tea berry-blue

Hey, all! Just wanted to pop in to say HI AND I LOVE YOU.

Been bad at updating. The LJ "update" to the friends feed doesn't work half the time and that means I forget to post. And, you know, have difficulty checking YOUR posts. My apologies!

Also busy like a busy thing. Work, distillery, lots of fun times going on these days. I realized the beginning of this week that I basically do not have a free night until sometime two weeks or so from now. And I like it that way.

Life is lifey, pretty much loving everything these days, which is kinda awesome. I have amazing friends and love my city.

And I love you!

So, I haven't posted since December 29.

That is over a month and I suspect the longest time I have ever gone without posting since I got my LiveJournal TEN YEARS BEFORE.

It was accidental at first. I was extraordinarily busy at work, and busy in non-work, and most of my internet time was going to hogwarts_elite.

Then like three weeks passed. And I was like, "huh, gee, I haven't posted in three weeks." But it was the day of the Internet Blackout, and I felt as if popping up to be all HEY I AM HERE ON THE INTERNETS on that day was a bit...well, counterintuitive. And then I sat and thought about it.

And you know, sometimes I challenge myself to post every day for A BILLION YEARS, and I post every day for a while. I decided maybe I should go a month without posting.

So the month passed a few days ago. And it actually felt...well, hard to post. I had to bring myself to make this post, to force myself to come out of my hibernation. I haven't quite decided what that means for me.

But it has been making me think more about my internet life, and how I live it, and my various blogs, and what I use them for. I'm not going away-- I'm not being like, "YES I LOVED THAT TIME AWAY FROM BLOGGING," because I have met most of the people I love most in my life as a result of being on the internet and particularly being on LJ, and for some of you whom I met other ways, it has only strengthened our friendships, and that can only be a good thing. But I think I have become more conscious of my relationship with my various blogging outlets, and that is a positive thing to do.

There are so many things that I meant to post to you all this past month. I have not. And some of them I realize are not necessary to tell you about, and some of them I will.

liret posted an article about Why It's Better to Start Your New Year in February, and I feel like that's what I've been accomplishing.

I don't really make New Year's resolutions. I find them to be counter to my personality and in some ways problematic. I'm one of those very goal-oriented people in a lot of ways, but in a sort of semi-self-destructive way where once I set a goal, I follow it through even once I realize it's not really what I want. Because I don't want to be a quitter. And that's not really very good. It is perfectly reasonable to quit something that makes me unhappy.

But I started thinking, around the end of the year, about the things I accomplished to become a more whole and healthy and functional person, and how I improved me.

Some of the things I did that I am really proud of:
--I started using a wallet. I know, I'm 33 years old and this is an accomplishment, right? But it is! I totally have done a great job since August of keeping my money and credit cards, Metrocard and work ID in a wallet, and I have only misplaced my word ID and my Metrocard once each. I used to misplaced them each about once a week-- or it was at very least very difficult to find them in my bag. Now, it is never a problem.
--I have vastly improved my skin. I have pretty break-outy skin. I started washing my face every single morning, using over the counter acne medication, and sometimes cleaning it with a facial pad sometimes at night. I still break out a little bit, but overall I don't feel like a pizza face most of the time.
--I have also improved my dental hygiene. I have always brushed my teeth, but I usually only brushed them in the morning. I have gotten into the habit of brushing in the morning and at night, and also flossing. FLOSSING. THAT IS SOMETHING GROWN UPS DO.
--I did some brave things, that are out of my character to do. Some of them didn't work out as I would have hoped, but I did them, and I am proud of that. Some of them have worked out and have made me more confident in general as a result.
--I have, and this is probably the most important, vastly expanded my social life. A year ago, I pretty much didn't have one. I mean, sure, I would do things with friends occasionally, and once in a while I would attend a party, but now I actually have difficulty finding free nights to do things. I try to keep one free evening a week for myself, just so that I have a night to veg out and recharge, but it doesn't always happen. Ah, the swing of the pendulum!

Those are all things I'm really proud of. I wrote more, but I drew almost no comics. And I think that's okay. I tend to be one of those people who gets very intensely into something for a while and then gets burned out a bit. I need to figure out how to be an allthinginmoderation type of person, but I just don't know if that is in my nature.

Anyway, moving forward this year, I started reading some of my friends' resolutions, and decided that since I don't make resolutions myself, I could help other people fulfill theirs by piggybacking on them, so to speak, and by supporting them by engaging them in continuing to keep up the things they want to do. For example, intrepia and I have started taking a walk for an hour once a week through Central Park. It has the dual benefits of getting exercise and helping us learn the paths in Central Park, which are many and varied and winding.

I would like to do the same with you! Not necessarily the walking, per se, but if there are ways that you would like support to fulfill your goals, please let me know!

Some things I personally need to work on:
--Fitness. I have lost track of any kind of fitness goals and gotten pretty out of shape since moving to Queens. My exercise used to be very easily built into my day, but it isn't anymore, so doing exercisey things means taking time out of my free time, which annoys me. And with dwindling free time (see my social life, above), it's taking time out of the hobbies I really want to cultivate, like writing and drawing. I need to figure out a way to make these things work together again.
--Sleeping. My sleeping habits are for shit lately. Partly, again, for the same reason-- a longer commute (up earlier!) plus less free time to do the things I want to get done (and the things I don't, like chores), means that my sleep has been for shit this past year. In prior years, I did a pretty good job of making sure I always got seven hours of sleep. Now I am down to about six. I can tell it's affecting me physically and emotionally, and it annoys me that on the weekends, I end up sleeping ten hours because I'm obviously trying to catch up, and then I can't get up on time to do things like go to half price movies.
--Cleaning. I am the messiest messy ever to messy. EVER. And it's only getting worse. It doesn't matter how much I try, I am hideously bad at keeping my apartment clean. And, well, to be perfectly honest, it's because I *don't* try. I don't really know how to try. I walk in the door and dump stuff on the floor, and it doesn't even occur to me in the moment that that is what I'm doing. Everything goes on the floor without my thinking about it. I rarely succeed in washing my dishes right after eating. I don't put my laundry away. Things in my apartment go months between cleaning, and this is embarrassing and also a dent on my social life because I can't invite people over. I can only go out to other places. And that means social engagements take longer. NOT THAT ANYONE EVER WANTS TO COME TO QUEENS ANYWAY.

So, those are the things I need to work on. Mostly things that I think will improve my overall physical and emotional health. Sound good? If you are the kind of person who learned how to be successful (it doesn't help if you've always been successful, because you don't know what it's like to transition from being failtastic to fantastic at these things) at any of the above habits, I would like to hear about it. Tell me your stories!!!! mel06 has been actually using the grown up equivalent of a star chart, and I am thinking that might be the way to go.

Love to everyone!!!

My legs are so itchy I don't even know what to do. Look at them!




The mosquito bites this summer have been the worst, worst thing that has ever happened to me in the annals of bugbite history. Only at my parents. Only in the evening. I get eaten alive and soon there will be no more of me to eat!

On the other hand, I look super cute at work today:



Other things you should know:

--hogwarts_elite is back in full swing and YOU SHOULD ALL APPLY. Yes, I am talking to you. And you, and especially YOU. It is more active than it has been in years! So much fun.

--I am taking classes at Amor Y Amargo. WHO HAS TWO THUMBS AND IS GOING TO MAKE HER OWN BITTERS? THIS LADY.

--I made a public playlist on Spotify if you are using it. It's here. There are only five songs in it, but here's what I'm doing: every time I catch myself humming or singing a song to myself repeatedly, it goes in the public playlist. This isn't necessarily a playlist of my favorite songs, and I am sure at some point I am going to get something I hate stuck in my head and it will end up in there too, but a list of the songs that are on my brain. So right now, you can go listen to about 23 minutes of what is on my brain. I'll keep updating it.

I have so many photos and recipes to post, you have no idea. SO MANY. To both blogs.

My legs are so itchy I don't even know what to do. Look at them!




The mosquito bites this summer have been the worst, worst thing that has ever happened to me in the annals of bugbite history. Only at my parents. Only in the evening. I get eaten alive and soon there will be no more of me to eat!

On the other hand, I look super cute at work today:



Other things you should know:

--hogwarts_elite is back in full swing and YOU SHOULD ALL APPLY. Yes, I am talking to you. And you, and especially YOU. It is more active than it has been in years! So much fun.

--I am taking classes at Amor Y Amargo. WHO HAS TWO THUMBS AND IS GOING TO MAKE HER OWN BITTERS? THIS LADY.

--I made a public playlist on Spotify if you are using it. It's here. There are only five songs in it, but here's what I'm doing: every time I catch myself humming or singing a song to myself repeatedly, it goes in the public playlist. This isn't necessarily a playlist of my favorite songs, and I am sure at some point I am going to get something I hate stuck in my head and it will end up in there too, but a list of the songs that are on my brain. So right now, you can go listen to about 23 minutes of what is on my brain. I'll keep updating it.

I have so many photos and recipes to post, you have no idea. SO MANY. To both blogs.

Oh crap, I forgot to post this to LJ.

Coming home from Jo & Erik's house last night, I was doing this very bad and dangerous thing called reading and walking. I had also been drinking, although I doubt very much the drinking had anything to do with how engrossed I was in my book.

I walked right the fuck into an iron fence.

This is what my knee looks like now:



...but you should see the fence.

So, I wanted to write down some stuff about the dream I had the night before last.

( I have long and involved dreams )

In waking news, yesterday was AWESOME. I went over to Rina's house to color a cartoon for her, and she paid me in dinner. So usually when I go over, I pack up my knapsack with liquor and other delectable things (like sometimes sorbets or whatnot) and bring them over and mix drinks. But I didn't because we were going to dinner and figured Rina would want to get the coloring done and just get out the door, and then I got there, and Rina asks if I want a drink. My only regret is that I didn't bring over some of the pickled cherries and my bottle of Root. But Brendan has these bottles of Royal Rose syrups, which are phenom, and some wormwood bitters I hadn't tried, so I played around with those, and then went up and did some coloring, and then we walked a few blocks to this new restaurant in our neighborhood called SALT & FAT. Yes, that is the name.

This place was seriously the best meal I have had in my neighborhood. The only problem is they don't have a bar, although they have a great spot for one should they wish to remedy this (they should). First off, they give you pork fat cooked popcorn as soon as you walk in, and, um. Unlimited little bags of hot pork fat popcorn. Rina and I shared a bunch of small plates; we had scallops and meatballs and little porkbelly BLT Beijing kao ya style buns, and omg oxtail. Seriously good oxtail with seriously good roasted mushrooms. And a couple of beers, and we chatted a while about writing and stuff and oh my god that oxtail. So we are definitely going to be going back there. If they had a bar, I don't know if the rest of you would hear from me ever again. I need to go back with my camera and do a proper review.

Oh, also: I wrote this excellent post about ice cream and dinosaurs night before last but a couple people said it didn't show up on their flist. So I'm posting a link: ice cream and dinosaurs. It also has my friend Steve's excellent old timey folksy band playing Folsom Prison Blues.

So, I wanted to write down some stuff about the dream I had the night before last.

( I have long and involved dreams )

In waking news, yesterday was AWESOME. I went over to Rina's house to color a cartoon for her, and she paid me in dinner. So usually when I go over, I pack up my knapsack with liquor and other delectable things (like sometimes sorbets or whatnot) and bring them over and mix drinks. But I didn't because we were going to dinner and figured Rina would want to get the coloring done and just get out the door, and then I got there, and Rina asks if I want a drink. My only regret is that I didn't bring over some of the pickled cherries and my bottle of Root. But Brendan has these bottles of Royal Rose syrups, which are phenom, and some wormwood bitters I hadn't tried, so I played around with those, and then went up and did some coloring, and then we walked a few blocks to this new restaurant in our neighborhood called SALT & FAT. Yes, that is the name.

This place was seriously the best meal I have had in my neighborhood. The only problem is they don't have a bar, although they have a great spot for one should they wish to remedy this (they should). First off, they give you pork fat cooked popcorn as soon as you walk in, and, um. Unlimited little bags of hot pork fat popcorn. Rina and I shared a bunch of small plates; we had scallops and meatballs and little porkbelly BLT Beijing kao ya style buns, and omg oxtail. Seriously good oxtail with seriously good roasted mushrooms. And a couple of beers, and we chatted a while about writing and stuff and oh my god that oxtail. So we are definitely going to be going back there. If they had a bar, I don't know if the rest of you would hear from me ever again. I need to go back with my camera and do a proper review.

Oh, also: I wrote this excellent post about ice cream and dinosaurs night before last but a couple people said it didn't show up on their flist. So I'm posting a link: ice cream and dinosaurs. It also has my friend Steve's excellent old timey folksy band playing Folsom Prison Blues.

…waiting to go home from Delaware. The train is about ten minutes late, and the GPS overestimated the length of our trip by about 30 minutes, so all in all I have had about an hour in the station. They just announced the train delay, so I though I’d take a few moments to update, because, wonder of wonders, the Wilmington train station has free wireless for its passengers. Excellent, I say!

Had a lovely weekend with my family. Grandparents are doing well, and I got to see my cousin Jeremy for the first time in about twenty years. He has five kids now! One daughter from his first marriage, three stepchildren, and a new baby! His kids are all adorable and precocious and amazing and they were so much fun. We went to my cousin Shannon’s wedding reception (she got married in the Carribean somewhere, I forget where), and had a delicious cake which is the official state cake of Maryland, that I’d never had before. It was one of the best wedding cakes I’d ever had (traditionally, it’s chocolate, but Shannon had it in strawberry, orange, and banana. I tried strawberry and orange as bananas are my mortal enemy.)

Some sad news, though! Chick Luisi, aka Salty Bob (according to Jess) died this weekend. My dad got up to the house and found her with her neck broken in the hen yard.

At first he didn’t tell us her neck was broken and I felt terrible and horribly guilty that we didn’t do enough to prevent heat stroke, or that maybe the chickens had gotten sick and would all die.

But then he told us about her neck, and while I am still sad that we lost a chick, it sounds like it was the work of one of the bigger chickens, which, I hear happens from time to time. We suspect Chick Luisi was not really a hen but a rooster (she was showing signs of not being female) and this is not uncommon. My dad is still sort of freaking out and thinks a wild animal got into the henyard, so he took a giant Santa Claus that my parents use as Christmas decoration and set it up outside because he is convinced that will scare away the wild animals. My mother is convinced it will just weather damage Santa.

Anyway, very sad to lose a chick. :-( Here is the last picture I took of her last weekend.

Time to pack up for the train! Love you all! <3 <3 More later!

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

There was something I wanted to do after work today but I can't remember what.

I just took our art director's intern out to lunch. She is so adorable and eager and ambitious and bright and talented and I wish so many positive and happy things for her. She sort of reminds me of a young shaenon in a lot of ways. It was super fun to sit and chat with a smart young lady about comics and about working in comics. Really positive. She kept thanking me profusely but it was really good for me too.

My mom went to the orthopedist and she is OK. Her wrist is sprained but her knee is much better than the original diagnosis-- it's a bone bruise, not a torn ligament, and will heal on its lonesome.

I strained all my new liqueurs last week and started a couple more last night (two rose ones and a burdock one), but I have a problem. I think the lilac liqueur is actually triggering my asthma. My asthma had not been bad in a while until last night when I drank it. What the heck, life!? It's okay because the dandelion and lilac ones are much better.

Speaking of triggering, I have been having this (possibly TMI) horrible thing happen lately where brushing my teeth triggers my gag reflex. It happened last week and it keeps happening! It's horrendous. The only thing worse than the taste of puke is the taste of puke and toothpaste together. Yeah, I know you wanted to hear about that, so I told you, because I am a classy lady.

Oh! Tattoos! I am getting my bees next Thursday. How exciting is that? BEEEEEES. The tattoo artist is super sweet, and she listened to me geek out about things like different breed-specific markings that I wanted to have visible on the bees. AWESOME.

Tomorrow, I am going to be out all day at a thing. A comics thing. It's a legendary comics party that I have been hearing about for years and this is my first time attending? I am pretty excited.

I'm having a little moment of lack of focus. I hate that. Just having trouble getting back into working on stuff after lunch out and some really invigorating conversation. Oh! Oh! Oh!

News: I built my first ePub from scratch, and it works, and it is awesome. Just so you know, in case anyone is looking for help developing ePubs that are not straight flowed text (either picture books or comics or whatever), I now know how to do this thing! Excitement and possibly updating the resume to follow. God, I am a nerd.

I think that is it for now. I need to decide what I am going to eat for dinner since dinner the past two nights was brownies.

Working, working, working!

So I meant to take a photo! Yesterday, I met up with nervousystem in Brooklyn because he said he had some comics for me. We got some delicious Thai food and he hands me this bag...full of giant fucking graphic novels. Some of which I have read, but none of which I own. Eee, so excited. So yes, we had a very nice dinner and talked at length about comics and the comic marketplace and comic business models and the DC reboot and stuff, and this totally new thing DC is doing called "Green Lantern." It's very exciting and completely new and it has a lantern that is green, if the title is anything to go off of.

It was fun! Then I went home and played with quizzicalsphinx and chatted to gildedage and alephz a bit, and I'm a little disappointed that I'm going to be down one of my favorite AIM buddies, but it is for an acceptable reason because his mommy is coming to visit him. And he said some funny things about marriage equality that I meant to post, but then forgot to save the IM window.

ETA: OMG alephz is the best and sent me the things he said:

alephz: "If we admit that a woman can have a full say in this, we'd have to give a -dog- full say and everyone knows dogs can't sign contracts, so neither can females. I eat poop." LOOK THERE IS ONLY SO MUCH MAN-NESS AND IT ONLY GETS SPREAD IF YOU HAVE SEX WITH LADIES AND BLOO-DEE-BLAH.

My super stopped by at 11pm! Eleven! To check my stove. He said he thinks he might be able to fix it, so he's going over there today during the day to check it out. Otherwise, new stove for me? Hmmm. As long as I can make my freaking bacon ice cream, I will be happy.

I had very good news this morning but it is not my news to tell. SO EXCITING.

justatailor and I are going to Death & Company tonight, which will be excellent. The last time I was there they were going through this weird period of having drinks that tasted like gummi bears but the new menu looks much more promising. Nom nom nom.

I keep forgetting to bring my camera places lately. So sad! I feel like a photo-taking failure.

Lunchtime! I am tempted to go over to Grom after lunch, but Brendan keeps telling me to go to Bomboloni although I have only ever had doughnuts there and not gelato. Hm.

Also, if you have a moment, it would be much appreciated if you could write to or callNYS Senator Skelos and ask him to hear the Marriage Equality Act.

You can also contact these undecided senators about why marriage equality is important.
Kemp Hannon
Greg Ball
Mark Grisanti

Remember, if you do this, I will DRAW YOU A CAT AS A THING.

I hope you are all having a luscious day!

ETA: Yeah, so. I went to Bomboloni. The gelato did not look nearly as good as the Grom gelato, and I was highly disappointed. However, I was in a store full of tiny delicious bomboloni so this was lunch:



Perfectly acceptable lunch, y/y?