tea berry-blue

I sort of had an epic gastronomic weekend, let’s just say, and there are lots of pictures forthcoming on Nommable! And stories. And recipes. I’m starting to realize the problem with my whole “Oh, I’m going to separate my blogs in to a food blog and a regular blog, on account of the food taking over the regular blog” is just how much of what I talk about is food or food-related. Gardening! Beekeeping! Drinking things! Howdy!

So then this blog is getting neglected as a result and I feel all bad and sad and sorry for it. Sorry, blog! I would update you if days had 37 hours.

Anyway, a few things:

1) The new King Features site launched last week, and I completely forgot to tell you all. This thing? This beast has seriously been most of what I’ve been doing at work for the past many months. Like, since January. Now it’s done and I can go back to all the things that didn’t get done while I was working on it! It’s pretty exciting, I think!

2) I rollerskated this morning! i got up at the time I usually get up at to jog, and instead put on rollerskates and went VROOM. Or, more like, ka-CHUNK, ka-CHUNK. Kinda awkward! I haven’t skated in like fifteen years, I think, and the last several times I skated were on inline skates and not quads. I was very timorous in my attempt, because, as I discovered when I left the building, every time I skated over one of the seams in the sidewalk, I would go ka-CHUNK, and it was a very herky-jerky beginning. I skated about seven blocks total (round trip), which is kind of pathetic when I usually walk 12 blocks and jog between 1k and 2k in the same amount of time. Trying to cross streets was kind of comical, I had to sort of crab-walk sideways down the little corner ramps and half the time, by the time I had gotten to a place where I could cross the street, the light would have changed against my favor.

It was pretty exhausting, this rollerskating thing. I used my arms a lot, mostly for balance and holding on to things, and the funny thing is that of all the pads I bought, I only got wrist pads because they were free, but they were by far the ones that I needed the most and I am quite grateful to have had them or my wrists would be most brutally bumped. So I still feel like I got as much exercise as if I had done my usual running.

On the way back inside, I tried to go to the basement to see if the basement was suitable for better skating practice than the outdoors. And this is how I discovered that the big sign about how the basement is closed until 8am was true.

All in all, awkward but fun.

3) Do I have a three? I thought I had a three when I was thinking about things I wanted to write about. Oh, yes! Reading! So. I have been stuck on Mister Monday by Garth Nix since before the polar ice caps started to melt. I read this book in 2005 or so, and remembered enjoying it enough that I bought the second and third books, intending to read the whole series– I love his Abhorsen trilogy. But I felt like I should read the first one, seeing as it had been A While. I got about half way through of it. My eyes bled trying to read it. I can’t honestly point out a single thing about it that I would criticize as being bad or weak. But I couldn’t do it.

I played a lot of Angry Birds instead and managed to get all three stars on the first three levels. And wondered if I had gone off reading again, and scolded myself a bit, and then finally decided that I should be doing something productive with my commute rather than playing Angry Birds until kingdom come, and bought some other books. And I just read In the Belly of the Bloodhound which is the fourth of L.A. Meyer’s Bloody Jack books, in about four days. Really three days as I did no reading on Saturday. I picked up A Game of Thrones and read fifteen pages on the subway.

So I have decided that it is not me, it’s Mister Monday, and I am going to get back into the habit of reading lots and lots of books. I realize that A Game of Thrones might take me the better part of a year to read, but that’s still better than I was doing with Mister Monday, which is not even a dense, difficult or complex tome. I got the fifth Bloody Jack book as well as Fire by Kristin Cashore, because I love Graceling.

4) I just want to mention that all of you should be reading Jess Herself, kandigurl‘s blog. Seriously. I have been loving everything she’s written lately. We’ve been LJ friends for a long time, but she’s recently put a lot more effort into writing in a vein that I find incredible inspirational and encouraging as far as helping me think about my own life and interests. She has a really tenacious spirit and is oozing positivity all over the place, and if you are not reading her stuff, you should do yourself a favor and start.

That is it for now! Smooches!

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

PS, LJ is being weird as heck right now, so if this posts twice or even three times, I apologize and will take care of that when I can.

I sort of had an epic gastronomic weekend, let’s just say, and there are lots of pictures forthcoming on Nommable! And stories. And recipes. I’m starting to realize the problem with my whole “Oh, I’m going to separate my blogs in to a food blog and a regular blog, on account of the food taking over the regular blog” is just how much of what I talk about is food or food-related. Gardening! Beekeeping! Drinking things! Howdy!

So then this blog is getting neglected as a result and I feel all bad and sad and sorry for it. Sorry, blog! I would update you if days had 37 hours.

Anyway, a few things:

1) The new King Features site launched last week, and I completely forgot to tell you all. This thing? This beast has seriously been most of what I’ve been doing at work for the past many months. Like, since January. Now it’s done and I can go back to all the things that didn’t get done while I was working on it! It’s pretty exciting, I think!

2) I rollerskated this morning! i got up at the time I usually get up at to jog, and instead put on rollerskates and went VROOM. Or, more like, ka-CHUNK, ka-CHUNK. Kinda awkward! I haven’t skated in like fifteen years, I think, and the last several times I skated were on inline skates and not quads. I was very timorous in my attempt, because, as I discovered when I left the building, every time I skated over one of the seams in the sidewalk, I would go ka-CHUNK, and it was a very herky-jerky beginning. I skated about seven blocks total (round trip), which is kind of pathetic when I usually walk 12 blocks and jog between 1k and 2k in the same amount of time. Trying to cross streets was kind of comical, I had to sort of crab-walk sideways down the little corner ramps and half the time, by the time I had gotten to a place where I could cross the street, the light would have changed against my favor.

It was pretty exhausting, this rollerskating thing. I used my arms a lot, mostly for balance and holding on to things, and the funny thing is that of all the pads I bought, I only got wrist pads because they were free, but they were by far the ones that I needed the most and I am quite grateful to have had them or my wrists would be most brutally bumped. So I still feel like I got as much exercise as if I had done my usual running.

On the way back inside, I tried to go to the basement to see if the basement was suitable for better skating practice than the outdoors. And this is how I discovered that the big sign about how the basement is closed until 8am was true.

All in all, awkward but fun.

3) Do I have a three? I thought I had a three when I was thinking about things I wanted to write about. Oh, yes! Reading! So. I have been stuck on Mister Monday by Garth Nix since before the polar ice caps started to melt. I read this book in 2005 or so, and remembered enjoying it enough that I bought the second and third books, intending to read the whole series– I love his Abhorsen trilogy. But I felt like I should read the first one, seeing as it had been A While. I got about half way through of it. My eyes bled trying to read it. I can’t honestly point out a single thing about it that I would criticize as being bad or weak. But I couldn’t do it.

I played a lot of Angry Birds instead and managed to get all three stars on the first three levels. And wondered if I had gone off reading again, and scolded myself a bit, and then finally decided that I should be doing something productive with my commute rather than playing Angry Birds until kingdom come, and bought some other books. And I just read In the Belly of the Bloodhound which is the fourth of L.A. Meyer’s Bloody Jack books, in about four days. Really three days as I did no reading on Saturday. I picked up A Game of Thrones and read fifteen pages on the subway.

So I have decided that it is not me, it’s Mister Monday, and I am going to get back into the habit of reading lots and lots of books. I realize that A Game of Thrones might take me the better part of a year to read, but that’s still better than I was doing with Mister Monday, which is not even a dense, difficult or complex tome. I got the fifth Bloody Jack book as well as Fire by Kristin Cashore, because I love Graceling.

4) I just want to mention that all of you should be reading Jess Herself, kandigurl‘s blog. Seriously. I have been loving everything she’s written lately. We’ve been LJ friends for a long time, but she’s recently put a lot more effort into writing in a vein that I find incredible inspirational and encouraging as far as helping me think about my own life and interests. She has a really tenacious spirit and is oozing positivity all over the place, and if you are not reading her stuff, you should do yourself a favor and start.

That is it for now! Smooches!

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

PS, LJ is being weird as heck right now, so if this posts twice or even three times, I apologize and will take care of that when I can.

I designed a new website for quizzicalsphinx's RPG, which you can see here. I'm very pleased with it. It's a bit sparse right now, but it's basically just up so it looks nice; we don't do hardcore recruitment. I am very pleased with the design, though! If you go to the About Us page, there are little cartoon me-and Lynettes. I'll be putting up an art gallery on the site in the near future, I would like to say this week, but I have been flitting from one project to the next like a little hummingbird as of late.

Also, I had dinner with spiralstairs last night and I am super pleased that she is back in New York! We had Thai food, and I showed her my new little apartment.

I finished Fairest and now I am reading The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo. It is very sweet and has gorgeous illustrations and nice book design. This is kind of wild because so far this year? I have read more books than seen movies. That's like, unheard of in Tea-land. But I have been trying to read more. I'm a very slow reader, and it tends to frustrate me, while I'm a very astute film-watcher, and movies take the same amount of time no matter how quick or slow you are. So I usually default to films. But reading! I don't know. I read a lot more when I was a kid, and I think I stopped in college, when it became difficult to read anything on top of my course load. I mean, I didn't stop completely, but I was lucky if I read more than one non-comic book a month. I would like to read more!

The last of the holiday hats is in the mail, and seori, it should reach you in the next few days. I didn't mention them outright because I didn't want to spoil it for anyone, but guys, to those of you who took pictures of yourselves in your holiday hats, thank you so much! It was a joy to see you all wearing them!

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, instead of cards this year, I sent everyone who requested a card a hat, and I tried to match it to their favorite colors as they listed them on my gift card post. I made almost forty hats in a month, and then mailed them at the post office, which was a nightmare in and of itself, because, you see, the local post office won't let you mail more than ten packages at a time at the desk, no matter how small they are. So I had thirty-six packages to mail out, and several of them were meant to go abroad, which means I had to mail them at the desk. I waited on line for the automated postal machine, but the problem is, they took out all the stamp vending machines in the post office. So the only way to buy stamps is with the automated machine. There wasn't anyone behind me when I started, but by about five packages in, the line was starting to build up, so I turned to the line and explained the problem and said I would do a few at a time and then let the next person go, and then a few more, etc.

One of the women threw a fucking shit fit, which would have been understandable if she had been the last person on the line, but she was only the third person, including me. So it was only as if she were the fourth person. She started bitching me out about how I had to go to the counter and it wasn't fair for me to use the machine. So I tried to explain that I couldn't used the counter. She went and got a postal worker and tried to get the lady to tell me I had to go use the counter. But the lady was like, "uh, no, actually, she's not allowed to use the counter, she has to use the machine." And then the flip-outtie lady, you could tell that she got very apologetic and realized that I had not been lying to try to delay her mailing stuff. Although she probably could have been done and out of there and she kind of ended up holding up the line longer than it took me to mail five hats, but she was nice after that.

It took me over an hour to get the hats down to a number where I had under ten and could wait on the regular line, which I did. Ten more minutes of waiting, and then those hats were mailed, and I was out.

seori was away when all this went down, so I didn't mail her hat till yesterday. But when I went to mail it, I was all, hee, this time I only have one thing.

And then I slid my card through the little slidey-pay thing at the register, and the lady's computer glitched up like whoa. So then I had to sit there and wait while she got her machine fixed because we weren't sure if the payment had gone through or not, so she didn't want to send me to another register to ring me up and charge me double. Which was fair, but oh, post office, you are so totally inefficient on purpose.

I totally just edited this post with an ETA that was longer than the original post. Win, me!

I designed a new website for quizzicalsphinx's RPG, which you can see here. I'm very pleased with it. It's a bit sparse right now, but it's basically just up so it looks nice; we don't do hardcore recruitment. I am very pleased with the design, though! If you go to the About Us page, there are little cartoon me-and Lynettes. I'll be putting up an art gallery on the site in the near future, I would like to say this week, but I have been flitting from one project to the next like a little hummingbird as of late.

Also, I had dinner with spiralstairs last night and I am super pleased that she is back in New York! We had Thai food, and I showed her my new little apartment.

I finished Fairest and now I am reading The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo. It is very sweet and has gorgeous illustrations and nice book design. This is kind of wild because so far this year? I have read more books than seen movies. That's like, unheard of in Tea-land. But I have been trying to read more. I'm a very slow reader, and it tends to frustrate me, while I'm a very astute film-watcher, and movies take the same amount of time no matter how quick or slow you are. So I usually default to films. But reading! I don't know. I read a lot more when I was a kid, and I think I stopped in college, when it became difficult to read anything on top of my course load. I mean, I didn't stop completely, but I was lucky if I read more than one non-comic book a month. I would like to read more!

The last of the holiday hats is in the mail, and seori, it should reach you in the next few days. I didn't mention them outright because I didn't want to spoil it for anyone, but guys, to those of you who took pictures of yourselves in your holiday hats, thank you so much! It was a joy to see you all wearing them!

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, instead of cards this year, I sent everyone who requested a card a hat, and I tried to match it to their favorite colors as they listed them on my gift card post. I made almost forty hats in a month, and then mailed them at the post office, which was a nightmare in and of itself, because, you see, the local post office won't let you mail more than ten packages at a time at the desk, no matter how small they are. So I had thirty-six packages to mail out, and several of them were meant to go abroad, which means I had to mail them at the desk. I waited on line for the automated postal machine, but the problem is, they took out all the stamp vending machines in the post office. So the only way to buy stamps is with the automated machine. There wasn't anyone behind me when I started, but by about five packages in, the line was starting to build up, so I turned to the line and explained the problem and said I would do a few at a time and then let the next person go, and then a few more, etc.

One of the women threw a fucking shit fit, which would have been understandable if she had been the last person on the line, but she was only the third person, including me. So it was only as if she were the fourth person. She started bitching me out about how I had to go to the counter and it wasn't fair for me to use the machine. So I tried to explain that I couldn't used the counter. She went and got a postal worker and tried to get the lady to tell me I had to go use the counter. But the lady was like, "uh, no, actually, she's not allowed to use the counter, she has to use the machine." And then the flip-outtie lady, you could tell that she got very apologetic and realized that I had not been lying to try to delay her mailing stuff. Although she probably could have been done and out of there and she kind of ended up holding up the line longer than it took me to mail five hats, but she was nice after that.

It took me over an hour to get the hats down to a number where I had under ten and could wait on the regular line, which I did. Ten more minutes of waiting, and then those hats were mailed, and I was out.

seori was away when all this went down, so I didn't mail her hat till yesterday. But when I went to mail it, I was all, hee, this time I only have one thing.

And then I slid my card through the little slidey-pay thing at the register, and the lady's computer glitched up like whoa. So then I had to sit there and wait while she got her machine fixed because we weren't sure if the payment had gone through or not, so she didn't want to send me to another register to ring me up and charge me double. Which was fair, but oh, post office, you are so totally inefficient on purpose.

I totally just edited this post with an ETA that was longer than the original post. Win, me!

I just got back from seeing "Waltz With Bashir." I had seen the previews for it and in spite of it winning a zillion awards, I thought it looked like someone's crappy flash movie.

Then it won the best picture awared from The Society of Film Critics.

I don't know if they just felt bad for not recognizing last year's Middle-Eastern autobiographical animated film about political strife in the 1980s, which was awesome? Because I can't for the life of me get why this thing that looks like one of those animated Charles Schwab ads and sounds like a bunch of Israeli soldiers trying to pass the buck Nuremberg-defense style ("Oh, well, I told my commander that the massacre was going on; I figured he would do something about it.") is supposed to be better than Slumdog Millionaire, Frost/Nixon, or Milk. Is it because they have never seen an edgy animated film before?

Granted, out of the 87 minutes of footage, there were three or four sequences that were visually stunning, but that amounts to maybe less time than Rhino the Hamster is onscreen during Bolt.

So, yeah, totally not impressed with this movie. And it is very rare that I dislike a movie so much that I consider leaving fifteen minutes into it. I didn't. But I wanted to.

Something good did come out of the experience, though! I made this!




I am also reading Gail Carson Levine's "Fairest." She has now done retellings of two of the fairy tales I have always wanted to do retellings of-- "Ella Enchanted" came out when I was two chapters into the first draft of my own Cinderella retellng and it really discouraged me for a while-- but I love that book. This one is excellent as well, so far. I am really pleased, because I was not as big a fan of "The Two Princesses of Bamarre."

If it's possible to spoil Sandman, I'm doing it below. But most of my rambling will make no sense to someone that's not a fan and might be entertaining.

( EEEEE ENDLESS NIGHTS )

If it's possible to spoil Sandman, I'm doing it below. But most of my rambling will make no sense to someone that's not a fan and might be entertaining.

( EEEEE ENDLESS NIGHTS )