since december that i've purchased any new jewelry...

    ( deliciousness + ridiculousness = ridelicioulousness? )

    ( hindsight through optical quartz )

    ( sparkly 1080p lovin' :D )

    ( hawk update, 7 months )

    also of note: gudu turned ten! & joe & me being super cute - i had just come in from cold & rain, & had forgotten my umbrella; the webcam caught him warming me. :)

    next up: movie marathon party, quickly approaching in april. oh yes, there will be many more events now that our tv doesn't require squinting. :D

    (* http://leisuretown.com/library/yfm/index.html)

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    Sunday, March 11th, 2012
    1:10 pm
    much of today's post will be boring for you if you don't care about our tv or stereo setup! but at least you don't have to not care about my computer. :D

    i spent a lot of time plotting out the reconstruction of our entertainment system for the new tv's capabilities, then buying & otherwise acquiring cables, & flipping shit around. our gaming systems (xbox360, ps2, n64 & game cube, the latter two because WHY NOT) were able to move into the stereo cabinet after i had joe cut another shelf & did some creative tetrising. i also finally determined that the way to go about getting everything i want is to move the dvd player to the video2/bd port with hmdi & move the avi/mov/mpg-friendly secondary dvd player to the dvd port with component, which frees up the satellite optical input to use for the giant tv. & THIS makes it so connecting the xbox360 directly to the tv lets joe use the tv's speakers if i'm watching something on my computer & thus using the stereo, or the full stereo setup by switching the receiver to sat if i'm playing a game with joe. plus, since our receiver is only 1080i (& annoyingly doesn't upconvert, which meant we needed a shitton more cables & a new component switchbox), putting the xbox video directly to the tv means we can play games at true 1080p. YES, ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM MATH FINISHED. man, this was a lot easier to set up on the old tv; i just had a bunch of splitters then, haha.

    a few weeks ago, much to joe's chagrin, i purchased a harmony universal remote. this one, in fact, but i got a refurb that cost less than seventy bucks. i had a cheap universal for the aforementioned rip-friendly dvd player, but it never worked well & had some CRAZY eccentricties - e.g, you had to press the light up "menu" button before it'd respond to choices on the menu screen, but if the remote was still aimed at the player when "menu" deactivated thirty seconds later, then it would send you back to the main menu of the dvd. wtf, right? at around six years old, it was really starting to fail, & the player can't operate a data dvd on just the front-panel buttons. logictech's site said they would TRULY support the player, & there's good documentation on linux compatibility for harmony remotes, so i went for it.

    i had a bit of trouble getting it going at first, but now i fucking love it. it's really making the new setup easier to handle: with one button, the harmony will turn on the tv, set it to the correct input, switch the receiver to the correct input, turn on whatever component is requested, & control everything accurately - like sending volume commands to the receiver but channel commands to the tv. & i was even able to program the power-down process to leave the receiver on & flipped back to the input my computer uses. CRAZY SHIT.

    another joyous unexpected bit is how our sony receiver interacts with the tv. the tv sends sound through the tv speakers, obviously, & the optical cable also allows it to come through the stereo. but the tv has a special setting that allows it to route ALL sound through the stereo. i tried this, & the receiver TURNED ON A BLUE LIGHT that i didn't know it had, then scrolled "DOLBY DIGITAL 3/2.1" across its face like it was all happy to have proper signaling. i'm not sure yet if it's really making a difference between what the optical cable is already delivering, but it sure is neat!

    by the way, did i mention the tv plays mp4s, mpgs, & wmvs natively? o_O holy crap it rules. so of course i had to order a 16g usb 3.0 flash drive (& a 3.0 extension cable since i'm a prissy bitch & don't like crawling under my desk) to better utilize this feature. usb 3.0 transfers five fucking gigabits PER SECOND versus 2.0's 480 megabits; i'd been excited to find my new computer has 3.0 ports, & this made for a nice excuse to upgrade.

    i re-hung my blood painting & the portraits of joe (swapped, incidentally), & we ended up with a big open spot under the tv. so we bought a storage hassock that'll fit perfectly into the space, will house our video games & controllers, & can double as more seating. [info]sic737 is making me a low profile wall shelf to hang our center speaker just below the tv, & yes i'm clearly very proud that my high school mechanical drawing class finally paid off. X)

    on saturday i threw the Inaugural Giant TV Movie Night Party. in attendance: i & [info]gorthok, [info]robinhoodvandal & [info]impatient_hands, [info]quarex (!), travis, & landon. we were GOING to cram twelve in here, but three bailed sick & two bailed lazy, le sigh. we got takeout from queen sheba & mirch masala, watched "inception" (which half the crew hadn't seen! also i wore these plugs because i determined them the most ridiculously appropriate), & we went for dessert at b&o afterwards. an excellent introduction to the setup i've been working on for two weeks now, & a bunch of folks finally got to meet drew! he's been so busy with his PhD shit that this is only the third time i've seen him since he moved to seattle last year - & we've been friends since the mid-90s.

    moving onto the tattoo project:

    instead of mocking up each country name as the trips are set up, i decided to work on all the countries at once, starting with those i know she visited. this way i don't lose my learning curve; more importantly, i won't wind up with only mediocre letters towards the end. & i do mean learning curve - i was able to put these together in half the time the first six took. the above covers all the countries that i'm 100% sure she visited, except for egypt (which is apparently the most difficult word to write EVER). in total, that's only 17 excluding the US*, though, & she went to at least 55, so... yeah. still working on finding any kind of documentation or list or other "knowns", but i'm not holding my breath on that.

    at first i wanted to start the tattoo by going to all the countries we visited together - france, england, scotland, wales, ireland, then canada. but as i think about it, i think she'd rather that i see things i haven't seen - so that aspect has morphed a bit to revisiting france first (since that's her favorite, it should start the piece), but then hitting switzerland & italy or something... & revisiting our places not in a row, but interspersed with new places. going on that thought, it'd be neat to put the countries we DID see together in a different color - blue, perhaps, as she's written to me in that color too, which would lend well to the "countries as water" motif for the fish. so, yeah. that's sorted.

    (* i am not having the US listed in this tattoo. we were both born here, so imo it doesn't really count.)

    a few photos on the ( food log )

    & you should see this if joe's narcolepsy amuses you.

    in closing, i'd like to present my favorite thing from the tv manual, under "troubleshooting". the words are verbatim from the text, but the emphasis is all mine:

    Condition: Tiny black dots and/or bright dots appear on the screen.
    Explanation/Solution: THE SCREEN IS COMPOSED OF PIXELS. Tiny black dots and/or bright dots (PIXELS) on the screen do NOT indicate a MALFUNCTION.

    can't you just hear the "you MORON" after that? :D

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    Sunday, February 26th, 2012
    8:36 pm
    most life-improving news: we bought a GIANT FUCKING 55" LED 3D FULL HD FANCY-ASSED FLAT TV. it was listed at $1599 on sony's website, but we also wanted a wall bracket ($129, $149, or $399), professional installation ($300), & a five year warranty ($250), so i geared up to negotiate with the boys at the sony store. i'd been doing Negotiation Math all week, & decided i'd open with buying the tv, bracket, & warranty, & ask for the install free. that'd be $2000 before tax, saving us $300. my backup offers were to buy the install & warranty & ask for the bracket free (total $2150), move to buying the next model up in 55" if they'd throw in the bracket *&* install ($2250), or leave & buy the refurb of the first model & extras on sony.com ($2000).

    though my sales guy said he couldn't give me anything free, somehow the exact model i most wanted was on "in-store special" that weekend & he could take it down $300 for me. well imagine that, the exact amount i'd hoped to wriggle out of paying! there was, of course, no mention of this "in-store special" anywhere near the tv or placard for same. i didn't check if there was an actual store flier to back it up - i just beamed & shook his hand & complimented him to his boss. he also beat the bracket price we expected - we got the froufrou tilt bracket for $79 instead of $149, as he explained we could use the smaller version not offered online.

    i'm not saying that it helped to wear a low-cut tank top to the sony store, i'm just saying i got exactly what i wanted. XD plus the fucking thing fit perfectly to the quarter inch (!) into joe's car without having to move either seat one bit. double plus i got the sony guy to put $501 of the purchase on my brand new slickdealt credit card, which gives me a magical $300 back without even trying (& makes it so i don't have to single & fin my way there within three months). AN EXCELLENT WEEKEND.

    here is a picture of me cuddling the new tv box:


    for those who've been here: some items in the front closet went down to storage; the sewing machine & stand went into the closet; the boot rack turned 90 degrees against the sofa; the 75gal reptile tank moved to where the sewing machine & boots were; the dvd cabinet went where the 75gal was; the stereo cabinet moved down a foot; & the wall is thus opened for the unreal TEN & A HALF SQUARE FEET OF VISUAL EPICNESS to be installed saturday. :D & yes, there will be a major movie night coming SOON.

    new computer news: the list of broken things from the last post: higher resolution x, quite probably cups. also high ascii has been added since that was determined broken when phil tried to show me a ± sign. X) we haven't done much fixing lately since phil sort of has a life, & i'm basically uar.

    news from 1992: i've been playing a lot of DooM. i'm glad to note that prboom works just fine on the new box, & midi plays without the weird sound-server package that only kind of worked on the last box. it's still my favorite, & some of you know i have a rather large doom tattoo, yet somehow i never really played anything beyond "ultimate doom". turns out that "final doom" was made up of a couple of amateur megawads ("tnt: evilution" & "the plutonia experiment"), & it's been okay to play. the levels do have some nice complexity to them, though there are still some bugs that were apparently never fixed. an unexpected upshot of all this is that joe is oddly turned on by watching me play, haha. that in mind, anyone want to go coop? :D

    on to tattoo news: i scanned the grammy letters at high res - after three hours, i finished the first six country names, the ones that we visited together:

    i'm SO happy i've so many letters to work from - i was able to judge proper spacing, how she connects letters to each other, & i was even able to use end-of-word letters to finish each country's name. plus i've been marking "used" letters (on a transparent layer) so i can keep it from ever looking like a font. :)

    continuing on the treasure hunt, i pulled a free trial to ancestry.com & found her as a child/teen in the 1920s & 1930s censuses, but those were handwritten by the census takers. i also found mention of grammy's marriage certificate, including the number, but with no image. i was going to order the marriage license online, but the order came to nearly fifty bucks & it wasn't guaranteed they'd find it - with no refund if they don't. so i wrote an archivist at the Register of Wills & Clerk of Orphans' Court Division, & he replied, "By the 1940s, most county clerks were using type writers to complete the marriage application. So, you are unlikely to find anything more than her signature." i thanked him for saving me fifty bucks & disappointment, though that may be something to pursue if joe & i want to visit another E country aside from England & Egypt. but i was able to order my mother's birth certificate, which should provide a V & maybe another signature, too. if i'm really lucky it'll be fully handwritten like my uncle's...!

    i then struck out at one of my most exciting leads, AARP. i thought she'd used them to book all her travel, but the chick on the phone said there was no account under her name. damn, i was hoping that'd be a really easy way to get a full list... oh well, i guess it's less frustrating to hear "sorry, no account" than "yes but i can't give you the info", right? that night, i went home & just had a feeling i'd missed some letters... i went very carefully through one particular box, & found SIX MORE CARDS! they provided K O q V x (& multiple "x"s at that, so we can go to Mexico & Luxembourg without a repeat, haha). the O was random because she unnecessarily capitalized Ocean, & the V is so fucking cute, it came from this:

    Did you know the state flower of Illinois is the (Violet)
    Penna is the Mountain Laurel fun letter yes.

    she wrote O & V for no good reason except that i'd need them twenty years later. :) so i'm down to needing Q U X Zz 8, which means we can go anywhere except Qatar, Uganda, Ukraine, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, & a bunch of places with Zs like Zambia, Zimbabwe, Belize, Brazil, Czech Republic, New Zealand, Switzerland, Venezuela... but knowing her handwriting this well now, i'm pretty sure i can comfortably draw her U, Z, & z if i have to. (U is just the top of her Y, & judging by the rest of her script, Z & z would be like this.) i don't know if her Q is O-like or 2-like, but i don't care about going to Qatar anyhow, so that's moot.

    i can't wait to see what the birth certificate adds to the collection...

    ( food log and super deluxe VD dinner notes )

    ( hawk update, 6 months )

    in body news, i've been booted for the past few weeks - my hoof had been hurting so i went to the farrier, & he decided to immobilize it instead of shoot me. so that's good, i guess. i'm four weeks down & probably two more to go, so clomp clomp clomp ttyl

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    Sunday, February 12th, 2012
    4:51 pm - computers, memorial art to come
    the list of broken things from the last post: zgv, gmplayer, quite probably cups - & that last one's only there because i've been too pleased to test it.

    the new video card installed decently well. i had to remove one of the inverse monitor screws to get it into the case, then the bios chose it without being told, & there was some weirdness that it wouldn't accept a cable hotswap, & the plug's putting a LITTLE pressure on the vga port (potentially shortening the card's life by flexing it, who knows), & i had to reboot again to actually USE the card, but it WORKS. CLI is back to true CLI, no more weirdo setfont hack, & most importantly: zgv worked immediately. :D :D

    but zgv/svgalib broke after i started x with the nvidia kernel module. phil discovered that the vesa framebuffer was coming up first, then conflicting with nvidia's fb once x was started, which killed svgalib. after a lot of swapping things around & enough reboots for a decade (ONE PER YEAR is ALL YOU NEED, & that's for a KERNEL UPGRADE DAMNIT), we ended up getting everything going with uvesafb, xserver-xorg-video-vesa, & no nvidia. this allowed zgv to be happy! plus movies worked with -vo x11, but they wouldn't play in fullscreen. i couldn't change the video size at all, so movies encoded larger than my monitor weren't really watchable... until i discovered -zoom the next day. it's nice to fix something by myself again, haha. but i can't fix that vesa x will only go to 1024x768, which is okay since it looks just like it did on the old box, but i came to prefer 1280x1024.

    new broken things list: higher resolution x, quite probably cups. i'd say the system has gone from 60% functional to 95%. phil's genius brain is still chugging away on nvidia, so i'm sure x'll be autofixed when i can get back on the nvidia module. & once that's stable, i'll bring myself to delicately poke at cups. (unless i need to print shit at home first, in which case i anticipate RageNight, as cups is wont to demand.)

    finally got a glimpse into phil's motivation to help me, though:
    [15:12] <CERisE8192> It's my hope to make your system so well off now that when it eventually dies a horrible death, you'll be even more traumatized.
    [15:13] <CERisE8192> It's what friends are for, right? 8)
    for once, phil says something truly hilarious that ISN'T a pun. :D

    so i figured out what i'm going to do to memorialize my grandmother. my grammy had a majorly green thumb & always had flowers still growing in october; she was a world traveller, visiting ~55 countries by the time she died at 95; she loved to care for & feed her family; she decorated everything & had dozens of beautiful, ornate table settings; she always enjoyed & kept fancy-tail goldfish. i was going the direction of trying to tie in these & other visual elements, but it's morphing into something i think is far better...

    i was really inspired by eidolon's memorial tattoo & its simplicity. (he had tattooed "you make me proud" on his wrist in his grandfather's handwriting.) i'm thinking now of making the image aspect just a single goldfish, probably from a dorsal view, on my upper outer left thigh. i have some letters my grandmother wrote, & from them i've been piecing together her handwriting. the idea is whenever i visit a new country, i can add to the piece by tattooing the name of the country, in her hand, beneath the fish. ideally each lettering tattoo would be done IN that country. with the way her handwriting wavers, it might even come out looking like a fish jumping out of a rippling pool of countries. & thus would this memorial tattoo continue to live & evolve on me as i travel with her in mind, instead of being a single, static piece of art.

    (the fucking bummer aspect is that my grandmother had literally a full closet of boxes of photos from her trips, each labeled BY HAND with the country's name, but my mother has discarded them all. it crushes me, but i have a good quantity of her writing in letters, & i've some ideas on how to get more. so i'll make do & not let it get me down, as grammy never let ANYTHING get HER down.)

    over several days of searching, i found nearly all of her handwriting in letters & cards she'd sent me, but couldn't find E J K O Qq U V Xx Zz or 8. (not that i need the numbers for this memorial, but it's all part of her handwriting. i also have her ampersand, which could be useful in travel to Antigua and Barbuda, Trinidad and Tobago, et cetera.) & thus began the real hunt. the E was especially important since i want to start the tattoo by going to the places she & i travelled together: england, scotland, wales, ireland, & france (probably france first since paris was her favorite). we also visited canada together, but that one's a day trip to achieve.

    i called rental agencies from places she lived, magazines & newspapers she held subscriptions to, the place where we got my first car loan that she cosigned, but got nowhere - either they didn't keep copies of checks or it had been too long (over seven years). then it was suggested that i can buy a copy of her marriage certificate online! that could potentially yield the E, K, & x if she spelled out all five of her names. when i asked my aunt for help in narrowing down the date to order it, she replied with my uncle's birth certificate, which gave me two Es, a J, & a second H! (duplicates are important so her writing doesn't look like a font, & i don't want to have to mildly modify letters myself if i can avoid it.) i've got some more leads to tackle this week, but it's going great - i'm down to needing just K O Qq U V Xx Zz 8. it's like the best & worst treasure hunt ever, haha.

    on the subject of tattoos, i've also had my eyebrows tattooed this month. lulz, don't freak out, they're the "permanent cosmetics" type & not big black dots or flames or whatever the shit people have been known to do. i found a chick in the area who can make them look seriously real, individual hairs & all, & it's delightful having eyebrows again. (where had they gone? got me, age does that sometimes. other people get wrinkles, i lost my brows? apparently!) i have a standard touchup at the end of the month, & i'm assembling a montage of youth/before/fresh/healed/touchup/final that will be available by request if i don't hate you. (i probably hate you.)

    in closing, another super sexy thing i found about the new box:
    Cpu(s): 51.1%us,  3.7%sy,  0.0%ni, 45.0%id,  0.2%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.1%si,  0.0%st
Mem:  16402104k total,  9319780k used,  7082324k free,      980k buffers
Swap:  1951860k total,        0k used,  1951860k free,  8088700k cached
  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND           
 8862 crank     20   0 1065m 523m  33m R  105  3.3  60:00.18 firefox-bin
 3411 root      20   0  230m  29m  10m R  100  0.2   0:26.36 mencoder
 3429 root      20   0 14896 2384 1092 R  100  0.0   0:12.74 lame

    you see that shit? i was hardly even trying. it's pretty sweet!

    (6 comments | comment on this)

    Saturday, February 4th, 2012
    11:23 am - computers & things that DON'T make me want to shutdown -h my brain
    the list of broken things from the last post: zgv, x in general, gmplayer, quite probably cups.

    x in general: "/bin/fbset -xres 1280 -yres 1024" allowed me to interact with X by setting the CLI framebuffer to the same resolution X uses. what'd i tell you: phil's a genius. plus i figured out how to make xterm look better (read: bigger) all on my own, since i otherwise liked the pretty higher resolution.

    however, despite continued troubleshooting & phil's genius, it seems ATI refused to do what i want. & what i want is simple - graphical X able to do graphical X stuff, & CLI that looks like CLI looked in 1997, back when all you had to do was CONFIG_VGA_CONSOLE=y & it was there.

    so last night, i took one of the high end video cards joe had bought for his box, figuring we'd go with nvidia since that worked before. joe had two of these cards; though they were visually different, he said that both were exactly the same, just assembled by different manufacturers. i couldn't find a photo of the one i was to use, & it was lacking the little "nVidia" logo i'd seen on all other nvidia cards, but it had a sticker that said "GeForce 5600" so i ran with it.

    well, they fucking weren't the same. the card he handed me wasn't even PCIe16. oh it LOOKED the part, but i'm still not even sure what it was. (edit: found it - THIS IS WHAT IT WAS. DIE DIE DIE) it had two extra pins, making it about 2mm too long, & a foot which in no way would fit into the clip on the slot. i nearly broke my motherboard thinking it was just being uncooperative before i realized that it was NOT what joe thought it was & it's NOT going to fit & WHAT THE SHIT IS GOING ON HERE. this is the point at which poor phil got yet another "PHIL I'M IN A NIGHTMARE & I CAN'T WAKE UP" screaming death call. at least he knew it might happen, since i no longer fuck with this shit without him on standby. the poor dear stayed on the phone with me through the continuing horrors.

    that's right, continuing. it gets worse.

    so joe hands me the second card of the pair, the one actually represented in the link above. the reason i'd wanted the first card is that it has a VGA port on the back, & the other had only two DVI ports. my monitor is VGA & i don't have a DVI converter, so using the second card meant efforts would end there for the night. fuck it, phil agreed i could install it, NOT switch it over in bios, & at least have the hardware portion done. in a fit of sheer amazing boyfrienditude, i heard joe calling local shops to make sure they had a DVI-to-VGA converter on the shelf, & then he actually drove out to northgate, twenty minutes away, to fetch it for me. i truly felt like this.

    i got the card installed (gee, THIS one clicked right into place), let phil off the phone, closed up the case, plugged it back in, pressed the power button... & nothing happened. UH, WHAT? checked cables, checked connections between motherboard & case, made sure i hadn't somehow turned off the power supply & that it was plugged back into my UPS, pressed power again. NOTHING. called phil back, nearly in tears, because cleanly shutting down my system had ONCE AGAIN RESULTED IN COMPLETE DEATH.

    phil walked me through troubleshooting which seemed illogical, since the power supply wasn't even powering up. apparently times had changed since i last really mucked around with this stuff, as i expected the power supply to at least power itself up when turned on, even if the board or card or hard drives or whatever else had failed. but phil noted that the green light on the motherboard was lit, so it WAS getting power. he had me remove the card, which didn't help, & then reseat the main power bar to the board, which DID fix it. wtf? i tried putting the card back in, reseating the power bar: nothing. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

    i called joe to tell him to turn around - just as he parked in front of the shop. the card went in the trash. i ordered this from newegg & we called it a night.

    it wasn't until this morning when i was looking at a schematic of my power supply, actually to see if there was a better term than "main power bar" for this write-up, that i saw this:
    Connectors
2 x 6Pin PCI-Express Connector

    ...what

    ...WHAT

    i did not know that PCIe needs power. i've never plugged power into a card. joe did not ask if i plugged power into the card. phil did not ask if i plugged power into the card. joe did not plug power into the card when we tested it on his computer BECAUSE WE ONLY TESTED THE OTHER CARD WHICH WAS NOT PCIe16.

    two hours of three people's time, high frustration, high emotion, an hour of driving, & fifty bucks - all wasted for the want of a power cable. & what's worse is that i specifically remember looking at the card, & almost asked phil what those little pins at the top are for. & he would've laughed at me & told me & it would've been fine.

    ...or not, as i JUST NOW LEARNED. (look, it's like being realtime inside my horrible head!)
    Q:Do I need a special power supply for PCI-E [PCI Express].
    A:Yes and no. Although the PCI-E spec calls for a PCI Express power connector, most PCI-E cards don't currently use it. This means that you should only probably worry about this if you are buying bleeding edge PCI Express parts. Card based on the ATI X600, ATI X700, ATI X300, ATI X1300, Nvidia 6600, Nvidia 7600 or Nvidia 7300 series graphic chipsets rarely use the connector.

    WHATEVER. the new card has HDMI output anyway.

    MOVING ON TO NON-COMPUTER SHIT NOW, BECAUSE SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE GOOD IN MY LIFE

    so we saw cavalia. it was a-m-a-z-i-n-g. from the first scene where they just send two horses galloping across the stage (OH HI PARADIGM SHIFT) to the finale with the aerialists & timed bungee dives & trick riding & trampoline flips & holy crap someone is SPINNING IN THE AIR OFF A 5" WIDE BOUNCING PLANK HELD BY TWO OTHER GUYS... yeah so we bought the DVD (for a dollar off, as we were barely short in cash & the hawker took pity, haha) & are happy to play it for anyone who wants to get a tiny inkling of the glory that was this event. (phil had wanted joe to just record ME during cavalia, & he would NOT have been disappointed. my expressions varied constantly between :O & :D with a lot of ^_^ thrown in.)

    i didn't realize when buying our tickets that "horse lover"-level admission not only gave us great seats just five rows back, but also a barn tour! i was so happy i think i double-punched joe in the chest when the usher told us why we should stay in our seats after the show. after the hoi polloi left, we got to go see the horses gleefully homphing hay in the cleanest stalls imaginable. we weren't permitted to pet any noses, but being near them still delighted me.

    super cute note: we picked up dinner at whole foods beforehand, & i bought a carmalita bar. i had a bite on the way in to cavalia, started laughing & told joe, "it's full of oats!" :D

    a bit of visual food logging, & two special event dinners noted ( back here... )

    ( hawk update, 5 months )

    i took this two thursdays ago when seattle awoke to a half inch of ice on everything. thank you, 20x optical zoom - this tree is a quarter mile away. :)


    it was the same day as this forecast, which made me lol:


    & as a positive final computer note, this is crazy:
    /dev/sdb1       932G   33M  932G   1% /mnt

    :)

    *sigh* okay, time to forget about all of this shit until the new card arrives, & just enjoy working on today's hair client & buying joe sushi tomorrow in appreciation of his efforts toward keeping me sane yesterday. as he'd noted, accurately, when this all began:
    [15:14] <gorthok> my entire goal was to get the shit handled before your client left
    [15:15] <gorthok> in order to stomp out the fuze on the lish world
    [15:15] <gorthok> it was like throwing myself on a lishrenade

    truer words, my friends.

    (3 comments | comment on this)

    Sunday, January 22nd, 2012
    10:36 am - progress
    continuing onwards & upwards from last post's tornado of crap, everything did arrive wednesday despite the snow, & not a minute too soon - the next day we had a half inch of solid ice on everything & i had to VPN to work. anyhow, i was able to get all the old equipment out, vacuum & clean the case fairly well, install the processor & motherboard, connect the case inputs, hook up the power supply, & install the ram, dvd drive, & a new 1TB seagate drive surprise-donated to the new box by [info]sic737. i got it all assembled with only one Rage Event when the fucking connector shield decided to be a complete bitch, as they are wont to do. (TINK TINK TINK I AM GETTING MY TINES STUCK INSIDE YOUR USB PORTS! TINK TINK TINK I AM STOPPING YOU FROM SEATING YOUR MOTHERBOARD CORRECTLY EHEHE FUCK YOU!)

    i left my main drive in joe's computer & tested booting to rescue disc to check hardware. the system started up, scared the shit out of me by seemingly SHUTTING DOWN, but then sensed the new proc & gave me a weird "omgz new thing!" error. after a reboot, it let me into bios setup & successfully booted to sysrescue.

    with [info]testing4l standing by, everything seemed pretty okay, so i moved my hard drive back into the case & went back in via sysrescue. one "make menuconfig" later, my kernel was deemed suitable enough to try booting directly... & it worked! i was able to get to my system again... though it was ugly. no graphics, svgalib or x, & my way-more-important-than-it-should-be console font was fucked. this is the frustrating usual when there's a new graphics card in the mix.

    i moved my computer back under my desk (not an easy feat considering the desk was specifically built [by chris <3] AROUND this computer, so it's pretty tight), plugged everything back in, & found i was short a ps2 port. the new motherboard has some weird dual port, but "dual" effectively means "one" without a splitter. as you may know, i only use ibm m2 keyboards, & that has a ps2 connector... but i thought my mouse was usb. it's not. i ran into the bedroom searching for either a converter or a spare usb mouse & started trying to root through our giant computer-bits-&-cables boxes which joe had JUST reorganized & wouldn't want destroyed. within two minutes of looking, in walks joe from his hiker's night out (mountaineering movie fest or some crap) like he sensed i was in distress. yay synchronicity web? :D we had both a converter & a usb mouse, but the converter was backwards (male ps2 & female usb) so i ordered what i need online & took the usb mouse in the meantime.

    phil worked on it with me all friday night & most of saturday. with the six core proc, i'm able to compile a kernel within five minutes - a time i haven't achieved since i upgraded from 486 to a pentium in 1998. sound was pretty easy to fix once we found the right module, & my webcam worked without incident or effort - & did not hard-kill the power, heh. phil found a quick hack to temporarily fix my console font (setfont works with this machine!), but it reverts pretty easily, so hopefully fixing the rest of svgalib will help with that. if not, i don't mind wrappering zgv. (note: this is not the right font, lulz.)

    we got X sort of working, but it destroyed CLI. the proprietary radeon packages weren't playing nice, so phil finally talked me into the newest kernel & a dist-upgrade... the latter which sort of didn't work. somehow there are two major knots to untie: one for X & one for cups (printing). on the upside, i found pork (my favorite text-based aim client) suddenly working again when i upgraded from 3.0.14 to 3.2.1. it ceased to connect to oscar when i left 2.6.x, & i'd been running it via ssh off joe's computer & disallowing him to reboot overnight, heh. i'm so happy it's back, though phil says he's still going to code me a perl-based pork clone just so he can insert fucked up error messages & in-jokes.

    phil kept fiddling with settings, many of which crashed the video ram & required a reboot, but we didn't get much further saturday. it was about this time that i went on a manic two-hour cleaning/straightening spree of the apartment. apparently i needed to feel accomplished SOMEHOW, heh. we agreed to reconvene sunday - & from my many years of experience with phil, i know that sometimes his giant brain just needs to marinate on a problem for a while & i'll randomly get a msg telling me to try some weird command that magically fixes an issue. so that's where it stands now.

    things that were broken in the upgrade & are now working: sound, webcam, cli font (temp), pork.

    things that remain broken: zgv, x in general, gmplayer, quite probably cups.

    amusing fashion notes: it'll be forever obvious that joe found me this equipment. not only is the proc a "black edition", whatever that means, but the ram's black with silver grips, & the entire power supply is black. ever more ridiculously, the power supply GLOWS with BLUE LEDs... which perfectly matches the case chris gave me years ago. i'd never ask for or seek to have lights in my computer, but i can't say it's not fun to have them. oh what the hell, have a pic:


    the quest continues.

    (6 comments | comment on this)

    Tuesday, January 17th, 2012
    3:31 pm
    so i was forced into spending $390 at newegg this week because the motherboard in my primary computer - my HOME - died hard & unexpectedly. the stress & pain of this is on par with a major house fire.

    i suppose there were a couple of signs. a few months back, the onboard soundcard's line-in port went silent. this is weird enough on its own, but i moved to the mic jack & was still able to record audio. the bigger issue was about a week previous, when usb completely stopped working - to attempt to access any hardware via usb suddenly caused a complete shutdown of the system, even during boot. & i don't mean like "la la, linux is shutting down now, here is a scroll of things i'm doing from /etc/rc6.d/"... it shutdown like "your power has been cut & you don't own a battery backup" - killed dead. (this made me VERY grateful for ext3/xfs, since i well remember the days when a hard shutdown like that would cause horrible data loss every time.) [info]testing4l suspected that udev was writing somewhere it shouldn't be. i disabled usb in the bios & waited for phil to develop some ideas.

    phil came up with a list of things to try, starting with replacing the rather ancient cmos battery. i purchased one, shutdown cleanly, installed it... & the machine just wouldn't boot again. at first i couldn't get more than a half second of power to the system. after fucking with some jumpers, it'd get power - but there was no video & no bios beep AT ALL. this happened shortly before a hair client arrived, which felt like the worst timing in the world, but ended up being semi-okay. the client was really cool & helped take my mind off it, & joe spent the entire three-hour session searching newegg for upper-middle-class hardware. (i still run 90% CLI, & DooM remains the most graphics-intensive game i play - i wasn't going to cheap out & didn't want the system to be obsolete before it arrived, but i hardly need state-of-the-art.)

    joe found me this equipment: a six-core processor, AM3+ motherboard, 16G corsair ram, & a 500 watt rosewill power supply, & i bought them with phil's approval. it sucks to have to replace FOUR MAJOR PARTS because the MB is the likely culprit & my old hardware won't translate, but that's ALWAYS better than dealing with a crashed/dead/defective/otherwise wounded hard drive. my hard drives are fine - that's the silver lining. that's what takes the house fire down to a kitchen fire.

    since stupid MLKjr day fucked up my ~free two day shipping~, i went ahead & moved my main hard drive into joe's most stable computer (he doesn't live in a computer the same way i do) & can access it again via ssh from my netbook. phil had designs of chroot, but joe's system is 32 bit, so it'd require chroot'ing into my 32 install & then binding my way to the stuff i need most in my 64... it turned into too much of a mess to bother for a week.

    it's absolutely no fun to buy a new computer system when it's forced like this, plus i'm unsure if that's the only problem. i hope i can get everything working like normal in the next few weeks & can get at least some enjoyment out of "oh hey, everything runs so fast now!" regardless, new hardware arrives tomorrow... IF the impending snowpocalypse doesn't completely wipe out UPS & all of seattle.

    oh, & did i mention that my work computer got horribly virused the same day usb at home died? fucking windows. it hobbled along for a week or so, & then suddenly wouldn't boot up again - some dll was magically missing. so this is my 2012: two computers inside one week were shutdown properly & never booted up again. >_< (;_;) 9_9

    things making 2012 better: my hot boyfriend, THIS OF COURSE, & ( delicious food. )

    also jewelry being saved:
    ( oh no, what got destroyed now? )

    ps! i just found out my DVT friend had a mild stroke! hooray! go 2012! he seems okay & is recovering well... but still. a fucking stroke. DEAR NEW YEAR, KNOCK IT OFF. KTHX

    i hope the next post can be a bit more upbeat. hey, maybe 2012 is getting all the shit out of the way early so the rest of the year can be super awesome?

    (15 comments | comment on this)

    Tuesday, December 27th, 2011
    5:45 pm - eoty holiday recap
    THIS IS A LONG POST, FOR MUCH HAS HAPPENED. you may read it if you like; i post for my own memory augmentation, so your tl;dr can be stuffed right up your cunts. :D

    to begin, the briefest of thanksgiving writeups: we roasted an 18lb turkey with thyme/lemon zest/sage under the skin; garlic sugar snap peas; olive oil basil brussels sprouts; butternut/russet mashed squashtatoes; cinnamon straw-blue-cranberry sauce; & crescent rolls because we were foregoing stuffing & i hadn't had crescents in about a million years. we didn't go all out since it was just me & joe, though [info]sic737 stopped by for a plate. (chris has been working 10h days & schooling 5h/day too, so SOMEONE had to feed him.) i am pleased to have new stores of home-roasted turkey in packages in the freezer.

    beyond the normal thankfulness shit, yeah yeah, i'm thankful that my second-worst boss was fired this year. this is the moron who, among a great number of other idiotic regulations, refused to let me take my break just before leaving. the only rules in the company handbook were 2 breaks a day totaling 30 minutes - & i preferred to take one of mine at 4:45pm so i could leisurely get my things together & relax before running off to the bus at 5. he kept telling me that doing that meant i JUST SAT THERE NOT WORKING for 15 minutes, whereas everyone else had to WORK UNTIL THEIR SHIFT ENDED. what the fuck kind of logic is that? it's 15 minutes NOT WORKING now, or 15 minutes NOT WORKING earlier in the day - that's what a BREAK is. & it actually worked BETTER for the COMPANY for me to break late since business was reliably slower closer to 5pm. i'll never understand the reasoning, but he nearly wrote me up over it several times. said i was "violating the spirit of break-taking". ridiculous. he hadn't been MY boss for a couple years, but i was still pleased to see him tossed out on his ass.

    speaking of schadenfreude & other things that make me happy, we had a visit from [info]testing4l earlier this month. his write-up is here, but the highlights were playing king's quest (obviously), the lethal weapon marathon i threw around his trip since neither phil nor joe had seen them (in attendance: me & [info]gorthok, [info]testing4l, chris m., landon, mika & an uncomfortably pregnant [info]sheeep who didn't stay long), a lot of frozen yogurt (omg red mango's limited cinnamon apple), the very cool oldschool geek book phil gave me, & - oh yeah - dead rising 2 on the new xbox360 that phil gave joe. :O joe's old 360 had finally RROD'd, & phil's solution has also served to bring more phil into our lives, as the boys are now playing via xbox live. this is a much better "gift that keeps on giving" than herpes would've been.

    for xmas, we took an awesome trip up to canada. grammy's birthday is the 28th, & world traveller that she was, i figured a good way to celebrate her would-be-96th was to be in another country. she was also a big fan of christmas (especially decorating for it), so since her actual birthday falls on a wednesday, we took the weekend before to hit british columbia - which happened to be xmas weekend. we didn't do anything particularly grammy-centric; just kept her in mind as we visited & shopped vancouver & ate.

    oh yes, i said ate. my breakfast was extremely light & nutrition-dense in preparation for a very special two & a half hour dinner extravaganza at five sails for xmas eve. ( here's a copy of the menu with my notes. ) yes, it was utterly amazing. words cannot even express.

    we stayed at the cassandra hotel that night, where i'd snagged a 50% off deal on expedia - definitely appreciated after the most expensive meal we've ever eaten! yelp reviews were split between "it was very nice for the price" & "holy shit do not stay here, it was awful", but i took the risk. totally worth it - we got a free upgrade to a mountain view room, the bed was SUPER comfortable, & we spent an excellent night in canada. (of course, it probably didn't hurt that i mentioned the bad reviews to the front desk chick, who begged ignorance & then tried extra hard to make sure we had a good experience. ;) as if the main staff doesn't know how their hotel is rated on major websites, heh.) we couldn't find a good movie to close the night, but there WAS a mythbusters marathon running (kind of "our show" since i first saw it with joe when a similar marathon was running during our first anniversary vacation together), so we watched the boys rebust while i enjoyed the decently quick hotel wifi & joe dozed in food coma:


    on xmas day proper, we missed free hotel pastries, but i had a few bites left of my main course from the previous night. even reheated, yum. we lounged in the hotel room until check-out, then visited the vancouver aquarium - partly because it was the only thing open, but also because the last time i'd been to an aquarium was monterey bay with cody, back before i even signed up to lj. they allow photography, so i ( took some pics... )

    headed back to ca-99 & i-5, we found an eastern european/russian deli that had a TON of crazy chocolates & pastries. i snagged a small slice of fruit bread, & we each picked five or six individual chocolates based on the wrapper & our instinct (as everything was cyrillic or some shit). we sampled each as we drove out of canada, found a lot of winners & a few mediocres, & were thus able to declare "a bunch of half-eaten chocolates" at the border.

    speaking of, we also picked up a shitton of canadian candy bars, just for the fun of the new: wunderbar, kinder bueno, after eight (i was disappointed that the filling wasn't goopy like their thin mints), mr big deal (which i had before & really liked), sweet marie, crispy crunch, & a kit-kat toffee that joe went wild over. plus i found a package of peach/wildberry nerds, which i'd never tried - nerds were my first favorite candy as a kid & i'll always have a soft spot [in my teeth?] for them. this much sugar & junk will probably last us several months, heh.

    joe & i hit half a decade together on the 26th, so i gave him this present while we were at five sails. (fuck christmas presents - there's nothing special about those, but anniversary celebrations are a requirement!) here are some of the things i've learned from joe in the past five years:
  • a pre-warmed bed makes for the best sleep.
  • meats should always be seared & then simmered for two-plus hours.
  • double-paned windows make a huge difference in my overall happiness.
  • there is a lot of vampire smut in the literary world. i mean a LOT. more than anyone could ever stand to read, much less own.
  • a dominant/dominant relationship totally works & is awesome.
  • the more estiferous the flatus, the more puissant the mephitis.
  • final fantasy X is stupid, but less so than FF VII.
  • boys are messy.
  • we are fucking genius together & i look forward to the next five years.

    & yes, i made ( a montage. )

    next comes a bit of ( food log ) & some dreads pics & a few other posts:

    ( blacklight collection )

    ( who needs anything BUT flashy stone? )

    ( saltwater lobes )

    ( hawk update, 4 months )

    looking back over 2011 in general, i'm proud to say i've put out a lot of fires this year!
  • i handled a friend's voluntary committment to a mental health facility at my behest & with my encouragement;
  • i bullied a hundred twenty pounds off a friend & then saw him through a[n unrelated] deep vein thrombosis that nearly killed him, & probably would have had he still had the weight on;
  • i suspected & then encouraged treatment of a friend's wife's previously undiagnosed anorexia;
  • i began the turning around of another friend's dietary & exercise habits, which at only a quarter of his goal met has already made major changes in his health & degree of daily pain; &
  • i was the only one to step forward for a friend's currently-still-a-bitch wife's treatment of him to make sure that he's not being abused by her & that she's aware of her issues.

    plus some long-burning fires have been put out on their own - the best example being that my brother is now in shape & gorgeous. i couldn't be happier for him. 2011 has been a good year.

    the next most exciting thing happening: TICKETS TO CAVALIA. omg. OMG. joe made us buy the second-most expensive seats, when i was totally going to mostly cheap out for his benefit. we'll be five rows back, in the section just left of center stage. CANNOT WAIT UNTIL JANUARY!

    • (27 comments | comment on this)

    Sunday, November 27th, 2011
    1:39 pm - BIRTHDAY POST
    it's so not easy for [info]gorthok to plan things. but he was still able to pull off a pretty great birthday. :)

    i didn't know what was going on or the precise guest list, but i knew there'd be a gathering, food, & cake, & that's all that really mattered. arriving to the apartment were [info]sic737, [info]girlgoth & magnus, travis, christopher, [info]nei_tan & trevor, [info]robinhoodvandal & [info]impatient_hands.

    we walked to annapurna, where i hadn't been before. instead of an appetizer, i ordered a virgin piña colada-type drink: strawberry & pineapple juice with a splash of cream; & the tandoori clay oven lamb with grilled vegetables & mint chutney. the lamb was lovely & all my meat had piercings. :D the drink was DELICIOUS but a huge mistake - i almost never drink calories, & a few bites into the meal, 12oz of the sweetest juice around hit me & i felt completely ill.

    i feared i'd end up missing out on my own cake, but fortunately, the cold walk home helped me to recover. joe & i extended our walk a few extra blocks, & my blood sugar stabilized enough to return to the apartment without feeling like wilford brimley was knocking down my door.

    so i'd been told mid-week that joe had acquired a "cake backer" - immediately i suspected [info]testing4l (& found out on the day that i was right). joe asked for my cake requests, & ended up getting my top choice: a black forest cake from b&o espresso. i fucking love b&o - you'll pay $8 for a slice of cake or pie there, but it's sooo worth it. i've often taken friends for dessert & i occasionally stop in on my way home from work, too. black forest is easily my favorite cake, but theirs is soaked in kirsch (cherry brandy) so i've never had it. ordering a whole cake, though, they were able to do without the alcohol component, & this made it even more special.

    i took photos of the glory before we hacked into it. note that there's no frosting, just whipped cream, dark chocolate cake, & dark cherries. it wasn't too sweet at all, which was a huge relief after le juice regret. ( SEE THE CAKE )

    holy shit, it was SO good. also HUGE. there was plenty for everybody, several people took a slice or two home, i put a big hunk in the freezer for phil's upcoming visit next month, *&* we still had a couple of slices left for the next day. that was one hell of a cake.

    after cake came presents, & a surprising number at that! molly gave me a card with a small square of knitting stapled to it, in my favorite colors, & said i'd be receiving a warm present as soon as she had time to finish it. X) will & james gave me a pony express belt buckle, for which i'll need joe to cut me a new belt. joe's present was awesome - a black fleece blanket that PLUGS INTO A CIGARETTE LIGHTER. YES! it'll be perfect for our upcoming trip to victoria BC for grammy's birthday, especially if joe decides to stop & hike anywhere.

    it also must be noted that james is hilarious. please look upon the packaging for the blanket:


    what the fuck. as james pointed out, that guy is a CONSTRUCTION WORKER. he has NEVER BEEN COLD IN HIS LIFE. he's obviously on the phone ORDERING THE BLANKET for his COLD GIRLFIREND, laughing about how she'll have no good excuse to put her ICE FEET on him anymore. haha i'm still mystified as to why a beefy dude who works outdoors was chosen as their product mascot - but hey, i'm not in marketing.

    so there was one more present, which gives me reason to put a jewelry post directly in the middle of this write-up, because lily is fucking awesome. ( you will not believe this. )

    so yeah, that was my birthday, & it was excellent.

    also, i bought another one of these. THEY'RE SO SPOTTY! SO SPOTTY! ^_^ now back to the usual stuff you get.

    ( food logging )

    ( greenland nuummite )

    ( hawk update, 3 months )

    speaking of, i found ryan's been posting some of my pics :) :) it's neat to randomly happen upon internet strangers complimenting you. one, two, three.

    & my dreads celebrated their fourth birthday on 10-29, so i posted a shitton of new pics & a timeline here. there are also additional hair-relevant posts here, here, & here. you probably can't see that last one, but you can email me if you think you deserve it.

    OK BYE FOR NOW LJ, TTY IN DECEMBER

    (20 comments | comment on this)

    Sunday, October 23rd, 2011
    10:21 am - GMD for EKSMD
    i threw the Grammy Memorial Dinner this month, as noted. i wore a velvet skirt she'd like, & my FF orange opal dichro, which i'd purchased ages ago because they reminded me of this huge opal ring grammy wore. i laid out a tablecloth she made & embroidered, with coasters, placemats, napkins, & salt & pepper shakers (shaped like fish) that she'd she'd sent me across some care packages fifteen years ago. we used my stabby flatware that she & my brother had gifted to me on a birthday. i put a slideshow of pictures of her on the tv via my zen, & we ate her recipes.

    it was delicious. everyone did a great job cooking, & everything did come out pretty close to how i remember. chris made burgers on kaiser rolls (thick, seasoned & seared in a particular way; he nailed it perfectly); james & will made creamed spinach & green beans (the latter boiled, not microwaved); joe made butter dips (a breadstick-like amazing thing); & i made frozen strawberry pie on a homemade graham cracker crust for dessert. (i almost bought a pack of individual tiny pre-made graham cracker crusts i saw at the grocery store - it went like this: "oh hey, there will be six of us & here are six tiny shells & it'd make things easier & grammy would NEVER EVER DO THIS so forget it". lulz, she never bought a pre-made crust in her life.) the extra bonus of the day was [info]atrophie's surprise arrival! since chris doesn't eat fruit & lindsay needed something to contribute, she picked up an assortment of pepperidge farm cookies which contained many of grammy's favorites (most notably chessmen & milano). there was plenty of food for everybody & it really was a great time. ( here are a few pics! )

    i also took the opportunity of lindsay's visit to do a little surprise for her & to give her a birthday present to take home (no peeking until the day!), but i'll let her write those up if she chooses.

    what a great event. thanks everyone for being there & for so kindly letting me micromanage. :D perhaps we'll do this again? grammy made AWESOME spaghetti & meatballs...

    next up: just two photographed entries in the food log (& a trip to coastal kitchen) since my last post, & these are good memories too. so ( here they are. )

    in other news, joe is finally employed again, so i hope we'll soon be able to get back to doing more awesome things. you know, like this & this. ok, maybe not so soon - but i am totally pushing for NZ as our next major trip because of this stuff. :D

    & now, time for something that becomes more major each year:
    ( collection post 2011! )

    & if that's not enough, some updated pics of my hawk.
    ( hawk update, 2 months )

    (3 comments | comment on this)

    Sunday, October 9th, 2011
    2:17 am - omg mechoui
    we got to experience mechoui at marrakesh tonight! from their website: Mechoui is a whole sheep cooked in a spit over a charcoal fire. Choose half or a quarter of a side. This is a highly Esteemed national dish which is generally prepared by a "Chouaye" (a professional cook), who delivers it piping hot. One then only has to season the pieces with a little cumin and salt, and enjoy the result. 8 persons or more, three days notice. i've been there many times for their royale feast, but never for mechoui as we never had enough people. finally i've now introduced enough folks to marrakesh that they were willing to go in for it.

    four of the five courses were the same as the feast (fine by me, really, since i was craving them all day), but the main course was... omg. they brought this one enormous platter, & heaped upon it was a huge pile of roasted chunks of spice-rubbed lamb, on the bones, with no fat. the meat fell apart so easily, & melted in your mouth like dark chocolate. there were a couple plates of couscous & some other items on the table too, but no one could stop eating the lamb. & between bites i had to keep exclaiming how good it was - as much as i dearly love meals where i get to have lots of different bites of lots of different foods, this lamb was extraordinary & i wanted for nothing.

    it's not a meal to have often, & we were all struck stupid by the indulgence, but holy hell that was exceptional. $400 well spent.

    afterwords, "the human centipede 2" was playing at the local indie theatre. joe & i were the only ones brave enough to continue on to it, but we went & it was AWESOME. much better than the first one, especially when watched in the proper raucous, irreverent environment. someone actually fainted in our theatre during one of the gorier parts! best heckle of the show (worry not, no spoilers coming) was when the head of the centipede was disrespectful to the, er, surgeon, & someone shouted in a threatening tone, "i will put a butt on your face so fast!" :D

    on that note, the ( food logging continues. )

    & so does the, uh, jewelry logging? sure!

    ( what is THIS? a SURPRISE?! )

    ( lindsay said i'm totally power hungry )

    & a couple of other things i posted this month. you'rrrre welcome.

    (18 comments | comment on this)

    Tuesday, September 20th, 2011
    9:03 am
    silverwood happened again! we basically did the same trip with the same boys as last year - same restaurants & everything, except the weather was 85 degrees & perfectly sunny this time. we got off to a bit of trouble initially when poor christopher's brand new tires, fifteen minutes out of the shop, wouldn't stop scraping the wheelwells, but we swapped to joe's car & all was well.

    we went to mizuna on the way out, & started with their delightfully light french bread with rosemary olive oil. joe was going all crazy vegetarian tofu hippie boy (though it was really GOOD tofu with a surprising tomato sorbet on top), so chris m. & i split two dishes: the grilled rare ahi tuna, with olive oil whipped yukon gold potatoes, & an asparagus, arugula, pistachio & black pepper-lemon vinaigrette salad; & the day's special, monkfish with italian sausage spinach tortelloni & mustard crème fraiche. the ahi was SO soft & perfect, & the monkfish was buttery, firm, & perfectly delicious. i wish more places would serve monkfish. for dessert i figured why not tie in a characteristic from each plate, so i called on the sundried cherry, amaretto, & pistachio bread pudding with crème anglaise.

    suffice it to say, it was a very, very good meal, & soaking in the hot tub at the hotel was a lovely follow-up.

    it was interesting riding coasters with my recent wounds, exactly four weeks old to the day, but most of the pressure from lap belts & stuff only ran into the hawk's tail, which is somehow the least painful part despite it being on the boniest area. i wore a "safety first" dreadstyle (pics here) & we bookended the day with the aftershock, my favorite. i had my usual at lindy's: turkey burger with avocado & garlic fries, & a repeat of the wonderful huckleberry smoothie they gave me last year. (yes, lindy's fries are so good that even i deem them worth the calories.)

    christopher's ankle was bothering him (he destroyed it a few months ago & it's quite full of pins now) & my back was generally sore, so we decided mid-day to take in the magic show, "mysterium". we weren't expecting much for a ticket price of FREE (especially considering travis got us free admission to the park again this year), but it was actually really good! the magician was clever & tricky but also funny & enthusiastic, & seemed to honestly enjoy his gig. it wasn't cheesy at all, & we found the hottest part of the day had passed while we sat in the air-conditioned "theatre of illusions".

    when the park closed, we moved on to vin rouge, where i had the center-cut kurobuta pork loin medallions, sauteed with sweet peppers, roasted garlic & sage, served with heirloom potatoes & various veggies. the meal was flavorful & felt pleasantly light, a feeling i completely destroyed by homphing down an entire apple crisp afterwards. :D mmmmmm worth it. i was so stuffed i barely ate the next day, haha.

    on that note, on to examples of daily foods that allow me to eat as above on vacation & not gain weight. :) ( click! )

    so i took my bereavement leave & made it to the DMV as detailed in the last post... & they turned me away for a stupid social security number issue. i went straight to the SSA office & had that corrected, but it took 24 hours to update in ~the system~, so i couldn't get my enhanced license during my grammy leave, boo. but we did make it back the same week, early saturday morning (fuck yeah i knew to get there at least an hour before opening, & we were first in a line that wrapped around the block by the time they opened. & joe doubted me!), & mine's currently in the mail. joe couldn't find his birth certificate, so he sent away for that, & he'll trek back to the DMV for a third time when it comes in. i'm thinking of spending grammy's birthday (december) in canada - it would've been her 96th. can you fathom being born in 1915?

    speaking of my grandmother, the Grammy Memorial Dinner is happening mid-october. i invited [info]sic737, [info]impatient_hands, & [info]robinhoodvandal, three of my closest friends in the area, though only chris & joe had met her. everyone's being super cool about obliging all the details i remember - joe even agreed not to improvise on the bread item he's assigned, which is a huge feat of discipline for him, heh. i hope everything comes out close to my memories.

    a particular high point this week was that joe finally posted his reaction to his surprise birthday party. i've updated my write-up, & i'll leave the subject with this related bit of google disappointment: No results found for "ancient african battle fork".

    on to a few jewelry posts, & updates on my hawk.

    ( the sweetest of combs )

    ( ebony and silvery )

    ( hypersthene )

    ( hawk update, week 4 )

    ( hawk update, week 5 )

    (13 comments | comment on this)

    Monday, September 5th, 2011
    11:40 am
    august 31 ROCKED. i made jewelry happen that i thought i'd lost forever to someone else; we got free ice cream at the office; i made a work thing happen for a customer that there was no precident to believe could occur (& it solved their problem); [info]middlewoodland emailed me AWESOME pics on a commission regarding a mechanism that neither he nor i thought would be possible; [info]gorthok gave me a ride home from work for no real reason, just to be delightful; then everything was going so well that i went & bought $5 of lottery tickets... & won $7!

    & then, just after midnight on september 2nd, my grandmother died.

    please don't comment with sympathy or sorrow; acknowledgment is great (especially if you knew her or knew of her) but she wouldn't want more tears. she was nearly 96, an independent, vibrant world traveller (57-some countries she saw!) & her body had badly broken down over the past year. if you've seen "dogma", think g-d at the hospital: stuck. she had to get out, & while of course it completely sucks, it's also a good thing that she's free. the most amazing part is that i just saw her in august, less than a month ago, noted in the entry just before this one. she waited for me, she recognized me, & it's SO classic her to've done so. (& yes, i do attribute my super lucky happy day to her, & i don't care if anyone thinks that's silly.)

    she was a great homestyle cook & an exemplary baker; i have several of her recipes via my cool aunt & am thinking of organizing a pot luck where everyone brings something based off her recipes. we'll see.

    my company gives me three bereavement days, & i'm taking those next week. it's too short of notice to go out of the country in my grandmother's honor, since my passport expired in 1987 (seriously - i'm looking at it, heh), but joe & i are going to the DMV to get started on our enhanced driver's licenses during my leave. part of why we went to hawaii last year was because we didn't get our asses in gear to travel internationally; the option will be open soon.

    in brighter news, joe & i were at bumbershoot yesterday, & it was actually really fun. we were able to see all of the things we wanted to see: kristin hersh being insane with some really electric spoken word interspersed with snippets of her songs; NoMeansNo's usual high standard of performance - & they ran a quarter hour long & i loved every second; the improvised shakespeare company's performance of "the unfortunate mustache", which was fucking hilarious & successfully referenced "mortal kombat" twice, including a live action "unbreakable block"; & most of the butthole surfers' set before we got bored & left. we also found the tastiest gyro stand & split a strawberry shortcake before the day was through. i'm glad to have labor day off work to recover.

    we might head to a movie later; for now, here's the recent ( food log. )

    & on to jewelry posts:

    ( copper on baby blue )

    ( relic amber, holy fuck )

    ( cathedral agate! )

    ( gws nebulae )

    ( iridescent power plugs, whaaaat )

    it's of note that this will brighten anyone's day who isn't [info]testing4l. & for those who love it, here are the latest pics of ( my hawk cutting. )

    ttyl, lj friends

    (28 comments | comment on this)

    Saturday, August 20th, 2011
    7:25 pm - east coast realized
    so this past week i was on the east coast, & in the most pain i've been in since the time i had to call an ambulance.

    but it was totally worth it.

    ( THIS IS A REALLY LONG STORY AND THERE ARE PICS. many of them are bloody! )

    (59 comments | comment on this)

    Monday, August 8th, 2011
    8:48 pm
    good things that happened recently:

  • i saw hedwig! real hedwig, actual hedwig! i didn't think it would be because the picture on the website appears to be an impersonator. this event was amazing - we found out last minute & snagged what was likely the last two tickets, we were first in line, & they went on for hours & several encores (including cee lo green's "fuck you" & the "transexual transylvania" song from RHPS). also we only narrowly dodged being repeatedly glitter-bombed by making a last-minute choice to sit in the balcony instead of stand at the stage. i feel so very fortunate that joe snagged us two of the ten seats in the whole place, 'cause glitter is my #1 most hated substance on the planet. i'd rather have bird shit in my dreads than glitter - it'd wash out easier. john cameron mitchell was chatting with some folks after the show, so i had an opportunity to go say hi & such, but the glitter was everywhere. i sacrificed the chance to touch hedwig to keep my glitter sterility, & i don't regret it. but yeah, the show was wonderful.

  • i won $21 worth of movie tickets/concessions from $8 of m&m's.

  • our glider rides were EXCELLENT. we each went up & around mount pilchuck for an hour. i took a ton of video & was permitted to fly for a while, too. we did some pretty outstanding "rollercoastering" in air, though aerial maneuvers are prohibited, & it was fucking delightful. i encouraged daniel (pilot/owner) to put up another groupon-type deal for a longer ride, as he says the thermals over mount si are better, but that trip's half again as long. ( oh, did you want to see pics and videos? )

  • i got in on another great slickdeal for a credit card sign-up bonus (& was instantly approved, like last time), so our next round-trip flights somewhere will be free.

  • i converted the old cilantro cassettes i had. i finally bought a cassette player for this purpose, since my stereo component rusted out while in florida. cilantro was a little project by lance hahn, frontman of j church, & released only a 7" & a couple of cassettes. i bought the latter directly from lance post-aforementioned-rusting, & thus hadn't listened to them. i miss lance terribly, & one of the few things i regret is that i never saw j church play live. i had the chance once when i lived in california, but i only knew a few songs then, only owned one album, & was too skint at the time to put down twenty on a band i wasn't totally in love with. it was the right decision at the time, but i have a big empty spot where that memory should be, & it's sad. anyhow, back to the cassette conversion, one cassette ended up being all songs that were later released as j church - the same 4-track recordings, even, so i didn't bother converting that one. the more recent cassette, though, was all new material. it's not great, & i probably won't listen to it much, but... man it's strange to hear new vocal tracks from someone loved & dead. it's one thing to listen to the songs you know by heart, to think that it's sad he's gone but at least this great music is left behind... but to hear NEW material... i'm not sure how to express it. it's an eldrich mix of sadness, pity, excitement, selfishness, & ungraspability.

  • i used my flight lesson coupon & went & flew a cessna 172R skyhawk! it was AWESOME. the instructor taught me the gauges & gave me a bit of an idea how things go while on the ground, then i did the major pre-flight checklist, & with little physical assistance i taxied, took off, gained altitude, banked left & right, descended, did a touch-&-go landing, circled back, landed, & taxied back to park. the coupon covered a passenger, so joe rode in back & was on camera duty. i took his life in my hands & we totally didn't die. ( oh, did you want to see MORE pics and videos? )

  • starved after all the excitement, we went to the 5-spot for dinner. we split jalepeño corn cakes as an appetizer (with bacon jam & a panko quick-fried poached egg). my entree was the hickory smoked pulled pork sandwich with particularly good sweet cole slaw, & a cup of turkey vegetable soup (flavored heavily by bay leaves & clove) in lieu of fries. for dessert we split the brown butter hazelnut cake (flourless, with hazelnut vodka macerated black & blueberries & fresh whipped cream). packed with chopped hazelnuts, my favorite, it was fucking phenomenal. an eclectic meal, but exactly what i wanted.

  • speaking of, here's the latest ( food log! )

  • [info]testing4l helped me for about eight hours over two days, once again, because udev broke like whoa. of course phil got everything working again, & the second day wasn't even that painful, heh. kernel panics are terrifying. the stupid part is that the whole reason i was upgrading was because i needed new video software because joe just HAD to hold the fucking camera sideways when he recorded my cessna landing. THANKS JOE. anyhow, phil rules & we love phil & he deserves many blowjobs.

  • & now, a story: ( sometimes i love my day job. )

  • next: jewelry! ( oh HI flashy sodalite! )

  • & i posted about a thousand pics of joe being joe; joe being a goofball; this pic of my dreads, doubled & immense; & this little "oops"...

    that ought to keep you busy until i get back with HOT SHIT CUTTING PICS OMGZZZZZZ

    • (18 comments | comment on this)

    Sunday, July 31st, 2011
    10:39 pm - joe's birthday 2011
    yes, it's that time of year again. the time when i obliterate joe's mind & worldview with my astonishing gifting skills.

    the idea for this year's present came into being back in february, when [info]girlgoth emailed me about dread maintenance & queried a barter. being familiar with & a fan of her portraiture, i responded positively, & we started sorting out the details.

    i'll step you through this from my point of view; of course joe had no idea what was happening until he saw the completed, framed works.

    ( categorical deviousness with a metric fuckload of pictures )

    fuck, what a great weekend. i'll link to his write-up when it's complete. edit: haha only took him six weeks! http://gorthok.livejournal.com/667349.html

    happy birthday, baby!

    (24 comments | comment on this)

    Wednesday, July 6th, 2011
    10:43 pm - little to say, lots to do
    despite being basically relegated to the sofa with primarily the internet for entertaintment, i didn't spend very much while i was laid up. a slickdeal for a dvd-r spindle came around, so i bought that & a couple of cheap ebay items, but the exciting purchase was a 2G ram stick for the netbook. that doubled what my vostro a90 came with, & it did make life on the sofa a bit easier. (& yes, i'm recovered. [non-sarcastic] thanks for the [non-sarcastic] abundance of well wishes, folks!)

    perhaps because of the aforementioned relegation, i've gone a bit wild with AWESOME EVENT PLANNING. i have a month of NOTHING to make up for, you know? so check out what i'll be doing:

  • RIDING IN A GLIDER. fuck yes! i've wanted to do this since i saw "the thomas crown affair". it's slated for sunday!
  • PILOTING A CESSNA. because WHY NOT! i have every intention of pulling the next deal i see for a helicopter lesson, too.
  • PLANNING THE SHIT OUT OF JOE'S BIRTHDAY. ahahahah you just wait. YOU HEAR THAT, JOE?
  • FLYING THE FUCK TO THE EAST COAST as you already know.
  • BEING CUT which is still TOTALLY EXCITING.
  • GOING TO BUMBERSHOOT mostly because NoMeansNo is playing!
  • RETURNING TO SILVERWOOD which has become a yearly event!
  • PLOTTING A NEW TATTOO partially related to [info]quarex TOTALLY FUCKING MOVING HERE!
  • oh & also ( EATING REALLY WELL. )

    speaking of food, rainier cherries are back in season & i have about three pounds in the fridge. here, look at something shiny while i blissfully enjoy stone fruit.

    ( my ears are on fire )

    & for being such a good reader, you may have this something as well as this better something. :D

    OK HAVE TO GO SOAR ACROSS THE SKY WITH NO MECHANICAL FORCE, TTYL

    • (19 comments | comment on this)

    Friday, May 20th, 2011
    12:27 am
    hi. i'm currently enjoying sofa wifi while recovering from surgery i had today. no, i didn't really tell the net about it, & i'm not going to go into many details. it was somewhat major (full knock-out anesthesia, sterile room, bunches of doctors - but outpatient), planned, non-cosmetic, & fortunately regarded quality of life, not quantity. it went really well. i'm off work for a week, which is nice, but am posting primarily to call out some friends for being particularly awesome today:

    [info]atrophie for actually sending me flowers! i can count on one hand the number of times i've received flowers, as i strongly discourage this practice as any kind of romantic/apologetic/otherwise stereotypical gesture - but from a friend they take on an entirely different & much more touching meaning. she just wanted to do something for me from a thousand miles away, & this beautiful bouquet of all red flowers totally surprised & pleased me.

    it's not a great pic, but it's pretty okay for being taken from a prone position, heh. they're just next to the sofa & i keep seeing them & smiling. thank you lindsay!

    [info]testing4l for making magic happen with a reluctant netbook & NFS, & for patiently handling same via a sleepy & understandably-stupid-today lish. i didn't even consider that NFS would be a Thing Highly Useful in this situation, but now i don't have to wait for scp (though 1.7mbps isn't too shabby) or convince joe to boot up sneakernet (ie walk over with a pendrive) - i can watch movies directly from my machine via sofa wifi. :D thank you phil!

    rich, [info]sic737, [info]journalface, [info]hannunvaakuna, [info]girlgoth, mika & [info]sheeep for asking after me & making sure i'm taken care of. sorry if i forgot anyone, y'know. thanks all!

    &, of course [info]gorthok, for his continued triumph as best boyfriend on the planet. aside from being my ride & such, he's on general beckoned-call duty - he got wifi working in the apartment (on a hacked fon router!), set me up with technology, remotes, pillows, water, & lindsay's flowers; he's made the apartment warmer or cooler or breezier as needed, ran to glo's to fetch a delicious breakfast, & trooped all over until he found a metro market with a fresh slice of lemon meringue pie (a favorite) as a surprise. thank you babe!

    joe's napping now, as soon so shall i, but i wanted to throw this post together first because today has just gone as exceptionally well as could be asked for. & hopefully i'll be in the percentage that has full success from this surgery.

    (25 comments | comment on this)

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