elanya

( The first part of this entry is cut for animal-related TMI! )

And that was the night of the Rat :p The family should be home in the next few hours, and before that I have some more cleaning/tidying to do:

Bed Laundry - in the washer - last load in the dryer = done enough
Clean my bathroom
Trash
dishes (wash hand dishes, deal with dishwasher) - about to start this, then maybe I will take the dogs out for a short walk? No walk, timing too uncertain.
vacuum the couch and chair where there have been illegal dogs.

I've already swept the floors and started consolidating my things, but I have more things to consolidate as yet.

Better get cracking, so off I go!

Now I wait... Until tomorrow. I got my dates wrong -_-

Today was my first day back to work after the break and boy, was I ever unproductive. I had no drive whatsoever, and was intent on engaging in every delaying and distracting technique under the sun. I think I am quite honestly ready for a change. I have been cataloguing this collection - and doing practically nothing else at work - for over a year. I would dearly love to have a job that is a little more dynamic. But that is going to be in my future one way or another, so - hey!

Other things I didn't miss about working - I left the house at 7:20 and got home 11 hours later. I don't even have a long commute, really, just that the buses run kind of stupid. I catch the bus at about 7:30 and get to work (in my proper workspace) by about 7:50, give or take.

Today, I had to stop at the grocery store, and then stop home to take care of my kitty (change his litter box), which added about another hour-ish? Maybe more? To the total? I don't actually have a car, so this entails leaving early form work, catching the bus to the store, catching the bus from the store to the stop close to my own place, walking there, taking care of kitty, walking up to the Dog House where I am currently house sitting. While I was home, for all of 20 min to clean the cat box, said cat chewed his way into the tortillas I'd bought to make turkey enchiladas :p

So then I got home, fed the animals, put away groceries, sat down for a bit, made a terrible dinner, and here I am. I haven't taken the dogs out yet but I should...

As long as I am chronicling minor complaints - my jaw is still sore >_< Not the way it was before Christmas - I'm not having that kind of pain for the most part, but chewing hard things likem say, dove chocolates, or tortilla chips, still makes it sore. Probably this is wht I get for eating all of Ginny's chocolates! I meant to get more at the store today too, dangit.

The dogs have settled and I think ehy will be okay without a walk. I think. What I should do now, then, is get up and put together those enchiladas, so that I can have them for lunches/dinners in place of/as well as the turkey soup I have.... I also need to deal with the rest of the stock in the fridge. Going to do turkey with black beans and yogurt (terrible me is considering the neufchatel in the fridge though, but noooo, be strong!) in a green chili sauce. I'll see how that goes, I guess!

Hopefull, when that is all done, I will have some energy still for writing! I signed up for trope bingo today (see above re:distractions: and have pretty much plotted out what I am going to write. Mostly - things no one else will care about save for like... two other peoplel, maybe. *sigh*. Ahh well! I want the sories and this is how they will get told.

In other creatively news, I now have *two* knitting projects started! I am making a little scarf/shawlette thing, and started a pair of socks at lunch today as well as a knit along with tethys123 and longpig. It is a chart, but it looks like a pretty simple one at least...

Off to the kitchen with me, then!

So, Tuesday I start my house sitting gig for the Crismans, which technically makes this the last Saturday i will be at home all day for a while. So probably there is some shit I should do this weekend, hmm?

Here is a short list:
Clean out the fridge
Vaccuum
Laundry
Pack

I am also working on my Jukebox fic, which is coming along very nicely. I'm quite happy with it so fa, anyway, and I don't think it is going to balloon ridiculously - it should probably be around 5000 words, which seems about right. I have been trying to be careful about section lengths, and that seems to be working out well. A lot of times I'll start with short sections, and then my middle bits will get all super long and structurally it just winds up a bit messy. I think I have a better handle on that so far here though! I have some scened that I expect will be longer (climax scene!), but that's okay too. After I'm done with it, there is a treat I want to do, maybe, if I can keep it short. And maybe some drabbles again, because that was super fun last year!

Anyway - I should go do *something* rather than just reading random crap on the internet all day. Tomorrow I am going over to the Crismans with Jola and a friend who will hopefully be taking over the house-sitting for me while I'm away in August. I'm very much looking forward to getting away form here for a bit, and to actually visiting my dad when it is nice enough to go outside!

It's Memorial Day, wooh!

This is kind of an off holiday for me, since it kind of does the same thing as veterans Day, only for a country I don't actually belong to, just live in.

Anyway - I have the day off, which is nice, as it meant I had more weekend to do stuff in, including get caught up on sleep. Sorta. this would have worked out better if I'd slept better last night, but this was apparently not meant to be.

I have done a lot of things this weekend though!

I made a cake! It is a midnight cake (dense dark chocolate cake) with raspberry jam and boiled icing. it is pretty danged delicious!( Cake images under cut )

I also made soup, but there are no pictures of that, and did a bunch of writing. Yesterday I had my friends malkontent and his wife (who doesn't have a convenient handle or I'd use it - I'm trying to not define/identify people *only* according to their relationships) come over to do craft stuff - but really to meet the greyhound I am dogsitting this weekend for some friends of friends. I'm actually the third-tier dogsitter. Some friends of mine are looking after the dog - they had to go away and left him with a mutual friend, who also had to go away, and so he is staying with me until the first friends get back tomorrow. I might have met one of the owners before at some point, but only in passing. But their dog is a total sweetie. His name is Red and he is 13 and he is made of skin and bones and love and laziness. He is also apparently afraid of thunder, which will be interesting as we have a big front coming through today. I gave him some melatonin, and I'll put the TV on later if he is still too scaredy. he also has a thundershirt, which he is half wearing now, since he wouldn't get up so I could put it on right. I hear some distant thunder, but so far he seems fine. The bigger front is still to come though. ( Doge pic under cut! )

The craft day also let me get more done on my Firelight vest - we'll see how that all works out for me in the end. I'm a little concerned, to be honest, that I have been a little too accidentally liberal with the pattern :| I'm so ready to be done with it, but I don't want to start anything else until I've finished it at this point.

Anyway, I have stuff I still want to do today, and some things I have already done so.... list time!

-Walk dogs
-Preview Episode of Edward Teaches History
-Do a journal update
-Put in some laundry
-Do some writing
-Read the Ficthropology article and take notes
-Record the new Ficthropology episode tonight
-Eat something other than cake.
ETA - I remembered - make pizza!
ETAII - And then I remembered I was out of flour -_-

Not an overwhelming list, really, but I am probably forgetting something...

Zorm day comes but thrice a year - it is the Day After Candy Sale Holiday. It is celebrated after Valentine's Day, Easter, and Hallowe'en.

Zorm is the sound one makes when one wishes to be given candy. repetition of the word is often combined with the action known as "grabby hands". This action is not typically successful, but it is tradition within certain narrow cultural circles nonetheless.

Zorms are, of course, candy. Zorm day is all about candy.

Building up the mythology of Zorm Day has psychological merit, in that it provides justification for the acquisition of large candy and chocolate hordes. It also justifies the efforts one might go to acquire such a horde.

This year, Post-Valentine's Zorm Day fell on a Saturday. I took Jola on a Very Long Walk to get to the Walgreens on Texas Avenue, which is the great Zorm Mecca. They have the best deals on leftover candy - everything goes on 50% straight off (hisses at Target), and they have a pretty good selection (hisses at HEB). Kroger was also pretty good when I lived closer to it, but it is quite a way out of the way for me now. Although that said it is only a few blocks away from the Wallgreens, I suppose. But anyway! I walked about 2.5 miles just to get some candy, ayup. ZORM DAY!

Today, of course, is Post-Easter Zorm day. I worked, but had hopes there would still be some zormable zorms! I also had a bunch of errands I needed to run - pick up Jola's county tag and her frontline, get some groceries and my acid reflux meds which I have been out of for almost a week now, ugh.

Clearly, fitting in a trip to Zorm Mecca was going to be worth the extra effort, even though it is about 3-4 blocks out of my way, considering that the vet is a block away from the grocery store (and its inferior zorms). I considered and reconsidered my route, and eventually decided to do a short circuit - vet, Wallgreens, HEB. With bus at either end and about a block walk home at the very end. This worked out pretty well - knowing that I was planning a zormspedition, I brought a pair of shorts to wear for the walk rather than the skirt I'd worn to work (because thigh chafe ;_;). I got off a stop later than I really should have for the vet and had to back track a bit, but everything else was fine. I got so many zorms - I'm well stocked for a while. I can also report that both Wallgreens and HEB have a crapton of Cadbury's Cream Eggs. I only got two - one for me and one for tethys123 - but Walgreens had one box full, and HEB (which had basically nothing else) had like three. I think this was about 1.5 miles, all told, but some of that was carrying shit, so that counts for more right? :V Anyway, it was not even 6 when I got to HEB, which I think is pretty impressive considering the bis didn't leave campus until about 5:07. I got home closer to 7, maybe around 6:45? But that was time shopping but waiting for the bus.

Most of my zorm haul is Russel Stover eggs of various kinds (the beeeest), plus the big cream eggs, two packages of the little cream eggs, some chocolate bunnies, a big bag of filled eggs. My biggest disappointments, in order was that I didn't score any: mini eggs (which were hard to find before easter too!), raspberry RS eggs, coconut RS eggs. Weh! I also finally got myself a new pair of sunglasses. Hopefully I won't lose or break these ones, or accidentally leave them in a other country :V

The zorms should last me quite a while - fear not, they are not for immediate consumption. And if properly requested, they may even be shared!

Bah, v. 2.0

It turns out my brain is not the problem, or at least not the *only problem.

Stupid uterus.

On the other hand, I managed to capture a rare moment today where the cat and dog were somewhat grudgingly sharing space. The cat (Maze) had usurped Jola's regular space on the futon while Jola was hogging the sunny patch of carpet. She later started whine/growling at me to let her up on the couch.

As a side note, my poor puppy is always a little uncertain about whether she is allowed on the furniture, and sometimes needs to be expressly invited. I suspect this is because she is *not* allowed on the furniture at the dogsitters where she spends several days a week and who generally take care of her while I'm away. Just now I had to get up and tell her she could get up in her regular space. Silly Jola :3

Anyway, which morning I got her to go up on the couch, where she sat awkwardly for a few minutes, staring at the very indifferent cat, who was smugly napping. Yes, of course cats can nap smugly:

( pic under cut! )

I got Jola to lie down, but she did not look impressed:

( pic under cut! )

When I went back to the couch she stared expectantly at me for a little while longer, but when I resolved to get a picture of that as well, she decided to give up, cleaned herself, and curled up to sleep. They napped together for quite a while! I can't remember now what disrupted it... oh no, I can. I got up to get a piece of pie (coconut cream, made partially with coconut milk, baked by my roomate!), and Maze decided he needed to lick the plate.

Okay, I am feeling marginally better, so I am going back to this article for a bit :p Then maybe knitting and getting caught up with Person of Interest once naryrising is home from her dinner out :)

I woke up early with all these *plans* and then I sat down at the computer and now it is going on three hours later. Bah!

I had some ideas for pirate-meta that I want to write up. In addition to talking about Black Sails, I may be going to do some conversational narration stuff for an Assassins Creed IV Let's Play with my bro-in-law. I have some things I'd like to talk about for the show though specifically - anyone have any preferences as to whether I talk first about Ships, or Wrecking?

I also had some ideas for what to do with my dissertation, article wise, which is that i want to write something that is looking more just at "here is what i can tell you about Harbour Island from the archaeology I did" and leave the big question theory for something else. I did some outlining while it was still in my brain, but it is hard for me not to hop into the theory >.>

I also had an anxiety dream last night that I was totally unprepared to run the LARP I want to do for Webercon. I don't think that it was really *about* the larp, per sey, though I do need to start working on it more seriously, but more about how I am a social fraud, and of course my RL friends mostly only tolerate me, some of them actively dislike me, etc. although the people who didn't like me in the dream were not relatable to actual real people, though there were actual real people that I know appearing in the dream, so that's something :p Either I don't know who doesn't really like me or they don't exist, I'm not sure. Even in the dream I was more concerned about the people I did know being disappointed, I think? Anyway, I am really a fairly confident person, but I'm also terrible at socializing with people. I don't participate in conversations the same way, or something? I don't know. I played pool with some t=friends on Thursday and despite it being people I know I was mostly quiet while other folks were chatty, and it left me feeling a little marginal and I think this has affected my subconscious. Which I almost wrote as 'self conscious'. Oh, brain, you ain't subtle :p I do think that I am *differently* socially awkward than most of my friends, and that does make it hard for us to connect sometimes.

Anyway, I *should* start working on something. I have other things I'd like to do today, or at least this weekend, as well, like laundry, baking, maybe even *shock* tidying my room.... I can find the floor, sure, but everything else is covered in things (mostly clothes and paper) that need to be put away :p

Oh and in other fun news, we definitely have a pipe issue of some kind in the bathtub. we thought it was water getting on the floor (for a variable configuration of 'we'), but it happened (or, at least, I noticed) again today and that was definitely not the case. I emailed lukoni but I'm really not sure what the best solution is going to be :/ No showers, anyway, I suspect, until we have a better idea what's going on. Yay?

In other mild annoyances, I ordered yarn for my sweater the other day, but the company emailed to let me know that they didn't have enough skeins in the same dyelot (I had asked for them all to be the same). They were really super nice about it and offered to backorder, but that was going to take eight weeks+! (Not their fault, that's just malabrigo for you >.>). I cancelled the yarn, but am still getting needles from them, and am now yarnhunting elsewhere. Even though they didn't have what I wanted I was really pleased with their customer service and will definitely be looking at getting other things through them again.

To end on a high note, though, I did at least get my prompts all finished for the Invisible Ficathon, and I am very happy with all of them! Now I just need to finalize my offers... Aftwer I go out and get some kitty litter!

Well, I technically *did* post yesterday - the new episode of ficthropology is up! For those of you who don't know that this is, it is a podcast whereing lukoni, naryrising, earis, and I discuss various academic articles and such that have been written about fandom. This episode looks at two articles talking about different aspects of the economics of fandom. And we all give recs at the end, because <3 fandom.

In other news, this has been a very strange week so far, though I'm hoping for a more subdued Friday.

Tuesday I was babysitting in the evening for tethys123, which was cool - I got fed homemade stew and breads, got to see the baby a bit (such a cutie :3 ) and then basically hung out at her place doing all the things I would usually do on a Tuesday. By which I mean hanging out on the internet. I actually did some random things, like setting up my OTW wiki user page, wooh! I also fixed my knitting.

Wednesday was my naryrising night, which is usually tuesday, but see above. it is also the day I came home and found that my roomate was just about to take a pumpkin pie out of the oven. So after I walked Jola, I made dinner, so that we could have pie "guilt free". I was not concerned about the guilt, but it was his pie.... Anyway, diner was eggs with stuff in, and delicious. Stuff = mushroom, green pepper, green onion, chicken, bacon, and smoked gruyere.

Still chugging along with Person of Interest - we're now into season three. I love all of the characters, but it is going to take a lot of work for anyone to unseat Finch as my favourite. He checks many of my boxes, in terms of hings I find interesting. I have come to better appreciate Root as well, after the end of Season Two.

Last night I also went to go play pool for a few hours with some local friends, which was a nice break - but still a break in the routine of what was already a strange week. Because of the babysitting my Jola-playdate schedule was all thrown off, so I had to leave early to pick her up (though I'm a terrible pet owner and almost forgot this was one of the reasons I did have to cut out early :p)

And all of these little deviations are not counting the weirdness of work - which I should be getting on with - which I will see about elaborating on later :) I have started on the Tiffany Favrile glass though! Woohoo! Also to maybe talk about later - weird dreams @_@

I had a very full sounding day that still included a lot of sitting around on the couch doing very little.

I got my roomie to help me take my cat to the vet in the morning to get some shots (though I realize I forgot to pick up Jola's flea and heartworm stuff - d'oh!), then treated myself to Subway for lunch ($5 footlongs :V). In the afternoon I had an interview for Tag Wrangling Staff, which I think went really well, and officially the longest interview I have ever had for anything. But computer stuff goes slower by its nature. I think it went really well though, and now I wait for them to finish other interviews and hear back from Volcom :3

After that it was minor hose things, like cleaning the cat box and doing dishes. Excite! I am working on weaving in the ends on my Night Vale socks, but there are a lot of them and I am not very good at it yet, especially where there is a lot of pattern to deal with. And there are 6-8 ends per sock :( I have four done in total. I think the ones on the toes were the worst though, and I did both of those. They were knit in black yarn on size 0 needles and I have a very tight gauge, so they are tiny and impossible to see. the advantage is that the fabric is so tight that I don't think it would be noticeable at all if I fucked it up (which I surely did >.>) If I remember tomorrow I'll bring my ruler downstairs and tell you the stitches per inch so you can shake your heads at me ;p But for reference, I was comparing gauge with tethys123 and to get the gauge she has on 0's, I would have to go up probably at least two needle sizes. The purple ends I have done were definitely easier. Never knitting in black on 0's again @_@

Tonight, other than end weaving, I watched another episode of Person of Interest with naryrising - now up to s1e5 :D I'm really enjoying it so far and I hear it keeps getting better, so score!

Gonna try and finish weaving in ends tomorrow, and if I do i will cast on my firelight vest. I also meant to clip Jola's toenails and somehow she escaped that fate for now! The other thing I would like to do if I have time/don't spend all day knitting and gaming, is to start working on background stuff for my changeling LARP that I am going to run at this year's Webercon. Because I am a masochist, or something @_@