Unbreakable 2

The first one is one of my favorite movies, but at this point in his career Shyamalan is gonna SLAUGHTER it. Bugger. I was hoping he was all talk about a sequel because he said he'd only make one if the muse hit. Guess the muse had a hefty paycheck attached.

Brushing up on HTML has been more like re-learning it. W3 changed a bunch of rules in ten years! For instance, fonts. Does anyone know why font color doesn't need to have "font-" in front of it while the other font modifiers do?


This is incorrect:

raawr

The code: <p style="font-family:calibri; font-color:red; font-size:30px">raawr</p>


This is correct:

raawr

The code: <p style="font-family:calibri; color:red; font-size:30px">raawr</p>


But...why is it correct?

I understand the ORCA system will record data each time I use my Business Card. Data will include the date, time and location of the card when it is presented. I understand this data is owned by the ORCA Agencies and is accessible to the City. The City will not use ORCA data to monitor an individual employee’s performance on an ongoing daily basis, but rather will use ORCA data consistent with the Commute Trip program goals. The City will not use information obtained from ORCA as the sole basis to discipline a City employee.

--

So the options are:
1)Pay a buttload out of pocket to use the bus and not have my movements tracked.
2)Accept the Orca card, ride the bus for free. Know that if I don't ride the bus enough to work, the card will be taken away and "discipline" may commence.

It's not the terrible choice that I anticipated, but I would like to re-iterate my hatred for the Orca card--the setup is definitely Big Brothery and mainly benefits coorperations. The only way individuals benefit is by having one card to pay for all transportation.

TINSTAAFL.

(three graphing calculators)

My mom just asked if I want the family bassinet.
After running away, I called
"Not yet."

I've been very quiet lately, in a good way. Which means that life has been quite boring and I kinda like it.

One of the reasons is dinero (lack thereof). The upside of not going out much is that I've been spending more time with Jailbait and my family, downside is that I haven't seen many of you guys for a long time. More on seeing my family more often: things with my mom are less stressful than usual, plus my relatives have taken it upon themselves to feed me & my brother to help offset our unemployment. My grandma sends us home with fruits & veggies from her garden, my aunt & uncle use our visits as an excuse to clean out their freezer & pantry, and my parents give us whatever they have on hand and aren't going to use.

I possess many potatoes.

"I like baked potatoes. I don't have a microwave oven, and it takes forever to bake a potato in a conventional oven. Sometimes I'll just throw one in there, even if I don't want one, because by the time it's done, who knows?" - Mitch Hedberg

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman in possession of a good potato must be in want of some butter." - Austen (bastardized)

"All I know is that you've got to have your potato, and then it will be all right." - Mr. Tulip, The Truth by Terry Pratchett

As you can see, not all potatoes exist as physical nourishment. However, an awful lot of physical nourishment spuds are piling up in my kitchen. It is a good thing I have mystical mashed potato powers that combine seemingly unrelated ingredients into comfort-food delicious.

Small potatoes aside: I've been having or going to very small get-togethers lately, easing back into being social on a budget. James' (Betsy's husband) 30th birthday saw a handful of us kickback over dinner and I finally played Camelot, a cooperative board game that I previously backed away from due to a building hatred for the hyper-omnipresent Arthurian myths which have permeated way too much of our media. The game was cool :) Then some of us stayed up until 3, drinking and watching The Riches and being warm under blankets on the couch. It was like an idealized family night, all kittens and lollipops and happiness.

~
Tra la la was the code that I traveled by in an otherwise empty mine-field.
!

Jailbait & I have been writing down 6-month goals because we're both pretty ADD-esque (getting diagnosed is on the 12-month plan) and neither of us get things done unless we're constantly re-focusing on what we want to do. Sometimes it's pretty bad--I start cleaning and get distracted by sorting my books for sale on eBay, he'll start washing dishes and end up pacing in the living room, mumbling about hard drives. Since we both do it, though, we're getting pretty good about pulling the other person back on task. It's becoming one of those "I'm better with than without you" things; I've struggled with paying attention for a lot of my life and it's so relieving simply to have someone alongside me with the same issue. It means I'm not crazy or lazy, just that I sometimes need help focusing and it's okay asking for help because he does too.

--
I will be up in Bellingham/Stanwood this weekend. Want to carpool to Poetry on the Deck? I can bring you there if you can nab a ride back.

--
Also, I want a cold icon with a happy face. Oh thankee jebus it's Fall.

In my cookbook-writing quest, I read more than I cook. I know I'm a relative novice in the kitchen, and learning cooking techniques and flavor combinations doesn't happen very fast unless you have a teacher.

However, I'm reading a book that claims to have researched everything-cookery since 2000 and is all about marrying flavors. The first sentence of their book? "Our taste buds can perceive only four basic tastes...."

Sigh. I might as well return it to the library now. Bitches who do their research KNOW that there are five tastes, it's nothing new--umami has been "discovered" by cooks since the revolution of French cooking (when they started focusing on making tasty food instead of pretty food). It was discovered in Japan eons ago, I think around the early 20th century. Bah, bah, bah.

To counteract this misinformation that even head honch cooks cling to, I am going to make at least one of my recipes with MSG and include a little baggy of it with the book.

Yes yes.

I have no illusions that my sweet grandma or religiously health-concious mother will change their minds about the perceived evils of MSG (which stem from a misinformation campaign, although I have no idea who drives it, and the FDA's willingness to not actually research things when they get kickbacks from other food interests.) But I do hope that some people will read about umami, give the MSG a shot, and see for themselves.

I have a curious test for the MSG, actually. I need to make beef jerky soon because the friends I borrowed a dehydrator from are coming back to the states, so a portion of that will be set aside for what will hopefully be a more robust meaty flavor. No idea how it'll turn out :)

In August I went camping at Ohanapecosh by Mount Rainier, and methinks next year will hold a group trip for that. So peaceful, so lovely, so not crowded with screaming munchkins.

However, the camera from that trip was lost when...

On the beach house trip this month, I scaled a beach cliff that was like a hill but steeper (and with needle-tipped things like hardy evergreens and blackberry bushes) in order to rescue a kite. Then I climbed around six more times in hopes of finding the camera. My legs were beautifully cross-scratched, but my old track hoodie's uber-thickness saved my palms from the pricklies. I'm still waiting for the last bloody scratch to go away so I can shave, and would just not shave except that the hair feels weird with knee socks.

FALL = KNEE SOCK WEATHER.

The world is right again.

--
I haven't been writing as much because I've been slowing down. Not being such a whirlwind, playing in the kitchen a wee bit more, plotting out what I want to do besides being a corporate monkey for the rest of my life. Being able to just spend time taking the ideas out of my head and spinning them into something fuller, weaving with the sparks and talents of others, has been the best thing to come from this part-time work wonderland.

Also, research on investing starts now.

You shoulda seen the crowd *before* the doors were open.

Just cracked open a post-apocalyptic young adult book that's about ESP and all that neugothicky rot, and inside I found accolades from: Lloyd Alexander, Charles de Lint, Andre Norton, and Tamora Pierce. Translation: a recommendation from JK Rawling or the Pope would be redundant. All of those authors on the bookjacket are head honchos in fantasy land (their sub genres, respectively: high/epic, urban, soft SF + dragons and YA grrl adventures)....

Recommendations by other authors in your field, with the exception of Stephen King (who has something nice to say about even the shoddiest of novels), are high praise indeed. I haven't even opened the book and am already sold. Tamora Pierce wouldn't let the reading public down!

...is not as far away as you think.

Sitting in front of an ancient fan and holding beers against my skin,
swapping them for cooler kin
and drinking none.
Now, maybe some.


Posters melt off my walls in this damn heat,
a testament to good renter's intentions
that are haphazardly applied,
forcing naked ladies to fall at my feet.

That part is not so bad.

On my dinner plate
sweet plums tease sweet red peppers,
lending their chill to mojito-sauced chicken just off the grill
salad dressing is declared a stereotypical bore
(thick and unwelcome)
my fork hits bottom and wails.

With ravishing sunset-endings to each day,
(makes you want to learn horseback riding
for that soulful cowboy silhouette),
Summer becomes an old man's season.
Smoke drifts between stories of the past and the sun's dying strokes,
enough to tie your butt to a porch seat
listening
while the air cools inside the house.

I learn so much from listening.

Story-tellers, for instance, don't care to swap words
Sole-speaking becomes more important
the older the tale-teller.
After all, they have heard everything there is to hear;
there is nothing new
if you declare it so.

I have never said so,
just squinted until recognizing the pattern in an anecdote
then tried to shut up before its conclusion.

That part will always be a work in progress.


--
Life is.

I have neglected job-hunting. Sifting through so many exciting--but ultimately not living-wage paying--ideas and dreams is more depressing than an empty piggy bank, but not than an empty bank account. So I will hop on that tomorrow.

Yesterday we ran across a carnival and pooled our wallets' resources to throw balls at milk bottles and ride the Zipper. Another position was invented* involving pillars and walking up them backwards, proving that creativity isn't always a curse.

There is a rad performing arts group doing Lullaby Moon X at Gasworks on Wednesday at 8:15. Alice in Wonderlandy stuff. I have a meeting earlier that night for TIG because I need to get off my duff and write again, but hope to be there by 8:30 or so.

*The yet-unnamed blog will be up later this week, sans illustrations until the weather cools down (you feel like a frog in a slowly-boiling pot if you stay in my room too long).

You worked part-time so You, Too, could stand in line--reading Elizabeth Bear for the first time--to see Harry Potter for free, waving friends down from their kitty-corner corporate towers, persuading abondonment of duty for pleasure. Trust me, I'm an evil fairy with the greater good in mind (keeping you away from straight-laced [so close to straight-jacketed] madness).

...a lot this week. Yesterday all I had clean were candycane socks, today someone abandoned a pair of running shoes in a pile of ornaments by my bus stop, and there have been other Christmas-ey things happening or being said in passing. It's passing strange, is what it is.

This is one of my favorite Perry Bible Fellowship comics, put behind a cut because it may or may not be NSFW.
( snip-schnipCollapse )

Next week I'll be starting an illustrated blog (not in this journal) of creative ways to boink. A few ladies have already received a description of the first position, "The Cheese Grater," and I am mucho excited by the responses :D As far as I know, the positions are original. (I haven't read any position books and the Kama Sutra was too boring.) So far, none of the positions require additional materials besides a male body & a female body.

Learning flash would be super useful in order to provide better illustrations. If there are any tutorials you particularly like, please forward them my way.

On Solstice I ended up accidently circle-dancing in a jerky fashion. It went something like this:

I wander towards the house after running away from a puppy. My friends have draped their arms across each others' shoulders and beckon from a nearby doorway. I join. Other people join and a circle forms because it's the only way that new shoulder-drapers can fit on the porch. The circle sways a bit, as circles of inebriated folks tend to do. Someone shouts "shuffle right!" We do. Then we shuffle left, giggling madly. Then someone gets a *BRILLIANT* idea to stick a foot in the middle and hop on the other foot to the right. It works, so we chant "Left this time. Left, left, left. Ok ready? Left!" The circle gets bigger with every pause and reversal. We do this until my friend's pants fall down, and he doesn't pick them up for a while because the circle is moving too fast and to break the circle means the circle all falls down. (We are all leaning on each other and no one falls.)


It was a kind of beautiful. As was curling on a couch, saying nothing because nothing needed saying.

Also:
A friend and I developed a short ceremony to summon the cancer fairy. We do it to welcome her presence and ward her powers away at the same time. Lesson learned from Sleeping Beauty: do not piss off the evil fairy by ignoring it! If you are willing to be a smokey cheesy-pouf, I will teach it to you.

Also:
I will be in the Pride Parade on Sunday, shushing people in mah fancy red velvet cape as we perform not-very-complicated book cart drills in the downtown streets. You have been notified.

Also:
We have two openings in this year's beach house trip, which will be Sept. 10-15 in Cannon Beach, OR. Send me a text if interested and I will fill you in on details, which I am not abouts to post here but will whisper to your electronic pocket device.

I began beating a smokey retreat last week. It is rather difficult because I've gotten addicted to the cancer sticks as a form of destressing/relaxation (I don't smoke enough to have nicotine withdrawl). The calming act of breathing in and breathing out just feels like hyperventilating without the cigarette as a go-between. But anyways, here's how I've gone about it:

1) I handed my pack to Jailbait and told him to put me on a diet. He decided I get one a day and two a day on weekends. He's responsible for doling them out or withholding if I cheat. I'm responsible for attempting to wheedle extra cigs out of him and taking no or yes for an answer. So far I've gotten one!

2) I allowed myself to cheat. There were two emergency cigarettes and they are now gone. No more emergencies for me.

3) I try not to smoke my one or two cigarettes a day in my "habit zones." No cigarette right after work when I get home, or when I'm drinking.

I'm not giving up smoking entirely, since I rather enjoy it, but I don't want it to be a part of my daily routine anymore. I've been using smoking as a crutch excuse for not going running, which I hatehatehate, but also for swimming. And 'tis the season to lurk in lakes.

This weekend was interesting because I noticed how often I would have gone out to smoke and didn't. There's a little egg-timer in my chest that goes "ping!" (almost literally, there really is this tugging sensation) and guides me out the door with a cancer stick in hand.

This weekend was also spent almost entirely at home. I didn't do a lot of stuff I was supposed to do in the world of others and it was totally necessary. If I had gone out birthday dancing, I would have smoked--I'm still in the infancy of quitting and have little willpower when it comes to eradicating bad habits I enjoy. I think I'm over the first hump, but we'll see. This is the first time I've actively involved someone else in my quitting process and he's helped immensely--especially with the glomping. Using make-out sessions to distract me/replace smoking is a super fabulous idea!

When I got up today, I was worried about 50 billion things: now two of the biggest ones are off my plate and a few more long-time stragglers are zipping off this weekend as well. My worry list is shrinking to a not only manageable but boring size.

Yessssss.

I've been doing much better budgeting lately, to the point where I thought my paycheck was still a week away based on my bank balance. When I got handed a pay stub this morning, I called my mechanic immediately and said "Fix that busted radiator, I'm flush!" He didn't laugh, but people rarely do at my terrible puns. When I am in terrible puns mode, though, you know that all is right with the world.

--
By the by: We're looking for a roommate for Ze Haus again. Ronnie D. is moving out at the end of the month and his room (across the hall from the upstairs bathroom, the first room after you pass my door) will be up for grabs. $315 a month for a small but not weensy room in Phinney Ridge, bills + toilet paper get split six ways, and we're looking for someone who'll stay through the end of the lease (May 2010). Move-in costs are first/last month rent and deposit, so about $900. Move-in date is July 1 and there's plenty of wiggle room if someone wants to move in early.

...because grammar nazis are a tad annoying. But since I've been getting way too many "high priority" e-mails with red exclamation marks about weensy small-bit stuff, no more! Overly abundent exclamation mark use is second only to typing in capslock as far as annoying-the-crap-out-of-Deb-with-words goes.

Yeah, I should put this on Yelp and probably will, after they play with my car tomorrow and I get an estimate. In the mean time, let me pimp Honest Auto Service up in Shoreline to you.

When I first bought my '94 Subaru a few years ago, I had no working knowledge of cars and was worried about the high mileage on it. My friends who play with cars for fun, amusement and sometimes even profit all recommended Honest Auto as the place they have their hobby and regular cars checked out for problems. I was dubious because, ha ha, it's called Honest Auto and the mechanic sterotype is to tack on added fees to whatever they're doing.

Not so! The car-inspection price was a tad higher than other places, but they went above and beyond the other places with fabulous, vunderfully personalized service. I took the car there and they gave it a super detailed inspection that resulted in a check-list but also a lot of hand-written details. The mechanic then explained the list to me in laymens terms, highlighting which parts of the car I'd want to fix soon and which were fine until later. When I asked them if the car was a good deal and if I should buy it, they went off the record and said "Yeah, the car has high mileage but Subaru owners generally drive them everywhere and don't have many problems with the engine. In fact, they don't sell them off that much because of the high MPG and low maintenance costs."

So I bought the car in 2006, and the only problems I've had with it so far have been flat tires.

I called Honest Auto again today because my AC has an electrical issue and only bunny farts out cold air instead of blasting it, plus I haven't taken Esme in for a tune-up yet and she could probably use the TLC. Honest Auto was like "No problem, can you come in tomorrow morning?"

The shop is on Aurora over by the Shoreline Sears, so I can just hop a 358 to work and back too. Sweetness is mine!

(I'm mainly posting this because I really, really, really hate looking for auto mechanics or other services that are important but I only utilize once a year. Dentists are included in this category.)

---

Edit: When I dropped her off this morning, they had hauled out Esme's "adoption papers"--the report they did on my car when I was thinking about buying it in 2006--so they didn't have to spend much time re-examining the car between their detailed notes and me pointing out what I'd fixed and what was still the same. Less labor = less money = win!

My lovely Esme now has working air-conditioning, although I didn't expect the fan to be worn out and death rattling--rather, I was hoping a wire was loose. Le sigh. But the mechanic was great: he told me I didn't need to replace one of my belts that Jiffy Lube had said was going to make my car break down and I had to fix right away (although when I mentioned that August & September would have a lot of road trips, he added it back on the list), and he helped me prioritize what was getting fixed on my car now versus what could be fixed later.

Oh, and I forgot to mention: they sent me a hand-written thank you note about two weeks after my first visit. Aww.

I went shoe shopping during lunch today, so of course I came back with a soft grey poncho and handfuls of underoos. Urban Outfitters is clearing 'em out for $2 apiece and I got some rather lovely items.

Shoes, on the other hand: blargh. Elephant feet suck monkey balls.

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/05/help-design-a-cipher.html

Super secret decoder rings masquerading as wedding bands!

...and yes, I totally put the cipher up on my wall that Jailbait spent half an hour writing out. There might even be a picture, if my mom was able to snap one of the sidewalk chalk art instead of focusing on her darling daughter.

...no, this is not a secret hint or anything. Decoder rings are simply badass. You know you want one.

http://www.usabooknews.com/2009bestbooksawards.html

Sick.

We just removed this award from an author bio for a writer who's reading soon at the library. While there is a wee bit of competition, with 150 categories an author is essentially purchasing their own literary award.

Admittedly, it is only USA Today. Which has flimsy journalism and nobody really counts as a primary source of news. Still, my stomach did little flippy-flops while I was deleting the award. I wanted to delete the event and send the author a nasty little self-righteous note, but instead I will bask in the happy knowledge that if you have to buy an award, it's for a reason.

I also had an interesting side-conversation on self-publishing because of this. The majority of self-published books used to be church cookbooks, family histories and brilliant manifestos that the damn publishers clearly must have been blind not to accept. Perhaps they still are. I was describing a self-published children's book my grandmother handed me one day, written by a distant relative (probably around Grandma's age) about raising a mentally-disabled kid in the 50s or 60s. In the book she calls him retarded because that's the term they used then. I said that a publisher would probably be interested in the subject matter, but it would be hard to market a kids book with the term "retarded" in today's overly-PC parental communities. My co-worker noted that if the book was released by a mainstream or even small-press publisher, it would be watered down and edited for more than just readability.

So really, self-published books can be better snapshots of the real world than mainstream or even small press literature. Something to think about.

I still don't want to read most of them--the writing quality tends to be rather low. How do I know if I don't read those books? When I interned for the Wales Literary Agency, my job was to read through the slush pile (unsolicited submissions). The self-published authors tended to be some of the worst because they had so much confidence in their amazing story that they spent money on publishing it immediately instead of investing in an editor-for-hire and bettering their writing. That's the flipside of self-publishing.

But then again...I've self-published, with the Lobster Manor chapbook and soon with my cookbook. Self-publishing the chapbook was basically sending it to a copying company. It reached the audience that was intended and then it sputtered out. The chapbook will sit on the bookshelves of the kids who read at the Lobster Manor, functioning as a yearbook of memories that will be flipped through occasionally. It's a rather good book life, actually.

Self-publishing definitely has its useful niches, including self-help seminar books, but self-publishing in hopes to reach mainstream audiences is pretty much a logic fail on the part of the author. Dream big and stream it into your writing. Don't think you're above the system, literary agents are necessary because you pretty much won't be read at a publishing company unless you're being pimped by someone with a respected opinion. As a former slush piler, I wasn't expected to actually find anything worth reading; someone had to write the rejection letters, though, and interns get really good at that.

While in New York, I observed that men were never seen alone with a kid--they were always accompanied by a woman. In Seattle today, there is a man riding the bus with two kids and reading to them from a story book. He's even doing the voices.

This is why I love it here, this is why I want kids someday. To be able to read the stories with the voices to people I love while we ride the bus.

As for the rest of this weekend,

Received:
- one marriage proposal jokingly given after a description of one of the recipes I'm putting in the cookbook.
- Ms. Unsinkable's new album (the performance is delicious, witty, snarky and thoughtful, plus the recording sounds lovely. Disclaimer - I'm not just saying that because I like her.) You can listen to bits of it here: Thimble vs. Needle
- one blow to the noggin with a baseball while I was catching a softball. I layed down and watched the tays in the win for a while with an icepack, the head's still a bit sore but there's not even a cool bruise. meh.
- Kayla hugs, many many. I eat them up.
- one secret code written in sidewalk chalk that, when translated with the cipher written on a scroll of butcher paper, made me go throw my arms around J. Although it took about a half hour before I solved it, even with Ang yelling the key code to me every five seconds, because I was accidently re-coding instead of solving the cipher. :D
- keys for my second home, where my wife resides.
- two bras from the bra fairy. This is why I put off clothes shopping, what I need will eventually appear in front of me.
- one tear in my contact lens from rubbing it while dry, getting home will be interesting.
- A cool new pair of dark purple tights swirled with grey fleur de lis-esque designs.

Completed:
uh. That's what this week is for, right? My planning went out the window as last week/weekend drained on. When I tried to take a nap on Sunday, five phone calls in a half hour laughed loudly. Laundry and room-cleaning attempts met with similar successes between the out-of-town jaunts. I'm just going to burn it all and start fresh, ok? Ok.

Given:
- smooches. Many of them. Everywhere. Everyday. Three cities, three days, way more than three people. Is goot modus operandum.
- scraped bark. While waiting to go pee, I climbed a tree for the first time in months and it was also goot. My new goal is to do this at least twice a month if not much more often.
- a refreshing jump in the lake. My mother kept voicing her desire to go swimming but avoided going in the lake while we were picnicking at my old church. Earlier in the day I had rescued a floaty device from the shores of Haller Lake and paddled around in my clothes, which were finally getting dry by the time we left. My excuse was good for not going back in! So after the family photo, Ang & Charlie held my mom still while I took her keys, cellphone, glasses and sandals. Then we pushed her in and it was very soul-satisfying for all who were involved. muahaha.
- rides and hangage, starting last Tuesday. Tonight is the first night that'll be spent alone at home in as many nights. If I don't get my room cleaned soon it might give birth to one of those B-movie (C-movie?) monsters like the Blob. I am re-envoking my treasured and still hypothetical month of flakiness.

Hallo lovely blog readers,

I am tired of eating microwaved or frozen meals. This is not to say that there is no reason to microwave or freeze, but it has been determined there will be Real Cooking once again in Deborahland.

So, I'm making a cookbook. I read the damn things quite a bit, oggle the recipe instructions and ingredient lists, then I return the books to the library. Fail! Even though I appreciate fancy cooking (elaborate instructions or ingredients) and am decent at it, my cooking priorities are definitely: healthy, cheap, and fast. Especially for those nights when I drag my tired carcass home from work and just want food as soon as possible.

With this in mind, I'm finally putting together a cookbook that will include the Quick Food cook-off recipes from last summer (haha! Betcha thought I lost those, eh? My room is like an archeological dig with layers of history. I found them last week :D), some of the recipes I've run across with my food experimentations this past year, and a few of my old favorites like my dad's burrito recipe (Four ingredients! Three if you don't eat cheese.)

But. I don't cook enough to do this alone! So, I'm asking you for help. Here's what I'm looking for:

The cookbook's target audience: People who want to make a fast dinner/meal that uses common ingredients and doesn't have 50 billion calories.

A fast meal is one that can be made in less than 30 minutes (this includes preparation & cooking time). All recipes should fit into this category.

Recipes should fall under at least one additional category from this list:
healthy, cheap, freezer-friendly/feeds an army, vegetarian/vegan.

I'll collect recipes until the end of June and send out a reminder when it's getting close. You can send the recipes to me at my gmail address or in the comments below.

ALSO: if you have any food/cooking/eating related poems or short stories that fall in these categories, send them my way as well!

FAQ
Q: Why should I participate?
A: Because you love me. I am hungry every single day (!!) and this is the next best thing to feeding me. It also doesn't cost you a dime of your food budget.

Q: What do I get if I give you recipes/writing?
A: A .pdf of the final cookbook in a printer-friendly format (i.e. not layed out for publishing, unless you want that too.)

Q: What do you plan on doing with the cookbook?
A: Eating it. ... Eating things from it. ... Eating things I make from it! It will probably become a Christmas present. I can't think of what else to do with it; although I'm not opposed to pimping the book to Sasquatch publishing, the book market already has a bunch of this type of cookbook.

But none of those cook books have your & my recipes, and often times the ingredient lists are overly fond of canned or not-healthy ingredients. I am not opposed to canned foods and use canned green beans pretty frequently, but any recipe book that uses cream of mushroom soup in a can tends to get tossed back on the bookstore shelf. Anyways, point being: if you have a better usage idea for the cook book, sling it to me.

Q: Just dinner recipes?
A: Any meal-type is fine. I tend to cook dinner more than any other meal, though, so that's going to be my personal focus.

Ok go! (not the band. I wants your cookery in my hand toot sweet.)

Ever since a high school HTML class, I've automatically kept a notepad open on my desk for quick font deformatting and/or temporary text storage. It's also a sort of to-do list. Here's what was on the blotter today:

In addition, we discuss the way attendees can make a Home Based Business as an alternative for job loss.



Tell facilities that the first light and the third from the end are out.

Road for Coorain?

Sally Wormcrantz

w: 8
h: 9
h: 4
h: 2.5

Giờ đọc truyện tiếng Việt! (Vietnamese Story Time at the Columbia Branch)

House Gun (open)

dorothy bestor, wendy?
--

These mysteries all have deep dark secrets behind them. Especially that wendy bird.

Gaiman's Newbery award-winning book finally arrived, after drama with Amazon *LAST SUMMER* and a much delayed printing because they couldn't find the right paper. Let's just say I ordered the book many moons before it was award-winning.

It is rather purty. The illustration style reminds me of childrens books from the 1940s, like "Blueberries for Sal" or "Make Way for Ducklings."

Energy has now been renewed to re-organize my room and finally move all my sister's stuff out of it; when the king comes, I will put together the bookcase I bought on a lamesauce Ikea date and put all my fancy books in one arena. Then I will stand in front of of the bookcase and ask the contents to marry me. I'm certain that somewhere in their pages is a "yes" yearning to be free...

Ok. Enough balderdash, here's a few shots of "The Graveyard Book" in it's second-finest edition:( the innardsCollapse )

In place but not in use. That could be Seattle's transportation motto.

Birthdaypalooza of a third of everyone I know being born in April: done.

This leg of the whirlwind is drawing to a close. Ze Haus couches are slowing emptying (although never completely, as I found out when I threw light on some sleepy strangers last night), the next week looks manageable, and to kick off the end of the cruelest month I am traipsing off to camp near the Ape Cave. This very weekend. There will be a bit of spelunking, but mainly there will be not much planned and so much sleep I can shake a stick at it. ♥♥♥

While camping, I plan on turning my brain with books. Bazillions of them. The stack of books piling up by my bed needs pruning and I am an eager jardinier de papier.

Once May has started, I'm in official flakey mode and am only rsvping to that Zombie Austen book group I started. Which is going to be rad and you should come to it. There has already been talk of extending it into a permanent book group because of the lack of them for non-old people, but it's just talk right now. Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.

(although I kind of already started making a mental list of...nein! no commitments! arrgharawrarawr!)

Off to find out what kind of drinks the Knee High Stocking Co. has, then laundry and maybe resting my head on skin. Oooh, mah life! Even when it's stressful in the whirlyness, I dig it. Shh. Is very well-kept secret.

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Total Side Note: has anybody played the new Katamari game yet?

"We only re-stock toilet paper when absolutely necessary."

When people ask for book recommendations but don't give me anything to go off of, I tend to either recommend "Beggars in Spain" or narrow the topic down myself. Here's the latest:

Literary mysteries for people who don't usually read mysteries:
"The Thirteenth Tale" by Diane Setterfield
"Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
"People of the Book" by Geraldine Brooks
"The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse" by Robert Rankin

The last one is more political satire, but I thought it was a fluffy fantasy until the end of the book :)

Books that you should probably read simply because they are awesome, but may not have heard of:
"Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader" by Anne Fadiman
- short essays about booknerdery
"The Lies of Locke Lamora" by Scott Lynch
- fantasy outside the usual stuff, the best I've read in a while. Warning: the chronological order of the chapters will make you peeved, but it's oh so definitely worth putting up with! He gets better about that in the later books.
"Magic for Beginners" by Kelly Link
- magical realism short stories that Neil Gaiman puts his stamp of approval on.
"The Higher Power of Lucky" by Susan Patron
- 2007's Newbery-award winner. Kids book. The voice is amazing. Dog testicles are mentioned so some people like to remove it from libraries because kids shouldn't read about body parts in any format.

...
And when you leave a fleur alone, it multiplies!



On Monday there were lavender shortbread cookies, too. Birthdays that keep on giving are pretty dang spiffy.

Sometimes I forget just how rad the Seattle Public library's website is until I try to find information for other people on their library websites.

Nice catalog. Goooood home page navigation tools. Like a site map! Awesome! *pets* Horizon, you have your downsides (not being able to use browser navigation arrows/time-out rate/tag searches still suck because they haven't blended in from LibraryThing's database), but you are still so robust. Down with limited keyword searches! Up with the possibility to search with exact phrases! What the heck is a super keyword anyways, because that other catalog's help button didn't say!

/geek

During a date on Sunday I re-ran into the ex who works at Ballroom. Only this time, I received a Facebook message from him afterwards saying he didn't know if he should have introduced himself or not, asking how was I doing, blah de blah the usual pleasantries. It is kind of amusing that he only sent this note after seeing me there with a boy, but it's also nice that he cares enough to send the note.

Exexexexex. x. xx. Someday I will move away and find new haunts where there won't be any ghosts of anybody I know, but I'll just end up hanging new shades. Bri & I had breakfast at Beth's, where he handed me two books for my birthday:
   ♥ Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
   ♥ The Night Watch (Book 1) by Sergei Lukyanenko
Bri has somehow managed to rarely gift a book that I already own, and he puts a lot of thought into these selections--they're always a little outside of my reading cloud but either titles I already intended to read or delightful newcomers. One of my favorites was Perfume by Patrick Suskind; after reading it, we watched the film together while yelling at the screen when the director skipped critical passages.

Mutual admiration societies for art (literature/films/theatre/food/etc.) are sometimes the only strings that really keep me connected to other humans. Everything else largely amounts to melt-away details found frequently elsewhere.

Because of that, I kind of think that the people we get along with best are those who have similar levels of similar interests that run parallel but not perpendicular to our own. To elucidate: the thing that keeps me interested in discussing books with others isn't that I expect to gush over how much we both like this one author: I expect our combined interests will challenge each other to introduce or follow-up with authors or titles in similar veins. If we stopped at the "Oh, you've read that book? Me too! Did you like it? Me too!" level, the other person would probably be mentally marked as a generally swell person but not necessarily as one who is worth connecting with. It is only when they take that second step, the one where we both contribute towards the development of the other person's passion, that the bonding begins.

My work group gave me a little lunch set for my birthday because I'm usually hauling book boxes all day Wednesday, it's terribly cute:


It came with a card that says "Stroke the air waves, pull up the tulips, break out the well digger's rod...we're gonna yodel tonight!" It is indicative of my unusual personality, or so they say.

Today my volunteer hurt her ankle =0 so I get to have lunch with my sister, who is making my life complete by delivering Manna Deli (short for Delicious Manna of the teriyaki gods).

Nights like last night make me feel like I live in a small town, but the travelling time always tells the truth.
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I ran into Frankie yesterday, a short redheaded girl who my brother says has promised to raise an army of red-haired rug-rats with him if neither of them are married by 25.

Unmarried at 25.
bwahahahahahahaha.

Then my brother told me I'm career-oriented and Ang is family-oriented. While it has long been acknowledged in our family that Angela will be baby-making before me, I've never really thought of myself as career-oriented. Possibly because I've never felt like I had one? I just dream up what I want to do and see what I have to do to accomplish it. But it got me thinking...aaaaand existential crisis go!

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My date went well, I invited him to my birthday party because I liked his smile.
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Last night at the Chris Pureka show I ran into my last long-distance lover, whom I haven't seen since he decided to date the girl that was sitting beside him. We met, she seemed nice. I didn't stick around to chat.

As for Chris Pureka, she's got a gorgeous voice but it was hard to differentiate between her songs. They contained a lot of similar sounds that all kind of mooshed together in my head and the only one I can pick out is about drinking cheap beer.

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Falling asleep while holding hands = best thing ever.
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I'm posting a pajama story time for the library's calendar, and in the event notes it says the standard rigamarole: "Library events and programs are free and everyone is welcome."

Lies. Although I kind of want to show up in pajamas and find out, I miss being read to.

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Tonight's another whirlwind, but at least part of it's at my house so I can do some laundry.

Everything is off kilter

(spot-washing clothes while belts slither off into unreachable lands and it's a damn good thing that you left a frozen lunch at work because there isn't time to forage for food while you're in meetings and playing catch-up on three e-mails, all work-related, and then don't even talk to me about last minute things this week because I might punch you if I don't love you hard enough)

but things are swell nonetheless.

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I missed the Thermals show that I was super excited about because I underestimated Sakuracon's drawing power and ended up dancing until 4 a.m or so. Beforehand, there was speed-dating. I went to the straight one and learned that quite a large number of anime fanboys tend to be unattractive both inside and out: people who output nothing and concentrate solely on intake (playing video games, reading manga, watching anime...and these are just Sakuracon-specific interests) are really not very interesting. Then I went to the gay speed dating to support J's search for a lovely lad and decided that the girls were cuter and more fabulous. Listening to the story of how a girl got interested in phlebotomy studies? rad. Especially compared to "uh...I go to work and watch Bleach!"

Perhaps I'm expecting too much out of the rest of the world by laying my self-expectations on others. hope not. It's one thing to believe that everyone has something interesting about them, which I do, but it's an entirely different matter when it comes to attraction and my attention span. Boring people, no matter how sweet they are, tend to blink off my radar. This could be the reason I'm not-so-secretly attracted to assholes: they are usually members of the interesting-kid crowd.

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Easter was nice but I was so tired it blurred by. My relatives poked me about when they were going to meet J, and my grandmother has this impression that I can't find anyone my age so I've taken a youngun under my wing to "train him up like she wants him to be." I can't tell if she's making fun or serious or both.

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Oh, and I'm happy about some other stuff. Except that I don't have the new Thermals album in my hot little hand. Record Store Day (April 18th) will take care of that!

Man, I could totally get used to this. Doing your civic duty nowadays means two hour lunches, downtime a-plenty and you're done by 4. It's pretty much what I'd be doing on vacation: reading Marx and Winterson and Girl Genius while working on my review articles and the Thermals preview that's going up tomorrow. Yesterday Ang brought me her laptop and I took her out to lunch at Unicorn Crepes, the only place I know that has a pizza crepe (nom nom nom) and a light-up unicorn that was once upon a time a reindeer.

The demographics of the jury crowd are a leetle skewed; most of the people in attendance are white, middle-class and 40+. In the first case I sat on jury selection for (I had number 33/35 and didn't make it to the "being picked" stage), it was a young black man on trial for drug possession. If he had even one peer in the 100+ people who showed up for jury duty, I didn't see them. It makes me wonder how supposedly random the selection process is, especially since it's only been about two years since my last summons. But really: is it that the lower middle class and poor opt out of this somehow? Or that they aren't registered to vote? I'm not sure how exactly how the selection & deferral process works, but these juries are pretty representative of the rest of life: the bourgeoisie creates a world after its own image.

Another thing I've noticed: a lot of the jurors take this time to let their opinions and philosophies be heard. One man spoke at length about how he couldn't uphold a law if it wasn't morally sound. That's all well and good*, but the jury box ain't the place to be debating whether you like a law or not--that's what your grass root political campaigns are for. You just have to say if you can put your personal feelings aside and make judgments based on whether or not the defendant has been proven guilty beyond any reasonable doubt based on the evidence provided. The next person to soapbox about how important their feelings are in a trial where their ass isn't on the line, I'm going to be rather hard-pressed not to start kicking their shins--and only because my pants are too tight to kick higher. I'm headed off to a second jury selection in a few, this time being 12/35, so I get to sit in the official jury box until they kick me out for whatever reason.

*I don't uphold laws like this either, although I'd say "ethically sound" because morals tend to have religion and emotions mixed in.