tea berry-blue

I got less than four hours of sleep last night.

I'm not really sure why. I blame a week off for part of it-- when you spend a week going to bed between 2 and 3, you are not going to suddenly be able to get into bed and go to sleep before 1. Or something. Especially when you got eleven hours of sleep the night before.

Sometime around 4:10, I set my alarm forward to 8:30 and said fuck it, I would be late for work.

But then I woke up completely naturally and feeling bright and alert at 8:18. I don't know how. I was still a little late to work, but surprise!

Now I am drinking chai to keep myself perky. Whiskey Monday tonight! It is always weird, you know, the way that coming back after a week of cooking makes me feel like everything is new again.

I finished Feed by MT Anderson. Funny story, this: liret told me I should really, really read a book called Feed. I looked it up and found said book, and was very excited because I enjoyed Octavian Nothing. I read the book. About a chapter in, I realized it was a different Feed from the Feed Jess wanted me to read, which is about ZOMBIES. This one is about chips in our brains and Google Ads ruling the universe. It is awesome and amazing and you should all read it. I have been 100% converted from the person who would line up to get the first chip, to the person who will never ever ever get a chip unless it's a cure for cancer or something.

Now I'm reading Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs and quite enjoying that as well.

I got a new pair of shoes in Delaware. They're orange:



I went into Clark's planning to buy another pair of black flats. I walked out with orange shoes.

I put together my Christmas wish list for my parents and forgot the most important thing! How could I?!

Love you all!

I have been so hellaciously busy!

So far, my week went like this:

Monday, I went to my psychologist and to Whiskey Monday. A bunch of the folks from the vodka distillery came out to Whiskey Monday as well!

Oh. Did I mention the vodka distillery? Yes? No? Last Wednesday, I went out to visit a friend of a friend's vodka distillery-- which, right now, is a giant empty warehouse space WHERE THEY ARE BUILDING THEIR OWN STILL. And they have all these cool machines and stuff, and it was pretty sweet. I love meeting booze nerds, and knowing someone with a still that close is kind of excellent. Anyway, some of them came to Whiskey Monday, which was pretty nifty. It was entertaining to me because none of my local friends have managed to come yet, but the people I just met last week all came pretty much right away.

Tuesday, I took a class on holiday cocktails at Amor Y Amargo. It was really informative and I learned a lot. And drank a lot of delicious cocktails. And ate some delicious food.

Yesterday, I was supposed to go shopping with my mother but the weather was hellacious and I pretty much just completely and totally zonked out. I did some stuff to get ready for Hogsmeade at hogwarts_elite, but I think it's the first day in over two weeks that I had nothing after work. So I suppose that's not technically busy, but it was...busy recouping?

We also had a bakeoff at work! I made these amazing triple salted caramel cupcakes...but I brought them on the wrong day. Which was a drawback as far as competing, but definitely a plus in that there were twelve entries on the actual day of and you could tell that no one really tried more than three or four things. So everyone actually tasted my cupcakes. I made two kinds of caramel from scratch, one caramel sauce and one with burnt sugar that got beaten into the buttercream. They were AWESOME.

...Someone whose wife made a carrot cake won.

This morning, I was super hungry and lethargic just a little while ago, and then I remembered there were still leftovers from the bakeoff. Thank you, peanut butter bars!

Today, we have a work party, which should be fun.

Then, tomorrow, I'm off to Connecticut for the Thanksgiving Stravaganza. I think I'm cooking for 10-12 people this year. Very excited. I bought all the booze for the party on Tuesday night, and it's sitting under my desk at work.

Also also!

Remember this poll that I posted last week? I got a few responses-- about 7-- and I found them very interesting, especially in a few cases where I would like to report some findings:

1) There are definitely disparate responses between people who know me in person and people who know me on the internet. People who know me primarily on the internet tended to characterize me with stronger and more forceful words than people who know me or have interacted with me more in person.

2) The person whose answers most matched the way I perceive myself is probably the person I interact with the least, and someone whom I have never met, which was interesting because apart from that outlier, I would say there was a direct correlation between how much someone interacts with me and whether they perceive me similarly to how I perceive myself.

3) The person who perceived me the least like I perceive myself is someone whom I already tend to disagree with about their perceptions of other people before looking at their responses. I of course don't mean this as a value judgment of any of you who responded, because I think you are all lovely people, and I don't know that it means that this person is actually imperceptive, or that we just have very different ways of characterizing people, or notice/value different things about people.

4) People who know me primarily through hogwarts_elite (regardless of whether we met that way to begin with) are more likely to characterize me using words commonly associated with Gryffindor house than people who do not.

5) I apparently know some cool chickens.

As a follow-up, and because I suspect it's easier to fill out, I made myself a new Johari window. I have an old one, but I feel like these things change over time.

I have been so hellaciously busy!

So far, my week went like this:

Monday, I went to my psychologist and to Whiskey Monday. A bunch of the folks from the vodka distillery came out to Whiskey Monday as well!

Oh. Did I mention the vodka distillery? Yes? No? Last Wednesday, I went out to visit a friend of a friend's vodka distillery-- which, right now, is a giant empty warehouse space WHERE THEY ARE BUILDING THEIR OWN STILL. And they have all these cool machines and stuff, and it was pretty sweet. I love meeting booze nerds, and knowing someone with a still that close is kind of excellent. Anyway, some of them came to Whiskey Monday, which was pretty nifty. It was entertaining to me because none of my local friends have managed to come yet, but the people I just met last week all came pretty much right away.

Tuesday, I took a class on holiday cocktails at Amor Y Amargo. It was really informative and I learned a lot. And drank a lot of delicious cocktails. And ate some delicious food.

Yesterday, I was supposed to go shopping with my mother but the weather was hellacious and I pretty much just completely and totally zonked out. I did some stuff to get ready for Hogsmeade at hogwarts_elite, but I think it's the first day in over two weeks that I had nothing after work. So I suppose that's not technically busy, but it was...busy recouping?

We also had a bakeoff at work! I made these amazing triple salted caramel cupcakes...but I brought them on the wrong day. Which was a drawback as far as competing, but definitely a plus in that there were twelve entries on the actual day of and you could tell that no one really tried more than three or four things. So everyone actually tasted my cupcakes. I made two kinds of caramel from scratch, one caramel sauce and one with burnt sugar that got beaten into the buttercream. They were AWESOME.

...Someone whose wife made a carrot cake won.

This morning, I was super hungry and lethargic just a little while ago, and then I remembered there were still leftovers from the bakeoff. Thank you, peanut butter bars!

Today, we have a work party, which should be fun.

Then, tomorrow, I'm off to Connecticut for the Thanksgiving Stravaganza. I think I'm cooking for 10-12 people this year. Very excited. I bought all the booze for the party on Tuesday night, and it's sitting under my desk at work.

Also also!

Remember this poll that I posted last week? I got a few responses-- about 7-- and I found them very interesting, especially in a few cases where I would like to report some findings:

1) There are definitely disparate responses between people who know me in person and people who know me on the internet. People who know me primarily on the internet tended to characterize me with stronger and more forceful words than people who know me or have interacted with me more in person.

2) The person whose answers most matched the way I perceive myself is probably the person I interact with the least, and someone whom I have never met, which was interesting because apart from that outlier, I would say there was a direct correlation between how much someone interacts with me and whether they perceive me similarly to how I perceive myself.

3) The person who perceived me the least like I perceive myself is someone whom I already tend to disagree with about their perceptions of other people before looking at their responses. I of course don't mean this as a value judgment of any of you who responded, because I think you are all lovely people, and I don't know that it means that this person is actually imperceptive, or that we just have very different ways of characterizing people, or notice/value different things about people.

4) People who know me primarily through hogwarts_elite (regardless of whether we met that way to begin with) are more likely to characterize me using words commonly associated with Gryffindor house than people who do not.

5) I apparently know some cool chickens.

As a follow-up, and because I suspect it's easier to fill out, I made myself a new Johari window. I have an old one, but I feel like these things change over time.

I have been up to so much stuff lately, and I keep wanting to post all about it, but, as I was saying to rosefox last night, the thing about having so many things to talk about is that you end up not talking about them because you're doing them, and doing things is always more important and better than blogging about things.

Here is the short version:

--I had bronchitis!
--I went to the Big E, with bronchitis, and had delicious foods and petted some sheeps.
--whirled came to stay with me for a week and a half. We did things such as: ate Thai food; visited my grocery store; went to a Dogfish Head Beer Event; ate Big Gay Ice Cream; went to dinner at the James Beard House; went to Toloache for fancy Mexican food; went to Donut Ice Cream Sandwich Heaven; had a cocktail party attended by gildedage, justatailor, liret and others; went to Connecticut; ate food in Connecticut; went to the Durham Fair, where we ate a giant donut, a giant fried onion blossom, Polish food, and petted some llamas; made gnocchis, went to Whiskey Monday at Ward III, and went out for hamburgers and cheesecake with intrepia.
--We had a beetastrophe which I really need to write a longer post about. Most of the bees are okay, though.
--The day whirled left, I went to Denver, where I: ate lots of slow-cooked meats, ate and drank copious awesome stuff at Encore, went for an epic walk in the park, drank copious amounts of beer (I believe I tried 36 beers over the course of the weekend), ate more stuff at Encore, got my hair cut, and cooked an epic dinner with awesome cocktails with my mom and Paul.
--I returned from Denver early Sunday morning, slept, and went shoe shopping. I bought four new pairs of shoes, including SILVER SADDLE SHOES, six new pairs of tights/hose, and a new purse that is much roomier than my last one.
--Another Whiskey Monday happened.
--Tuesday, trouserminnow came to visit and we went to Astor Wines & Spirits, got a pizza at Lombardi's, and drank awesome geeky drinks Mayur made us at Amor Y Amargo, and then broke into my booze collection at home and had a super geeky awesome time.
--Yesterday, rosefox took me out to dinner at San Rocco, which was a new discovery for both of us. It was beautiful and we had an incredibly reasonable tasting menu (especially for New York) with ten amazing delicious courses that were so large that by the end we couldn't even eat it all! Rose took the leftover fish home! And there was dessert, and limoncello. We took a nice leisurely walk home and it was lovely.
--Today is my mother's 58th birthday and I am going out to dinner again!
--Tomorrow, we are going to Delaware for the weekend!
--Monday is Whiskey Monday again, then Tuesday I am going out for bubble tea and noodles with nervousystem and then Wednesday the Comic-Con events start up. King Features is going to have a booth this year so if you will be at Comic-Con, do stop by. I will probably be there Friday morning and Sunday afternoon, along with whatever other time they need me. There is also some party at Bloomingdales that I think is on Wednesday and open to the public, so I will get more info to anyone who'd like to come.

Whew. I guess this is what they mean when they say "I'll sleep when I'm dead." Or at least "I will stop eating when I'm dead."

My arrival home was marked by the dim realization that, since I had spent the week previous suffering at the hands of my eeeevil bronchii, I had not. picked. up. anything. at. all. Seriously. My apartment looked like the only place the Rapture actually happened, and apparently when the Lord called up all his chosen children, they left dirty tissues and empty glasses and drink bottles all over. It was like a secret beverage burial ground.

I cleaned up a bit, but it's not quite finished. This is one of those times when I sincerely wish I could afford to pay someone to clean for me. Or could find someone to live with who likes to clean in exchange for cooking. I am so bad at it. So, so bad.

Today, when I left for work, I forgot to bring my inhaler, because I pretty much didn't need it after the first night in Denver. And my lungs pretty much instantly clogged up again. Ugh.

Anyway, I had a nice lunch with a very small contingent of the Madison Square Lunch crowd, which was extra nice because I missed lunch last week due to lung gunk. And I had a lot of Betty Boop stuff to bestow on people.

I went to the psychologist, and that was nice, and I talked to her about some of the stuff in my last (friendslocked) post. Then I went out to the little food tent enclave that is still in Madison Square (the one with the shaved ice guy I took pictures of) and got a pretzel dog.

Pretzel dogs are my guilty pleasure horrible snack food. Every once in a while I'll just get a desperate, crazy urge for a pretzel dog that can't otherwise be sated. But these are on homemade fresh pretzels, and topped with homemade sauerkraut that is really good. So I had that and a beer, and headed home on the subway.

I finished the book rosefox loaned me (thank you!) right before I got to the doctor. It was a very dense book and took me a long time to read. I'm still mulling over my feelings about it, which are mixed. It read like oral narrative, if that makes any sense, and I think that threw me a bit. The narrator had a habit of explaining to the reader what was going to happen before it did, and I felt like the parts of the story that I personally would have been most interested to read were summarized in not quite enough detail for me, especially when a lot of other things were described minutely. But I liked the protagonist and a lot of the world-building in it.

Anyway, when I got to the subway, I decided not to start a new book, and instead I just sat and thought thinking things. Nothing much of really any substance, mostly I made up little songs in my head.

Oh! And also also, I got an email about my blog today (and a comment from the same dude!). Usually when I get emails about my blog, they're "Increase traffic for just $29.95!" emails or whatever. This is what I got today:

hello,

i saw your blog and you have beautiful one.

also, you have beautiful long hair, but if you want to change style, may be you can cut it.

hope talking to you soon .

bye

[signed here]

Very nice of him to send a note, but the subject matter is a little creepy. Okay, dude, of all the things on my blog that you could have chosen to comment on, you picked my hair. He commented on my hair on the blog, too. Okay then! He can go be friends with the guy who tried to touch my hair on the way home the other night and then got shirty and shouted at me when I ducked out of the way. I think I forgot to write about that, it was one night when I was out with Rina. At least it happens less in Queens than it did in Manhattan, although there was another crazy hair lady in the past couple weeks too.

Now I think it is time to do some more apartment cleaning. If I start now, maybe it will not be ridiculously filthy by the time Lynette comes, Y/Y?

My arrival home was marked by the dim realization that, since I had spent the week previous suffering at the hands of my eeeevil bronchii, I had not. picked. up. anything. at. all. Seriously. My apartment looked like the only place the Rapture actually happened, and apparently when the Lord called up all his chosen children, they left dirty tissues and empty glasses and drink bottles all over. It was like a secret beverage burial ground.

I cleaned up a bit, but it's not quite finished. This is one of those times when I sincerely wish I could afford to pay someone to clean for me. Or could find someone to live with who likes to clean in exchange for cooking. I am so bad at it. So, so bad.

Today, when I left for work, I forgot to bring my inhaler, because I pretty much didn't need it after the first night in Denver. And my lungs pretty much instantly clogged up again. Ugh.

Anyway, I had a nice lunch with a very small contingent of the Madison Square Lunch crowd, which was extra nice because I missed lunch last week due to lung gunk. And I had a lot of Betty Boop stuff to bestow on people.

I went to the psychologist, and that was nice, and I talked to her about some of the stuff in my last (friendslocked) post. Then I went out to the little food tent enclave that is still in Madison Square (the one with the shaved ice guy I took pictures of) and got a pretzel dog.

Pretzel dogs are my guilty pleasure horrible snack food. Every once in a while I'll just get a desperate, crazy urge for a pretzel dog that can't otherwise be sated. But these are on homemade fresh pretzels, and topped with homemade sauerkraut that is really good. So I had that and a beer, and headed home on the subway.

I finished the book rosefox loaned me (thank you!) right before I got to the doctor. It was a very dense book and took me a long time to read. I'm still mulling over my feelings about it, which are mixed. It read like oral narrative, if that makes any sense, and I think that threw me a bit. The narrator had a habit of explaining to the reader what was going to happen before it did, and I felt like the parts of the story that I personally would have been most interested to read were summarized in not quite enough detail for me, especially when a lot of other things were described minutely. But I liked the protagonist and a lot of the world-building in it.

Anyway, when I got to the subway, I decided not to start a new book, and instead I just sat and thought thinking things. Nothing much of really any substance, mostly I made up little songs in my head.

Oh! And also also, I got an email about my blog today (and a comment from the same dude!). Usually when I get emails about my blog, they're "Increase traffic for just $29.95!" emails or whatever. This is what I got today:

hello,

i saw your blog and you have beautiful one.

also, you have beautiful long hair, but if you want to change style, may be you can cut it.

hope talking to you soon .

bye

[signed here]

Very nice of him to send a note, but the subject matter is a little creepy. Okay, dude, of all the things on my blog that you could have chosen to comment on, you picked my hair. He commented on my hair on the blog, too. Okay then! He can go be friends with the guy who tried to touch my hair on the way home the other night and then got shirty and shouted at me when I ducked out of the way. I think I forgot to write about that, it was one night when I was out with Rina. At least it happens less in Queens than it did in Manhattan, although there was another crazy hair lady in the past couple weeks too.

Now I think it is time to do some more apartment cleaning. If I start now, maybe it will not be ridiculously filthy by the time Lynette comes, Y/Y?

There is them! God, this must be the boringest boring ever to boring these days. "What's Tea up to?" "Oh! She's still coughin' and shit!" "Gosh, what an exciting life she leads!"

I am going to Colorado tomorrow. I was supposed to be leaving bright and early and getting in in time for lunch at the restaurant, but our flight got cancelled and we're getting put on an early afternoon flight and getting in at 3...which is in time for drinks?

I'm pretty bummed because I had to drop out of Plans To Socialize twice this week, on account of my bronchii hating me. Especially when I have a New Giant Bag of Boop. Every time the underside of my desk gets emptied of Boop, there is more to take its place. The Boop merchandise is like the head of the Hydra, or something.

I still feel kind of wretched, but I'm not nearly as bad as I was yesterday, even though once an hour or so I get one of those wretching coughing fits that makes me feel like Camille or something. Pollen count, please drop soon? I think I might make an appointment to see an allergist when I get back.

Oh! gildedage and I went to see Something Borrowed last night. It was not a movie either of us felt very strongly about seeing, but the things we did want to see either turned out to have been misleadingly labeled as 3-D when they were not 3-D, or only showing late at night, or didn't have enough priests fighting vampires in them.

This movie was fascinating because there is not a single likable person in the whole thing except for one of the supporting characters, and even he's kind of a jerk at points. Like, you just want to throttle them all. They reminded me of every person I have ever not liked in my life. It leaves me a little frightened, though, that it might secretly be a masterpiece of contemporary something or other, because, hey, look at Brideshead Revisited and Wuthering Heights. Those are chock full of horrible, nasty characters!

We also happened to see the CC screening. It was kind of neat because the movie has a very robust 1990s nostalgia soundtrack. The nineties! Who is nostalgic for those? Anyway, the closed captioning tells you the name and artist of every song that plays, and the lyrics, so you could see how appropriate the songs were to the scenes in which they were played.

Then we went out for Thai food and I had delicious soup and lots of ginger in my tofu to try to fix my sinuses. They, alas, were not fixed, and by the time I got home, I was sicker than I had been before. But I soldiered on and went to work today and all that good stuff!

I also have two cocktails to post, but those get posted from my regular blog, where I will not be whining about my rogue bronchii.

There's also another story over at my writing journal. No comics, just some writin'.

And with that, I must to bed! Excitement and adventure awaits! In sunny Colorado!

So, today, I stayed home from work because I woke up at about 6:45 feeling atrociously atrocious. I couldn't get back to sleep, so I noodled around on the computer, called in sick to work, and ate a bunch of lemon lozenges the doctor at work gave me yesterday, then realized that the alarm that should have been waking me up was going off and took that as a sign that I should go back to bed. I holed up in my room and conked out for about four hours, then got up and noodled about a bit more and went to the grocery store to buy myself more fluids.

I I don't think I've drunk quite as much as yesterday, but:

80 oz water
30.5 oz R.W. Knudsen Grape Spritzer
22.3 oz San Pellegrino Limonata
20 oz Coca-Cola

Then I went to the drugstore and got a new inhaler, because I had a prescription for a new one, and I thought that might help. Holy god, did it ever. My new inhaler is possibly replacing all of you as my new best friend. It's like, puff, I have lungs now! Breathing! I can do it! Also, it's pretty obvious that this is related to my usual respiratory issues, and therefore I don't have to worry about the baby.

I took it pretty easy today, worked on some web stuff, and one of my LJ Idol entries, and did pretty much nothing else apart from eating some pasta with fiddleheads. Ah, fiddleheads, I love you so!

The most wonderful news of the day is that quizzicalsphinx is coming to visit me in June! In exactly three weeks! Eeeeee. I have not seen her for three years. And this is the first time I will have her all to myself and not a billionty people here. So much excitedment.

I am feeling way better now that I have my inhaler and stuff, so I will be going back to work tomorrow. Throat is mostly okay. My nose is running like it's training for a marathon, but a packet of tissues can deal with that. Definitely needed the day off, though. Definitely happy that I only have two days to work and then I'm off to Denver.

So, today, I stayed home from work because I woke up at about 6:45 feeling atrociously atrocious. I couldn't get back to sleep, so I noodled around on the computer, called in sick to work, and ate a bunch of lemon lozenges the doctor at work gave me yesterday, then realized that the alarm that should have been waking me up was going off and took that as a sign that I should go back to bed. I holed up in my room and conked out for about four hours, then got up and noodled about a bit more and went to the grocery store to buy myself more fluids.

I I don't think I've drunk quite as much as yesterday, but:

80 oz water
30.5 oz R.W. Knudsen Grape Spritzer
22.3 oz San Pellegrino Limonata
20 oz Coca-Cola

Then I went to the drugstore and got a new inhaler, because I had a prescription for a new one, and I thought that might help. Holy god, did it ever. My new inhaler is possibly replacing all of you as my new best friend. It's like, puff, I have lungs now! Breathing! I can do it! Also, it's pretty obvious that this is related to my usual respiratory issues, and therefore I don't have to worry about the baby.

I took it pretty easy today, worked on some web stuff, and one of my LJ Idol entries, and did pretty much nothing else apart from eating some pasta with fiddleheads. Ah, fiddleheads, I love you so!

The most wonderful news of the day is that quizzicalsphinx is coming to visit me in June! In exactly three weeks! Eeeeee. I have not seen her for three years. And this is the first time I will have her all to myself and not a billionty people here. So much excitedment.

I am feeling way better now that I have my inhaler and stuff, so I will be going back to work tomorrow. Throat is mostly okay. My nose is running like it's training for a marathon, but a packet of tissues can deal with that. Definitely needed the day off, though. Definitely happy that I only have two days to work and then I'm off to Denver.

In the interest of trying to kill my sore throat:

1) 101.4 oz of water
2) 8 oz peppermint tea
3) 22.3 oz San Pellegrino Limonata
4) 10.5 oz R.W. Knudsen Grape Spritzer
5) 12 oz Sly Fox Rt. 113 IPA
6) 3 oz Bitter Truth Sloeberry Blue Gin & X.L.R. plus very small tastes of various other liqueurs/bitters.
7) 19 oz Progresso Chickarina Soup (the 19 oz counts the solid food)

How do I feel? Still crappy!

I left work around noon after I realized that all the work I thought I had to do today? I had pretty much finished on Friday, so I didn't feel as bad about ducking out. I came home, got some mapo tofu, which was a favorite comfort food back in college and which I don't think I've eaten since then. It was delicious and spicy and good for the sick.

After sleeping from 1 till 4-ish, I dragged myself out of bed and went over to Astor Wines for the Bitter Truth thing, largely because I've had most of the bitters, but they have a whole bunch of products in their line that I have really wanted to try but haven't had an opportunity to. I liked their sloe gin a lot (and how can I not like anything with berry blue in the title?), but the XLR was a little disappointing, mostly because it tasted like a less complex Fernet Branca. Which isn't to say it was bad, but I'll stick with Fernet Branca for that. Their Pimento Dram was really good, really spicy. The guy from The Bitter Truth was awesome and what with all the stuff he was giving us to taste, the free tasting in the store actually took forty minutes. Forty minutes! Usually it takes about five. He also had some really good tips for infusing stuff, and that was cool.

Then I went to my psych appointment, which was nice and mostly positive, and then I went back to get more vodka to make some lilac liqueur, because the vodka violets seem to be much nicer than the gin violets. I picked way more lilacs than I needed and they smell crazy sweet-- much sweeter today than they did when I picked them.

Then I came home and drank more non-alcoholic fluids and just kind of vegged out.

I did, however, finish this!

iridesce57 made a very generous donation to the tornado relief effort, and in return, he asked me to draw a picture of alephz with rattsu. This is the kind of thing that I probably should have done a long time ago since they are both dear friends but I somehow have never drawn them. Probably because they live too far away to be regularly involved in my daily life.

Anyway, here you go!



I hope you all enjoy that.

Now, it is time to go to bed. Blah. I really hope I'm not this sick tomorrow, although if I am I am not dragging myself out of bed.