So I totally didin't realise NCIS was new this week. Which is why Sam's Three Things are BELATED.
Spoilers for Episode 7.10, ( Faith )
3a. Okay normally I would mention how I absolutely DID NOT tear up at the end, with McGee and the Most Adorable Child Ever, but instead I have to say this: I watched the latest episode of Merlin last night as well, The Fires Of We're Not Nazguls, Really, We're Not, and the first ten minutes were the most awesome ten minutes of Merlin ever, followed by the most ridiculously stupid forty minutes ever (okay not the most ridiculously stupid of Merlin, though, that would be the fucking troll episodes).
OMG YOU GUYS DID YOU SEE MERLIN THROW HIM HIS SWORD THAT WAS TOTALLY BADASS AND THEN HE DRESSED MERLIN'S WOUNDS WITH HIS OWN. CLOTHES. AHAHAHA.
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AHAHAHAHAHAA I THOUGHT I WAS GOING INSANE.
I decided that Domino's Pizza was not a healthy option in my life, so about two months back I stopped ordering it. Which really means I stopped eating pizza, mostly, because local pizza places are either too expensive or too shit (yes, shittier than Domino's, I know that takes effort) and Domino's is the only chain place that delivers to my area.
The night before I went traveling I decided, well, I can have one once in a while, and I ordered a Domino's pizza.
It tasted awful.
I thought, great. I've weaned myself off the one pizza I used to tolerate. Now I don't even like Domino's. The sauce is gross and what's up with the garlic salt on the crust?
THEN I SAW THIS. Dominos refomulated their entire pizza recipe.
They say it's only available in Ann Arbor, but it's definitely available at my local Domino's too, and it is foul. The sauce in particular is offputting (red pepper kick, not so much, too sweet, oh yes), and the garlic salt on the crust just tastes of grease.
BUT AT LEAST I'M NOT CRAZY.
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![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) sams_cafe |
| 2009-12-16 11:27 |
| (no subject) |
| Public |
I got my bloodwork back from my doctor yesterday, but I'd already posted a bunch so I didn't want to spam. I am reasonably healthy for someone who falls down a lot, though I am Vitamin D deficient (Vitamin D-ficient!) so she gave me a prescription. Let's recount the pills I now take on a daily basis:
4 Calcium (2 morning, 2 evening)
4 Naproxen Sodium (2 morning, 2 evening)
1 Vitamin D (evening)
1/2 - 1 Vicodin (evening as needed)
These are all prescribed by my doctors and in the correct doses, mind you. Finally my body is beginning to match my 83-year-old personality. All I need now is a cane and a pair of high-waisted trousers.
The doctor also thinks I should pre-emptively lean towards The Mediterranean Diet to keep up heart health since my family has a History. This particular dietary structure recommends a lot of bread, rice, potatoes, fruit, legumes, and nuts, and fish as the primary meat. This suits me to the ground and means I can eat a lot of sushi guilt-free.
I'm just going to politely ignore the bit about eating a shit-ton of vegetables, and buy more carrots.
Man they want me to eat a lot of olive oil though. How do you get that much olive oil in your system? There's only so much you can dunk in it, and I like hummus but it gets old fast.
Maybe I should just do a shot of it every now and then. I could call it the Greasy Martini. "It's a shot of olive oil...with an olive in it. Shaken, not stirred."
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MUM SENT ME GROCERIES.
I love her. She knows of my passion for bagelfuls!
(I would like to say that while I love brie, the "brie log" is ill-concieved. Too much rind. It's not bad, and it's convenient for cracker snacking, but you're better off buying a wheel.)
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In the insanity of this morning, and of learning how to make ebooks (my curve is steep!) I almost forgot to tell the best story of my day.
Yesterday we got a flyer about a special deal that a few downtown hotels are offering to employees of downtown businesses. It was a little bit vague on the details, so I called the central number and asked a few questions. The woman I spoke to was SO PLEASED I was going to spread the word that she took down my name, company, and email address.
Cue an hour later, a rep from the hotel company shows up at the office and brings me a bag of candy and a GIFT CERTIFICATE for a free night's stay at one of the hotels, as a thank-you.
IT'S STAYCATION TIME.
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I am upright! And coherent!
Okay, semi-coherent. But coherent enough to complete all my work tasks with a minimum of bewildered weeping.
Actually I have some very exciting stuff to share with you this morning.
First, 51stcenturyfox gave me a lovely early Christmas present -- www.extribulum.com. It's my very own domain name! Which is good 'cause damned if I know how to set stuff like that up. :D
Right now it redirects to my Lulu storefront, but I hope to badass up a website sooner or later. Thank you very much, Foxy! (She also wrote me a lovely poem about it.)
And, if you visit www.extribulum.com (link your friends! :D) you will notice that Nameless is now listed twice -- once at the top of the page and once at the bottom. This is because shezan poked me into action and Lulu provided the means to create an ePub file of Nameless. Yep -- you can now download Nameless, the e-book, and load it into the ePub reader of your choice.
Because a lot of people who have bought the book or downloaded the PDF would like it as an ePub, it seems a bit unfair to charge for it right off. The ebook will be free until the end of the month, at which point I'll raise the price to $3 (about $1.80 of that is profit; for some reason you can give the thing away, but if you charge for it Lulu takes a fair-sized chunk).
You guys will have to let me know how it looks, 'cause the Calibri e-reader's kind of buggy and tends to make random sentences disappear until you resize the screen, at which point it makes other random sentences disappear. :D
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| sams_cafe |
| 2009-12-14 11:31 |
| (no subject) |
| Public |
I am home from the clinic! (for those of you reading on IJ and JF mirrors, I have a sprained/possibly torn MCL. No breaks!)
I'm to ice and elevate today. I got a prescription for vicodin and didn't check it before I filled it -- holy crap he gave me 30 500-mg tablets. So I'm taking half-tablets, which should be more than enough.
You can tell I was a little bit high when I filled the prescription. I bought vicodin, Calcium tablets (I was almost out), a spare Ace bandage, a toothbrush, two Snickers bars, and a jar of jam. I don't even remember buying the jar of jam.
I can't recommend Michigan Avenue Immediate Care highly enough, for those in Chicago who don't have a doctor or need to see a doctor NOW but don't want to go to the ER. I was seen within half an hour, they charge on a sliding scale so you can generally get fairly cheap medical care if you don't have insurance, and they have really nice doctors.
I did have to do the Walk Of Shame in my pyjamas, but that's why I wore pyjamas instead of just jeans, so I didn't have to keep taking off my pants; I could just wear my pjs and roll up the cuff. Undressing and taking off my shoes are the hardest thing right now.
I am going to go sit down forever.
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I AM HOME. The shuttle took FOREVER because he decided to drive up Halsted. WHY? WHY NOT!
I am sitting in bed with my leg up on a pillow and an ice pack on it. Is anyone shocked I keep ice packs in the freezer for moments like this? Me neither.
The full story is, this morning I was going to walk my hosts' dog, because he loves me best and despite fearing the rain might actually pee if I walk him in it. So I was standing on the steps to their mud-room, and my host said, very clearly, "Be careful! The tile is slippery!"
"I will be extra-super-careful," I said, or words to that effect, and then put my foot down on the tile and tumbled headfirst to the ground.
I tried. I really did.
I'm sure the fall sounded worse than it was, considering I took a hall table with me and nearly took the dog out in the process. I'm sure I traumatised the poor dog, and probably my hosts as well. I felt ok at the time, so I picked myself up, walked the dog, carried my bag to the car, and went to the airport. I got on the plane, got a seat where I could elevate my leg, asked the flight attendant for an ice pack (btw, Southwest flight attendants are the coolest MacGyvers ever) and spent the entire two-hour flight elevating and icing in fifteen-minute increments.
When it came time to get off the plane, my knee felt...funny. And then it hurt. So I caught a shuttle home, yay door-to-door service, and put in a sick-call to work via email for tomorrow. I'd go to the ER tonight but I'd just sit there in uncomfortable dirty chairs for hours on end, when I could get a good night's sleep and go to the nice Immediate Care clinic tomorrow morning. I trust them more; they're the ones who had me see a specialist for my wrist after sending me off with a splint, when they didn't even have to call me again.
Dad Lucky thinks that it's either a really bad sprain or a fracture in the head of the tibia.
If my leg is broken again I'm going to laugh and weep simultaneously, just to scare the Immediate Care people. My New Year's Resolution was not to break any bones in 2010.
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| swtalmnd |
| 2009-12-11 16:15 |
| Update! Because deep down I know you care... |
| Public |
 cold |
| Poor Jack, Danny Elfman |
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Really, really deep down. *cough*
- I have 3 different fics that would be done if I could get my porn muse to cooperate. One that's my original santas_lap contribution, one that's a very overdue gift, and one that no one cares about but me. Heh.
- Holiday cards have started coming in! My wall is getting festive.
- Speaking of festive, I decorated! I posted photos to my RL blog, and can't figure out if y'all care enough to repost here. I'm going to go the lazy route and wait for someone to ask, I think.
- Made one sale of holiday cards at Etsy, two to people I know IRL, and have a line on two more. Otherwise, Etsy has been a total flop, sigh. But there are zombie head stitch markers! How can someone not want to love those? One good thing about Etsy is that it's very cheap when things don't sell.
- Sent out my cards for the HP Holiday Art Card Exchange. Will post after I'm sure they've been received!
- Finished my own card design, and now I just need to spend a day printing, folding, writing in, addressing and stamping. Also need to do this for RL people.
- A little behind on shopping, mostly due to lack of funds. Ah, well, something good will happen soon! Either that, or everyone else is just gettin' cards, dammit. XD
Happy Holidays to you all -- I hear it's starting Hanukkah tonight, if that's your thing enjoy the candles and latkes! And remember, next time someone snottily insists on a Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays, Auntie Amy says it's always appropriate to reply wishing them a miserable New Year. *cough*
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In the insanity of the last few days, I've been remiss in not sharing with you a new triumph for Nameless!
A few months ago, I was approached by Rebecca, a reviewer for Voice of Youth Advocates, which is a library journal targeted at librarians and teachers serving teenagers in a literary capacity. Although VOYA does not ordinarily review self-published books, Rebecca thought they would be interested in Nameless because of the process of its creation, and they agreed to publish a review in the December issue of the journal. VOYA is also tentatively set to run an article about Nameless which I believe will be in April's issue.
I received the review a few days ago and was really pleased with it. Rebecca submitted a long review and two teen reviewers, Alisa and Julia, also submitted shorter reviews. They're all positive about the writing, which is always nice, but also conscious of the book's flaws, which I appreciated. (Julia, in particular, hit the nail on the head with her assessment of my fear of conflict in writing, and Alisa and Rebecca both commented on the rather leisurely pace of the thing. :D)
It's late tonight and I'm traveling tomorrow -- I'll be out of town this weekend, though I'll have the netbook -- so I'm going to pull some quotes later to add to the brag post, and I'll link when I do so. If you have access to VOYA, which is a great resource in general, check out page 424 of the December issue to find the reviews.
As a little PR reminder, you can always find Nameless (and my other self-published books) in the links on the right sidebar of my journal, and digital PDF downloads of the book are still completely free.
I FEEL LIKE A GROWNUP WRITER OMG.
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So, it's something like nineteen degrees below zero in Chicago this morning.
Okay, it's 4 degrees above, that extra 23 degree drop is for wind chill, but I'd like you to stop and think about the kind of wind that causes a 23-degree drop in temperature. And then imagine me walking in it, and you will understand that I am not delirious or surrealist when I make the following statement:
My house keys froze to the inside of my jacket pocket this morning.
I'm not particularly fussed by the cold, except when my belongings freeze together. Today does present some obstacles, namely that everyone who could call in sick did so. BossBoss, Coworker Fail, and three department heads are all mysteriously missing, which means basically I'm running the place. The down-side to this is that anyone who could provide lunch support, or who could concievably notice that I don't have lunch support, is gone.
It's going to be a long day.
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| sams_cafe |
| 2009-12-09 20:27 |
| (no subject) |
| Public |
I was going to do the "If I came with a warning label, what would it say?" meme that's been going around, but I'm pretty sure "HEALTH HAZARD" covers it. :D Possibly "Contents Under Pressure".
I have been adjusted and massaged and manipulated, and apparently my ass is literally too tense. They kept poking it. IT'S MY ASS, STOP POKING IT.
In happier news, celestialsoda made me an OMG AWESOME drawing of a maskmaker's self-portrait. It's all sepia and Leonardo Da Vinci! And he's sculpting in a mirror!
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| sams_cafe |
| 2009-12-09 15:51 |
| (no subject) |
| Public |
I forgot I have to go to the chiropractor tonight at 5:30. On the one hand, yay theraputic massage. On the other hand, it's supposed to storm and I won't be getting home until 7:30 at the earliest. And then there's the eternal question: do I eat before I go, or wait till I get home?
Also, as it is approaching finals season, and Stressed Out Season, and all the rest, a reminder: deleting_my_lj. If you're going to delete temporarily, please post first! It saves us all a lot of worry and scrambling to find copies of your fic.
I had other things to post about but now I don't remember what they were. It's been that kind of day.
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You guys will not believe what Coffee Diva Coworker did next.
THIS IS A WOMAN WHO ACCEPTS NO SUBSTITUTIONS! EXCEPT FOR DECAF COFFEE!
She decided that since her suggestion of No Coffee After 3pm had received tepid, if not outright hostile, reviews from the Operations group, she would institute it herself. She apparently spent much of the afternoon telling people that there could be no new coffee after 3pm, and implying this directive came from us. For those of you who question the logic of this:
1. There isn't any.
2. Her reasoning, I believe, is that people would finish the coffee in the pots after 3, and He Who Finishes The Coffee Shall Rinse The Pot.
3. This shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the basic human condition.
People reacted in one of two ways. First, they ignored her, and brewed coffee whenever they damn well pleased right up to 5:30, an hour after I had already left. Second, they waited until I was gone and then sent me FURIOUS and DEMANDING emails.
The result of which is, I have been soothing frazzled nerves since 7:45 this morning, and may have to send out a companywide email announcing that NO, there is NO BAN on coffee after three.
Which will deeply embarrass Coffee Diva, and I'd feel bad about that, but the entire Operations group and about 90% of the office are on my side on this one, so I don't feel too badly.
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TEMPEST IN A COFFEE POT.
This afternoon, one of our managers emailed the operation staff (of which I am the lowest rung and yet hold all the power...interesting) to notify us that every morning, when she comes in to brew her pot of decaf coffee, the coffee pots from the night before have not been rinsed out. She is outraged! She demands the cleaning staff be reminded of their position!
1. While I hate to say it, nobody thinks decaf coffee in the morning is in any way worthy of their time. I know people like the taste of coffee, and like not being caffeinated, and I'm not going to say morning decaf is stupid. It's just that nobody else in the world cares. I can guarantee you my hard-caffeine-drinking bosses, ALL THREE OF THEM, went "Oh fuck that noise, decaf junkie."
2. The cleaning staff are under no obligation to wash our coffee pots.
I emailed her back that the coffee pots are communal kitchen responsibility, because the cleaning staff can wash the coffee pots but it'll cost us $50/night, which is a trifle prohibitive.
She asked about the possibility of a rota, or of a no-new-coffee-after-3pm rule.
I am hoping she will compromise on a "please rinse out the coffee pots if you see them full after 5pm" sign. It won't actually work, but she'll get a warm feeling of martyrdom when she sees them as she's rinsing out a pot for decaf every morning.
Coworker Fail saw the email and said, "If BossBoss makes cleaning out the coffeepots part of my evening duties, the union's getting involved."
I might have LOLed. On the inside.
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| painless_j |
| 2009-12-08 00:10 |
| Animated film rec: 9, sort of vs. Dragon Hunters |
| Public |
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9 []
Rated PG-13 for violence and scary images.
Runtime: 79 minutes.
Director: Shane Acker
Summary: When 9 first comes to life, he finds himself in a post-apocalyptic world where all humans are gone, and it is only by chance that he discovers a small community of others like him taking refuge from fearsome machines that roam the earth intent on their extinction. Despite being the neophyte of the group, 9 convinces the others that hiding will do them no good. They must take the offensive if they are to survive, and they must discover why the machines want to destroy them in the first place. As they'll soon come to learn, the very future of civilization may depend on them. |
My notes: BFF ordered me to watch this film 'cos she had seen a couple of scenes from it and fell in love with the visuals. So I did. I liked it fine, especially the visual side, yes. Landscapes, the dolls, those factories and machines. If you like steampunk, go for it! I did find it very, very pleasant for the eyes. Not quite an eye candy 'cos it's all greyish-brownish and raw and dusty but it looks really nice. I even liked the story for the most part. It's quite charming, and the story of a small individual becoming a hero in order to save the world, figuring things out, gathering courage and strength, well, it's cliché of course but it's a sure win as far as modern action/adventure goes. But at the same time, I found it annoying. I mean, if you have such a well-established heroic cliché, there's no need to make it even more cliché by making the villain a Hitler in such a non-metaphorical way. I mean, sometimes it's OK to believe that your spectators aren't completely stupid, so there's no need to put things in their mouth and chew for them. Sometimes you can create a more far-fetched metaphor, say, as Tolkien did in LotR or as Hiromu Arakawa does in Fullmetal Alchemist, and your audience will get it. Or on the contrary: make him Hitler, no a Hitler-like something. Don't dance around trying to side-step every dangerous thing. Another thing that annoyed me was 7 at the very end of it. The dolls are more or less sexless, more boy/men-like than girl/woman-like but whatever. I liked it that the story wasn't about love, that it wasn't about how family saves everything -- which, let's be frank, Hollywood feeds us so much as to make one want to stay single forever. But then [spoiler] 7 acquired some distinctly lady-like expressions, nearly batting eyelashes. WTF? Will they now hold hand and knit baby dolls or something?[/end spoiler] And this leads me to the following. I liked Dragon Hunters much better ( my review). They are seemingly nothing alike, Dragon Hunters and 9. It's just that they both are about small people saving the world and that something in the animation looks similar to me. So, while I'm ready to rave about Dragon Hunters for ages, this review is about 9 and regretfully, I'm not prepared to squeal about it. Yes, I enjoyed it. Yes, it's a real pleasure for the eyes. But I expected more. The animation made me expect more originality from the plot, and it might be completely my fault that I was so ready to fall in love but in the end, merely liked it. But like it I did. Give it a try!
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| sams_cafe |
| 2009-12-06 11:11 |
| (no subject) |
| Public |
WELL.
The beans and the beer bread came out well -- for the many who've asked, the beer bread is a quickbread, a mix from Trader Joe's, $2 and well worth it because it is DELICIOUS.
Meanwhile this morning, the yoghurt is yogging and will be for the next ten to fourteen hours; the pumpkin bread is baking, the rice is soaking, and the curry for the rice is defrosting. I am going to have some EPIC LUNCHES this week, between the curry and the beans and the chowder. And the fried stuffing, oooh.
As long as I'm taking a break from cooking, I may as well post Chapter Nine of Valet of Anize; Chapter Ten might...take a while.
I used to write faster than this, you know, but I also used to have a job that wasn't nine-to-five and I don't think I wrote as well. I'm trying to embrace the genre-adventure-story thing and not struggle with imbuing too much meaning in this; it's never going to be the same kind of story as Nameless was. It's still my problem child, but I'm finding moments of pure beauty in it, so. I do what I can.
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"Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read." Algernon Moncrieff in The Importance of Being Earnest (Act 1)- Oscar Wilde
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