Tuesday, May 21st, 2013
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6:09 am - Has it been that long?
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Friday, January 13th, 2012
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10:42 am - A statement, indeed.
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Monday, January 9th, 2012
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10:44 am - Italian hand-crafted ceramic PSA
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I bought some nice dinner plates on sale. At home when I started to soak off the rather overly-enthusuastically adhered "Made in Italy" stickers the dishes started to make an ungodly racket. So, to the google I went. Apparently the first time they are washed or otherwise put through a temperature change Italian dinnerware will make a lot of noise, which may be variously described as pinging, popping, crackling, tinkling, plinking, or (as one site poetically put it) singing as the glaze settles.
It is still chattering away out there in the kitchen as I write this. I cannot keep it at bay much longer. I feel the end is near. I leave behind this record for future travellers who experience this phenomena.
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Monday, September 12th, 2011
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1:21 am - One of the few career options for medieval women.
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Just watched Anchoress a Bergmanesque black and white film about the Anchoress of Shere. Bonus: the priest was played by the 9th Doctor.
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Wednesday, September 7th, 2011
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10:34 pm - 2012: Ice Age
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If you enjoy yelling at a screen "GLACIERS DO NOT DO THAT!" over and over, you will enjoy 2012: Ice Age</a>.
It was so terribly, horribly, bad I pretty much enjoyed it. The scientific accuracy of the glacier's behavior was pretty much on par with Monty Python's blancmange attacks, the special effects look like they were done on a home computer, and they kept cutting to ridiculous b-roll of "traffic on a snowy road" and "fire truck driving through New Jersey" that painfully obviously had no disasters or panicking crowds in them whatsoever. Oh, and also the teenage son reminded me of Tina from Bob's Burgers.
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Friday, August 19th, 2011
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5:17 am - My swamp yankee one-cup coffee system.
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-Measuring cup
-Funnel shaped piece off an old coffee maker
-Mug with a pretty wide mouth
-Filter (Paper filters make it look more sophisticated. Cramming a piece of muslin in the funnel adds more rustic charm.)
Put 1/8 to 1/4 cup of grounds in measuring cup depending on your caffeine needs. Fill measuring cup the rest of the way with hot water, and let it sit for four or five minutes.
Put filter in plastic thingy. Put plastic thingy over mouth of mug. The mug mouth should be wide enough it sits down inside and is pretty stable. (If you have a small mug, heaven help you-- you will think that if you pour very carefully it will keep its balance, but you will be wrong.)
Pour steeped contents of measuring cup into filter, and wait for it to run through. If resulting coffee is ungodly strong, top up the mug with more hot water (then it's like an Americano!).
This system replaced my old "grounds in a piece of muslin held on top of a mug with a rubber band, upon which I slowly drizzle boiling water" method.
(It should be noted that I do in fact have a real coffee maker, I just can't be arsed to run it for my one daily cup.)
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3:36 am - almond things for nomming
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2 egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1/4 cup almond meal
1 tbsp plus 2 tsp truvia
1/2 tsp almond extract
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
Mix the almond meal and truvia and give it a couple pulses in the blender.
Beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar. Drizzle in extracts near end of beating. Gently fold in almond/truvia mixture into beaten egg whites.
Plop by spoonfuls onto parchment covered cookie sheet. Bake at 300 for 20 - 30 minutes (until the tops just start to brown). Turn off oven and crack door and let them sit for another hour or so.
Makes around 15. It is altogether possible to eat them all in about 30 seconds, but those of a more temperate nature will store them in a ziplock bag.
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Sunday, July 24th, 2011
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8:54 pm - OMFG LJ SPAMMERS GO AWAY
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GAAAHHHRRRRAAAAHHHHHHHGGGGHHHHOMFGWAFFLETOASTCRABBOAT! Why is my poor strawberry wearing a top hat gathering so many spam responses? SPAMMERS, DON'T BOTHER! They all get caught in the spam filter for moderation and no one sees your stupid posts but me when I KILL THEM WITH THE BIG RED X.
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Saturday, June 4th, 2011
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4:50 pm - Filed under "things that do not make as much sense when you wake up all the way"
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 So, the other day I woke up and for reasons that aren't really clear to me I was thinking very excitedly "Strawberry in a top hat!" and scribbled it down so I wouldn't forget. Anyway, that's where this t-shirt came from. Available with text and without.
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Saturday, May 28th, 2011
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3:34 pm - Vulcan Calling
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For the Star Trek geeks...
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Saturday, May 21st, 2011
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5:20 pm - Rapture!
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Monday, May 16th, 2011
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9:52 am - Perhaps I am not the first to see the connection
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Sunday, April 17th, 2011
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11:46 am - Crime (Drama) Spree
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Also I've been checking out The Killing. It's strikes me as rather like Twin Peaks played straight.
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Saturday, April 16th, 2011
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12:38 am - How to want WHOPPER!
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Daniel reminded me of the night we pretended to be French tourists.
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Friday, April 15th, 2011
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6:43 pm - o_O Why that one in particular?
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Comment spam is not a new problem, it happens from time to time. Lately though, I don't know why, my old post linking to a neon accented Nagel painting from a while back has become really popular with spammers. I'm finding myself deleting spam from it quite frequently.
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12:09 am - I will give pretty much any show with a coroner a shot
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So I've checked out a couple episodes of Body of Proof. My summary is thus: Dr. Stephen Strange Megan Hunt was a brilliant but self absorbed neurosurgeon who got into a car accident that ruined her hands and ended her career. Now, she is Lady Quincy, using her cantankarous genius to solve mysteries along with her boss Seven of Nine and a team of quirky character actors. Free bonus: angsty, estranged teen daughter.
I wish I liked it better. Maybe it will find it's groove with a few more episodes.
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Wednesday, April 13th, 2011
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11:13 pm - blah blah blah
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My current mission is updating my Skreened shops' images from flat to transparent PNG for dark shirts. Also catching up on a backlog of designs I need to get up at CP, and consolidating my template files at Z now that shops are merged into one account.
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Tuesday, April 12th, 2011
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6:14 pm - Let's call it a sabbatical
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So I realize I've sort of taken a monthlong vacation from my "post at least once a day" New Year's resolution. But then again, who didn't see that coming ;). Anyhoo, I suppose it's time to get back on that metaphorical horse and start posting the backlog of updates I never quite got around to making.
Of course, now that I think about it I should have just claimed I had given social networking up for Lent.
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Wednesday, March 16th, 2011
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5:30 am - Oh, V. You crazy!
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V is a show based on the fact that Morena Baccarin makes a splendid evil alien lizard queen.
I did appreciate that in the finale, after the humans' gawdawfully stupid plan failing that rather than giving the series some closure the writers apparently just went "oh fuck it all to hell" and did a bunch of crazy shit. On the plus column was ( spoilerCollapse ).
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Tuesday, March 15th, 2011
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6:35 am - Being Human
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"Okay, two rules for Ivan's car: no food or drink and I get to choose the music, and tonight we shall be listening to Miss Kate Bush."
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Sunday, March 13th, 2011
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10:27 pm - Well what do you know, I must write mother.
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Wednesday, March 9th, 2011
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3:46 pm - Sambadrome!
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11:47 am - And now, lent .
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 I haven't done a new lent t-shirt this year, so I'll have to settle for last year's.
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Saturday, March 5th, 2011
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11:10 pm - More fun than a barrel full of Brontës (which actually would probably not be fun at all).
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 So, here are some new Brontë themed shirts.
Back:
 
 
Of course I can't make a Brontë post without posting this on general principals.
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Friday, March 4th, 2011
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11:54 am - LJ layout
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At some point a few months ago LJ did some internal tinkering that barfed all over my page customization. I really need to go into my settings and fix that one of these days.
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Thursday, March 3rd, 2011
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11:54 am - Catching up on movies
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I watched Precious today. Not an easy film to watch. I do get the argument some people had that the amount of adversities the main character has to deal with are laid on rather thickly, but I think the film deserved all the awards it got.
As an aside, I didn't even recognize Mariah Carey. Hers wasn't a huge role but considering Glitter, I would have never guessed she could do it.
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Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011
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1:09 pm - I cannot explain this other than "I was stupid because I was like 9".
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I don't know why I was reminiscing about this, but thinking back I was such an idiot kid.
When I was in middle school, my mom gave me a couple dollars for lunch every day. I'd sometimes buy a carton of milk, but I never ate lunch so the money mostly just collected in my purse. At some point I realized I had a lot of money in there. Probably thirty dollars (a ridiculously large amount to me at that age anyway). I showed it to whoever I was sitting with. A kid nearby asked me if he could borrow some money for lunch and he'd pay me back later. He was one of the kids that would pick on me sometimes, but he was asking nicely. So I gave him some. Then another kid asked if he could borrow some. And another, and another. I heard one kid tell his friend "go ask her for some money, she'll just give it to you". So pretty soon it was all gone. And obviously, no they didn't pay me back. I would like to say that either they learned a lesson about sharing or I learned a lesson about life, but nope. I was just clueless and remained so throughout school.
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Tuesday, March 1st, 2011
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12:30 pm - You never let me have any fun.
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I read "Agnes Grey" by Anne Brontë recently. It gets points from me for being about a beleaguered governess, but a minus for it's lack of Byronic hero.
There is one particular bit of the story that really stuck with me. Agnes' first situation is with a snooty family with several children, all of whom are little shits, and over whom the parents don't give her any actual authority, so they just defy her and never learn anything. Anyway part of the introduction of the boy is that he is cruel to animals, in particular baby birds. So far that's not a strange attribute to give a spoiled, entitled kid. But the description... he tells her oh, sometimes he gives them to the cat. Sometimes he cuts them up. But next time he plans to burn them alive. And when she tells him he shouldn't do that, he tells her it won't do anything to tell his father because his father doesn't care-- he gave the boy a whole nest of birds once and watched him rip off their legs and wings and heads and just laughed with a fatherly "boys will be boys" attitude.
Wow, this is one of those examples of how social values have changed*. No mistake, it was certainly played off as an example of horrible behavior, but to my modern sensibilities not horrible enough. Today, this would be a signal of "omg we have a psychopath who is going to grow up to be a serial killer". In the novel though, it was more just a simple example of spoiled brattyness.
Later on in the story, the bird motif continues. Agnes comes across Young Master Shit out in the garden in possession of a nest full of baby birds his Uncle Asshole has given him. The exchange was something like this:
A: What are you going to do with those?
YMS: I'm going to torture the fuck out of them!
A: That's terrible, you should either give them back to the mama bird, or kill them quickly without suffering.
YMS: Fuck that! They're mine and you're not allowed to stop me.
A: (Picks up a large stone while he is not looking, and lifts it over her head) I'm asking you one more time, what are you going to do with those birds?
YMS: Oh I am going to torture torture torture them. I can hardly wait, it will be ever so much fun!
At which point, Agnes drops the stone on the nest, smashing all the baby birds.
And at which point I was like, WTF!? I mean, I see what the author was getting at, better a quick death than torture but I was not expecting that from the meek-but-high-moralled governess.
And to top it off, then the Mother called Agnes into her sitting room to angrily ask her why her son came in all upset telling how the governess had smashed a nest of birds in front of him. But she wasn't concerned that Agnes had murdered a bunch of birdies, oh no. She was upset that Agnes had spoiled all the poor kid's fun.
*Another example is how she laments several times that she's not allowed to beat the children as one should.
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Monday, February 28th, 2011
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6:36 am - Somehow, Danse des Petits Cygnes makes me think of the Human Centipede
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Finally watched Black Swan. Which led me to watch Swan Lake (terrible 1981 anime), The Red Shoes (1958 Ballet film with Moira Shearer), The Red Shoes (2005 horror movie about cursed high heels), and I am currently watching Princess Tutu (2002 anime series about a duck turned into a magical girl that solves problems with the power of ballet).
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Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
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10:35 pm - Imitation McDonald's Apple Pie Recipe
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When I was very little, I made "apple pie" by taking two pieces of white bread, squashing them flat, putting some sugar in the middle of the bottom piece, licking the top piece of bread to stick them together, licking the entire assembly again for good measure, then microwaving it for a couple minutes until the bread was hard as cardboard. Delicious! Then I tried to get my babysitter to try some (she declined).
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oph3lia
