| This was a triumph, still alive, old meme, etc. |
[08 Apr 2013|12:48pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 tired |
] |
WELP. I, uh, really hope that my disinclination to write not-very-much about anything does not continue once I actually get a job.
...Although, honestly, it's been less 'not wanting to write' and more 'being dreadfully tired while still having ideas flitting about brain'. I've been cooking away ideas on roleplays-to-be-done and fanfiction, of all things - I haven't written fanfiction in a decade! - but - ...oh my word, do I feel old now, that that fact's just sunk in - it's been so blasted hard to focus my brain on actually getting all those words down that I've just left them to percolate for the moment.
Perhaps this week I'll actually get some of them out of the brain and onto... well, not paper. In a text file somewhere, I guess.
For!
I have a whole week's break from classes, because I am finished my practicum a whole week earlier than everyone else in my class, hee~
( Class Ramblings and Pictures of GoodiesCollapse )
I've managed to finish a couple of video games. Mostly 3DS/DS, of course, since I've been on transit for a while. Radiant Historia was intriguing, and even if parts of the gameplay were non inspiring (I totally didn't find out about the 'skip' function for scenes that had already been seen until after I'd finished it), I found the writing in it really awesome and most of the characters pretty engaging. An enjoyable tale! Even if most of the internet seems to have Raynie's motivations wrong. (I seriously do not understand how they manage to misunderstand her so - but, whatever. Maybe I'll spell it out in some of the percolating fanfiction I'm contemplating.)
Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask was diverting and fun as usual for the series, even if I was dreadfully unimpressed with the episode's antagonist. ( Spoilers, sweetie.Collapse )
And then there was the Citadel DLC for Mass Effect 3. I laughed. I cried. It was probably the best love letter to the series they could've written... although I would've liked to see more Kaidan, but I'm biased.
Anywhoo. Time to go and see if I can't get some decent unboxing photos of my little giftie.
|
|
| I can haz sleep nao? |
[29 Nov 2012|10:05pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
tired |
] |
Soooooo for the last month, pretty much nobody has seen me. Friends haven't seen me. Family hasn't seen me. The Internet has not in fact seen me. (I missed you, Internet!) I suppose Travis managed to see me a couple of times, now and then, but even that was brief and fleeting.
This is because I've been pulling twelve hour days at school (plus the whole hour and a half commute there and back) for the past month. On a Saturday, once, even.
That was because I signed up to be on the school's gingerbread competition team. Every year, the Hyatt Regency downtown has a Gingerbread Lane event, a competition with three categories (professional, amateur, and secondary school), a ton of awesomely decorated houses (and not-quite-so-housey houses), and a donation drive fund thing for Make A Wish. VCC has been sending in entries for a few years, now, and had actually won first place in the professional category three years running. There was a biiiiit of pressure on our shoulders.
So, a team of 24 baking students, one instructor, and one fuzzy deer statue (oh deer) worked in two four-hour shifts outside of class hours daily for three weeks. What did we come up with?
Welcome to the Gingerbell Bakery!
The piece is 3' by 4', and juuuust under the height maximum allowed at 47" tall. Everything in there is edible (except for the string lights on the tree) and was made in-house. My particular projects were the floor tiling, the gingerbread tables and the arrangement of goodies on them, the wee little gingerbread cutters on one of the tables, and the spice cabinet/bookshelf and the jars accompanying it. I also wrote a whimsical little story about the entry that's posted up on display beside it - some of which is paraphrased on the photos linked up above.
The cabinet assembly alone took me almost a week and a half, and it had to undergo emergency repairs on the last session before transporting it to the hotel because it both started leaning forwards precariously and got a huge crack across the bottom board from stress fractures. I'll be having nightmares about that damn thing for months.
...But, all things said and done, it was kind of worth it. Even the waking up at 5:30am part and the Christmas carols every morning in November part.
We did, after all, win first again. :3
|
|
|
[29 Oct 2012|12:07am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 upset |
] |
Welp. Iiiii just kind of got into a large fight with my mother. And I don't even have Travis here to complain and sniffle at about it, since he's out hunting. Yay. Sorry, LJ-friends. You're up.
I was over at her place for dinner (apparently I am a bad child and never go see her, or something), and, you know, things were okay. We ate, we chatted, we sort of watched Van Helsing in the background as I entertained the Eri-cat.
Of course, the chatting eventually turned sort of political, since she has a habit of watching news stations of all sorts (Canadian and American) when she's on her days off. We always tend to get a bit scrappy during these discussions - I'm a socialist, and she's of the opinion that socialists are head-in-the-sand want-all-the-tax-monies communists (and yet she detests the Conservative party and thinks they're a bunch of crooks. idek.). But usually it doesn't ever get terrible. That's fine with me. Insult my politics all you like; disagree with me about welfare and spending and social programs. Whatever. We did actually agree on a few things tonight, though - mostly education-related - which was a bit unusual, but all the better.
Aaaaand then the topic dipped towards the USA's elections, and she mentioned part of her wanted Obama to win, and another part of her wanted to see Romney in there. I grimaced and groaned and asked her why she would ever want to see Romney elected, and she said, and I quote: "Because maybe someone needs to stand up for the white man."
I gaped at her for about a second, got up, thanked her for dinner, told her I'd see her in six months (which was probably unnecessary, but goddamnit, there are reasons I don't really go over there a whole lot - she's also got a history of homophobic comments), got my bag, and left. I didn't really trust myself to say anything else, and it would've been all the worse had I engaged right there and then, I know it.
She of course called about five minutes after I walked in my door, demanding to know what the hell, what I thought I was doing eating her food that she cooked and then storming out and slamming the door (which, to be honest, I only minorly slammed because it didn't close right when I tried the first time - the door handle's been fussy for years). I explained that what she said was offensive and disgusting, and she said "well obviously we can't talk about politics any more" - which I agreed with - and then went all "MY OPINIONS" on me. I thanked her again for dinner and told her I wasn't really interested in continuing the discussion, that I didn't even know what to say. She hung up on me.
So, um.
Stace had a period where she didn't talk to mom for a few months after they had an argument. I wonder how long this one's going to last... because, damn. I know her. She won't think for a second that what she said was the least bit wrong, and won't apologise for it.
...'Course, I don't think what I did was wrong, either, given the context - but I still feel like shit because of what happened and have an inexplicable urge to just go bawl somewhere.
|
|
| Yeep. |
[22 Jul 2012|11:04pm] |
Hot damn, have I really not posted to this thing since January?
...As you might be able to surmise, I've been having problems of the not-writing persuasion lately. Between being plain ol' busy, general anxiety, and just losing the will to get started on just about anything, it's been like pulling teeth to sit down and bang out more than a couple of sentences at a time. I don't like it, but I also don't know what to do about it. :\
(Noting that once I get started, the writing usually goes okay for a bit, and that it definitely isn't the 'sit down' part that's been the issue. I do a lot of that - or had been doing a lot of that up 'til this month, but we'll get to that.)
( Six months condensedCollapse )
Honestly, I probably don't have the time right now anyway, aaaaas I started my pastry chef-ery course at the beginning of the month. It's kind of awkwardly placed, from 1pm-6:30, and held downtown, so there's about 45 minutes of travelling back and forth, too, so it just feels difficult to get anything done besides it. I mean, I've always been kind of bad at time management, but this is just seeming to make it worse.
Something I have to fix, if I really want to go into professional baking.
We've had theory and demonstrations about quick breads and pies and puff pastry these past few weeks. Been doing reasonably well - excellently in the theory component, anyway. I'm not positively sure, but I think our demonstration-marks have been averaged across the whole class; they're okay, but not what I was expecting.
Tomorrow's the big shift change - we start the 'for reals' bit, a month where we rotate through various production stations, making everything again on our own to stock the bakeshop in the college. We'll see how that goes. I'm on quick breads/muffins this week - which is easy in terms of the baking itself, but is apparently the most difficult because our station also has to tend the ovens. Our instructor put me as the leader of the group, and has said that she'll be helping us out this week to show everyone how the flow should be going. Not sure if this is a vote of confidence because of the former, or not, because of the latter. Guess we'll see how it goes.
( And here's some other nerdity. Mostly ME and Pern-related.Collapse )
Aaaaand with that, I should probably get to my 'homework', such that it is. I think the most valuable thing I might get out of this course might actually be time management skills, with the amount of planning ahead we have to do. I kind of hope so, anyway, because damn do I need the help with that.
|
|
|
[21 Dec 2011|05:28pm] |
Harper's Conservative back-benchers are clamouring again to erode the rights of women.
Said backbencher is, clearly, an ignorant prick. Of course children should have - and do, if I recall correctly - human rights. Embryos are not children.
For once, the comments on the article there - or at least, the highest-rated ones - are not completely stupid. The very top-rated one even addresses how these male MPs should be keeping thier noses firmly out of it. I was kind of tickled to see that, even if the subject matter makes my blood boil.
Fuck this government, seriously.
|
|
| Writer's Block: Bah Humbug Day! |
[21 Dec 2011|09:29am] |
Your comment redesign sucks balls. It's slow, the subject lines being relocated to comments is not helpful at all when looking at collapsed comments, it's slow, it's not any prettier or serves any design purpose, and it's slow.
I find a certain humour in this prompt.
|
|
| Writer's Block: B.Y.O.B. Holidays |
[12 Dec 2011|10:33am] |
I bow to the gods of presents.
Often enough I'll try to light a candle for the solstice, too, but half the time I forget. I make a terrible pagan, really.
|
|
| Writer's Block: Occupy Wall-et |
[22 Nov 2011|09:17am] |
Approximately $16,000 between my husband and I. $15,000 of that is new and thanks entirely to my shiny blue tiny vehicular thing; we're on track to pay it off in under three years. The other $1000 is just the average monthly tally on my credit card for food, gas, and other expenses. It gets paid off every month.
Thankfully, neither of us had to take out loans of any sort for university. That helps in keeping things low.
|
|
|
[17 Nov 2011|10:43pm] |
fiat
fiiiiat
sitting in front of our apartment~
A whole week earlier than we were told, too!
We still have to finalize the payments - we're adding me as a cosigner on the loan for it, just to see if we can't get a better rate that way; I've undoubtedly got more (and better) credit history than Travis. It doesn't really matter too much, though, thankfully.
The only slightly shitty thing is that it started snowing tonight. Which is awesome in and of itself - I love snow, it makes me happy, we never get enough of it here, and I'm surprised it's starting this early, honestly - but it means that I'm hesitant to drive the Fiat to work tomorrow instead of the old reliable 4x4 truck. And it'll get dirty, and possibly saltwatery. But then I can't show it off. :(
(Really, it's not a terrible problem to have.)
|
|
| staple staple staple |
[25 Oct 2011|11:13am] |
So a few weeks ago, we had to fill out a questionnaire thinger here at work as part of a consulting/productivity/employee happiness thing. I had only been here for two weeks at the time, so I imagine my insight was very, very useful.
(pffft)
Part of this involved filling out our job description and the most important tasks we did, how much time we spent on them, and all of that. On mine, I put down the most-important-seeming things: invoicing, receiving payments, calling companies looking for payments so that I can receive them, and so on.
I conveniently forgot to mention that the one thing I spent the most time on was removing staples from piles of paper, and then putting staples back in to those piles of paper.
*resumes unstapling and stapling*
|
|
|
[01 Oct 2011|03:09pm] |
I think Livejournal keeps thinking I'm in China, or something. I have no idea why else most of my menus would be continually switching to Chinese. (Maybe it thinks I need to start practicing the language again?)
Just got back from shopping a little while ago. Made my largest purchase ever. Trav and I just put in our order for a brand spanking new Fiat 500. (Sporty model, hehe.) Unfortunately they didn't have the right-featured one in stock for us, so it'll be a few weeks - possibly not 'til Christmas, but I think probably before then - but it will certainly be a sight better than driving the stupid truck every day to work. It just needs to hurry and geeeeet heeeere.
I think I'll make pumpkin bread today. It's that kinda weather.
|
|
|
[23 Sep 2011|01:39pm] |
I am currently at work.
Knitting my sweater.
With the full blessing of my supervisor, who is sitting just a few feet away from me and can see exactly what I am doing.
I do not even work in a yarn store.
It's been a bit of a slow day.
|
|
|
[28 Jul 2011|11:38pm] |
Finally. Not being able to post comments while I could see interesting posts on my friendspage was the most irritating thing ever. ;.;
For the past week, I've kind of been attempting a science experiment in my kitchen. Tonight I should have had some results, but alas, I've got nothing to show for it. I set out to make a sourdough starter, diligently followed all the directions in my bread-book, annnnnd... nothing. The dough hasn't risen one bit. It kind of smells like how sourdough should, but there's been no leavening at all - not even a hint of a rise - after three hours. If I baked it, I'd wind up with one hell of a brick, I think.
Heck, the starter itself never even doubled in size - as far as I saw - when it was in the plain ol' feeding stage. I got some bubbles in the first couple of days, but then it all kind of stopped.
Reading some other tales from sourdough-making-folk, I think I might not have been feeding it quite enough, in this warm weather we're having. Probably made for weak and starved yeasties.
Oh well. Just have to try again and dump more flour down the drain, sort-of-literally. Start it up again next Tuesday, I guess, after the long weekend. I'm glad I'm at least using the giant bag of flour from Costco. This'd be hella expensive otherwise.
|
|
|
[13 May 2011|12:54pm] |
1000 Awesome Things is a pretty fun blog, but after skimming through the front page, I came across one I sorta-kinda have to disagree with.
#254: Finding a chocolate egg way after Easter can have the potential to be awesome, sure. If it's a couple months and you haven't had any super hot days, great! That chocolate is still bound to be somewhat edible, and it's always nice to find surprise!chocolate.
However.
Occasionally, you'll come across eggs that you just know aren't going to be kosher.
Case in point: after I moved out of my parent's house and in with Trav, I was going through and putting things of mine away and kind of decorating a little bit with my mass collection of everything. A lot of this collection of everything is composed of candles (my mom and sister love candles, thus I end up with a lot of candles).
One candle, in particular, has a stopper on it and never gets opened, for good reason - one of these. It is huge, and potently smells of blueberries. Seriously, you uncork that thing in the living room for just a moment, and you can smell blueberries all the way at the other end of the apartment in the spare room.
Anyways, when I was living with my parents, this blueberry monstrosity lived on a shelf that was far away from my eye level, and I never, ever bothered to open it because I did not need my room exuding blueberry smell for months at a time. When I packed it away, I just threw it in a box without looking at it.
When I unpacked it and was searching for another convenient out-of-the-way shelf to put it on, so no one would have the urge to open it, I happened to take a closer glance at it.
Glint.
There was an easter egg, gaily wrapped in its colourful foil, trapped between candle and the stopper. The stopper is not one of the standard see-through lids, by the way - it's a statue of a wizard on top of some clouds. Quite opaque. The only way you could see the egg was to look at it dead-on at the right angle.
My father, at some point, had placed this egg in that candle, and I suppose I must have had a cold or something on that particular Easter, because I never noticed that my room smelled terribly of blueberries. He had done this at least two years prior to my finding the egg - there had not been an egg hunt the Easter previous, since he was away on a trip during that weekend, but there had been egg hunts for every year previous since my brother and I were small-lings. Nevermind that I was 23 or 24 at the time of the last one. Of course, the last couple of years had been significantly ramped up in difficulty with devilish hiding spaces - hence, egg in a sealed candle.
So. We have this easter egg, which is at least two years old - and it has been marinating in godawfully strong blueberry candle scent that entire time.
I love chocolate, but there was no way that thing was going anywhere near my mouth.
Finding easter eggs way after Easter - nooooot always awesome.
|
|
| So productive |
[28 Apr 2011|08:09pm] |
I spent way too many hours today relearning how to do things in the GIMP, and this is the result:
It probably only makes sense if you're a little bit familiar with Canadian politics.
(And yes, he was a professor for some time way back when at Ryerson.)
|
|
| Tales of Interest |
[10 Apr 2011|09:15pm] |
Fun fact - the original version of The King's Speech was rated R in the USA. Not because of gory violence, or sex, but because of the presence of a single scene where there's a whoooooole lot of very frustrated cursing. A version rated PG-13 was released after the Oscars in which this scene (which was rather funny and poignant) was cut.
We could only find a version rated PG to go see last night, Trav and I. We had known of the rating kerfuffle in the States, and assumed the same kind of thing happened up here. Boo for censorship, but the movie is going out of theatres and all, so there's not so much selection as there was. Disappointing to not see that scene, we thought, but I still wanted to see it (yay linguists!), so away we went.
And yet there there in the very PG-rated movie was the scene, in full glory. Canada's film classification people have their heads firmly on their shoulders. :)
Main game of Pokemon White completed as of a couple days ago. Just the vast task of filling up the PokeDex left. :3 I'm actually going to do it this time. No, seriously!
...It'll be a whole lot easier when Trav rigs us up a wireless router, though, so I can actually get to trading. If anyone who has Pokemon Black (or available Tepigs or Oshawotts) wants to get a thing going eventually, let me know~
And finally, for all the dudes on my flist here who do the RP thing, you may be interested in checking out the RP Repository - s'free, almost completely customisable sites for roleplaying characters, along with other neat things like group areas and forums and what-not. Have a Rhaetia, for example!
|
|
|
[19 Mar 2011|04:24pm] |
"Rydia obtained a TM76 Struggle Bug!"
...Oh they did not name a move that.
They did!
Oh, I'll take you for a ride in the ol' struggle buggy, Leavanny. *wink wink*
|
|
| kitten~ |
[30 Jan 2011|03:32pm] |
Guuuuys. We get kitten tomorrow~ Well, maybe. Either tomorrow or Tuesday. We went out looking for kitties at the shelters yesterday, and there was a cute-as-button one at the Surrey one who was all "Hey! Humans! I wanna sniff and see you!" the moment I peered into his cage. He's not actually a wee!kitten, being about four and a half months old - they're actually neutering him tomorrow which is why we don't have him already. But he is still pretty adorable (sort of like a marbled Bengal in colouring, almost), and looks like he has a good temperment so far.
The only problem is figuring out what to name him. The shelter (or his previous owner, I dunno) gave him the moniker of Simba (he has a sister in there named Nala, too), which is okay, but I'm not sure if it's just perfect yet. Any suggestions~?
|
|
|
[15 Jan 2011|05:58pm] |
Well, for the first time in almost a year, I have a cat nestled on my lap as I type. We got Eri-cat from my parents as a 'trial' cat, to see how Trav's (maybe ex-) allergies are triggered.
She's never left my parents' house since she was a kitten. She's two, now - not that bad, but still. She was very lost and confused, wandering around the apartment and finding all the hiding spots and sad-yowling.
At least she's calmed down now. She seems to remember what 'computer laptime' is.
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
|
|
|
|
