if you want to say hello (or something less pleasant) get thee to the messageboard.

a good song for hard times (youtube link)

i'm pretty damn enchanted with the Aspire One. so far i'm okay with Linpus with a regular Xfce desktop, but even if i do make the move to Xubuntu she'll still be mouse-powered and mouse-sized.

therefore i will call her Miss Bianca. not the Disney version, but the one from the novel who wears a fine silver chain and travels by diplomatic pouch. she arrived at my house inexperienced and airheaded, but she has a good heart and will continue to improve with time. (i briefly considered Reepicheep, but this lappy is definitely a girl. also, who can say Reepicheep in casual conversation with a straight face?)

this breaks up the household naming scheme a bit (since we usually name devices after minor gods and/or mythic figures and the network is Annwn) but C says that heroes have an elevated place in the afterlife, so she belongs.

last weekend we got breakfast at Hattie's Hat*, and for some reason they were playing The White Album. i immediately started spewing Beatles factoids, because i imprinted on them as a child and can't help myself. by the end of breakfast i realized that i like Modest Mouse because they sound like White Album era Beatles to me.

currently i have the White Album and We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank on shuffle together. it's pretty seamless. not like the White Album is exactly a unified experience. but still.


*i like to eat with the fishes; the back room has a huge saltwater fishtank. Saturday mornings, fish are about as much stimulation as i can take before coffee. and watching a starfish travel while you have that first bit of sustenance is near-hallucinatory.

Darth Mojo is sharing his hour-plus sci-fi dance mix.

not done listening yet. so far, i'm happiest about the Six Million Dollar Man mix, but the Prisoner one and the extended Futurama theme were pretty cool...

ETA: there are at least two different classic Battlestar Galactica mixes. "this is Captain Apollo..."

according to del.icio.us, i started researching martial arts classes in Seattle more than six months ago, and that was i don't know how long after C and me swore we would take a class together. it's a sign of how things go with physical fitness in my house - reading about it is much more engaging than doing, and there's always some reason we should put it off or drop it for a while and then the momentum is gone and we forget...

mimerki mentioned elsejournal that it takes 21 days to form a habit.* i've embraced it as an arbitrary measure. the plan is to go three times a week until we hit 21 classes and hope that makes it stick. so maybe i'll read this in a couple months to see where i was at the beginning, or maybe it will be another well-intentioned failure.

we settled on kung fu. we've done three classes as of yesterday. ( first impressions )

i liked my first week. quite a bit. we got massages this morning to work out the tense bits, and i feel relaxed and excited rather than scared about going back to class Monday. it's a good place to be.




*so i looked it up. it came into popular use from a book with the ridiculous-to-me title Psycho-Cybernetics.
¹research says this is from the style family attributed to Wong Fei Hung - the dude from an astonishing number of films including Drunken Master, Once Upon a Time in China, and Iron Monkey. more fangirl squee.

i don't know why i never looked for an album of New Order remixes before today.

every film shown at SIFF Cinema during the festival begins with a trailer for My Winnipeg, and this damn earworm song about Winnipeg.

“Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Wonderful Winnipeg/It’s no Eden that you would see/But it’s home sweet home to me.”

i often work out earworms by listening to all of the song, but i can't find a source for it online since (surprise) "Wonderful" is used in conjunction with Winnipeg all the time. anyone heard this song elsewhere, or is it something they put together for the film?

if i play Tomoyasu Hotei while i work, i can pretend that i am on a mission, writing The Dry Instructions That Will Save The World.

this year, it was easiest to schedule wedding anniversary festivities a day early.

this happens to be ( wagyu beef dinner )

followed by a stay at a nice hotel.

this conjunction was completely accidental, and i am amused.

if i wrote fanfic, i would be totally inspired to write Babylon 5/Scarecrow and Mrs. King crossover right now. (Lee has a recurring series of vivid dreams about being a hero on a giant space station in the distant future. his obsession is starting to affect his job performance, and Amanda is questioning his sanity. meanwhile, on a space station orbiting...) but i don't write fanfic. just saying.

thanks, bhagwanx. i'm going to be thinking about it all day.

i never would have chosen to go to Disney World on vacation (and i still won't) but when someone else is paying for part of it and i get to see my family it's very nice. i get it: they hold your hand from the moment you step off the plane until you get back to the airport on the way home. our agenda was to visit with the family, and maybe ride some rollercoasters. anything else was a bonus.
( Read more... )
kudos to my sister-in-law for putting it all together. she made a handful of group meal reservations (not even daily) but otherwise we were free to break into small groups and self-schedule. we took a lot of afternoon naps, i took a lot of baths, i still rode rollercoasters with my Dad and the Haunted Mansion with my niece, and we all saw the Wishes fireworks from the top of the Contemporary Resort after dinner at the California Grill. awesome.

it's so cute to hear them let the crowd take care of the "whoo ooo...whoo ooo" part.

robotic dalek pumpkin: photos, howto, and a video of it moving.

for posterity, however embarrassing it may be later:

( my HP7 predictions, what i wish and what is more likely to happen )

on a whim, i bought "genuine leather" soap the last time i was at Bliss*. i adore the smell of leather. i like to walk into leather shops just to breathe the air.
the soap itself has a nice texture and lather. the smell is just remarkable (or at least it works well on my skin chemistry and on C's) and it lingers here and there all day. i went back yesterday and got them to mix the scent into body butter. now to stop sniffing my hands...






*these days, Bliss trumps Lush for me. the bath bombs are equal in quality or better. they don't make any promises about organics or animal testing, but they don't use artificial perfumes, it's a local business and i've never been served by anyone other than the owners. the prices are great and they're always ready to do custom orders and hear your ideas about scent combinations. love!

for pixxelpuss:

i'd sit still for this makeover.

Mom used to play Rodgers and Hammerstein records all the time. like a duckling, i have imprinted. it's the only way i can explain my attraction to Wind It Up*, a bit of fluff from Gwen Stefani that samples the Lonely Goatherd*.

it's the aural equivalent of passing a car wreck. can't. stop. listening. know. it's. horrid.

help me.

*YouTube link

via mimerki, ten things i like starting with "D"

dogs
dark chocolate
Drambuie
dystopias
Doctor Who
Devotchka
down comforters and other down-filled items
dice (i especially like the kind with swirly fine bits of glitter in them)
dancing (mostly of the jumping around and shaking my booty sort, although being led well is one of the great pleasures in life.)
Dune

this can be perpetuated if you ask me for a letter.

scarlettina was looking for a Torchwood icon. requirements: "Torchwood: more blood and snogging" with an image of Captain Jack. i quietly started work with some screencaps from the first few episodes which did, indeed, feature blood and snogging. i had put it aside for a while because i just couldn't figure out how to insert Captain Jack.

meanwhile someone else produced the request.

i can keep this one for myself.*





*which allows me to keep fussing with the color and the timing. forever.

i'm trying out Fireworks to see if it would be a useful tool at work. jury still out, since easily editing animated gifs isn't something i actually need to do.