Thanksgiving...

Why even bother?

...

( Avoid me when I'm grouchy. )

What price tickets to Alaska, again?

$1267.70.

No.

Not doing that.

Conversion of the Masses

Welcoming yaksha42, aka the Evening Lab Guy, aka the Tolkien Geek, to LJ.

What?

No one but me is interested in dream treatments?

(no subject)

Good Friends:

( Most of us have read most of this before, just a little bit of editing... )

boojum: Introduced to me by pyrogenic in 1995, when they were dating. Became friends. Lost touch; gained touch again through the List and LJ. Can almost read my mind.

iroshi: A new friend and colleague.

sithjawa: A newer friend and colleague, introduced to me through boojum, and various common interests. DOOM!

digitalambience: A former fling, boy-toy, live-in lover. A very nice guy. Was a DeVry student for a while. Votania's and my roommate from mid-December 2001-June 2002. Tall clean-cut redhead with a big grin and a wacked sense of humor. Good with computers. Moved out of our apartment complex and into ralmathon's in November 2002.

Dave (Dave-in-Seattle, Dave-in-Baltimore, Dave-in-Philly, Microsoft Dave, Auj, pyrogenic): an old friend from CTY 1995. The center of attention of the infamous "Cult of Josh".

Dave (Dave-in-Ohio)/godai: an online friend, another of a large collection of Davids.

Dave (Dave-in-Germany): an old friend; a slightly less-old flame; we are no longer attempting a long-distance relationship. He's Army.

Linux Dave: yet another Dave. Comes over to babble about computers occasionally.

Dawn, A*, Aurora: The friend of Darkside and Neighbor who is now a friend of mine. She and I conspire about my ongoing courtship of Darkside. She gets married on January 4, 2003, to yet another Dave.

Various Livejournalers are also pretty damn good friends, but probably won't wind up listed here for a while until I form regular (my definition) patterns of talking-to.



Previous version found here.
Next version found here.

Cast of Characters, Continued

The Computers:


ENKI: The much-maligned, much ill-used box that provides our 'Net addiction's connection. Running W2K, with all the problems that implies. He's much calmer about stuff now, but still has to be rebooted forcibly: he freezes on shutdown. "Enki's being a dick again" is a household phrase.

( ... )

Red: Votania's personal machine, now finally running W2K, after unknown numbers of reinstallations of gods know what-all. An evil little thing. Short for Red Dragon.

( ... )

Two quasi-new Compaq Deskpro's, with Pentium II's, running Red Hat. Thank you soooo much, votania! I love mine!



Previous Computers cast of characters entry here.

Next: http://www.livejournal.com/users/azurelunatic/2629255.html

Cast of Characters

Household: Residents of the apartment, known as the Temple.

( Read more... )

Water Blossom: The second betta, blue. Male. A little more quiet than Fire Blossom.

Water Blossom (2): The orange-and-silver goldfish. (Nephew named all the goldfish.)

Storm Blossom: The orange-and-black-spotted goldfish. (I think I'm sensing a trend here.)

Orange Blossom: The little orange goldfish. (Yep, a definite trend.)

The snail is nameless.


Previous entry may be found here.

Next entry: http://www.livejournal.com/users/azurelunatic/2628706.html

Further Cast of Characters

School


Schoolmates

ralmathon: CIS. Senior. Good friend. Gamer.

Skippy: Not the Skippy of Skippy's List, but ex-military, a gamer and friend of ralmathon, and a nice guy all-around.

yaksha42: Tolkien geek, works night shift on the downstairs lab. A neighbor.

Baronness Babble: The ADHD redhead in my class group who's old enough to be my mother. Delightful lady. Lots of fun.

Slackerprep: He's baaaack... BIS major. Was in a working group with him my first tri. Really irritating. Major prep, major slacker. Ex-military of some flavor. Egotistical.

digitalambience. The morning cafeteria cashier. Used to talk gaming with Darkside. Serious Heavy Gamer Alert! In the EET program.

Bambi: A classmate, CIS. Redheaded, female, has attitude. Ex-Army. About my age.

Bob: A classmate from 5CDA, a long-haired white guy who likes to tie hemp and happens to be Rastafarian, which really screwed with Ashford's head.

The Lovebirds: Two of my classmates, engaged to each other, rarely seen apart. Femmebird and Mellebird.

Staff:

( ... )

Demland, Analysis Dave: Teaching the Systems Analysis course. Has actually worked in the industry. Not known for censoring himself when talking about the industry.

"Double" McGuirk: The very nice Web Dev teacher, who repeats the last bits of everything she says. The last bits of everything she says.

Barden: Usually an accounting teacher, a former manager, now teaching Management.

Mrs. Byer: The teacher so new that she was late to her first class because she was handing in her contract. Has experience at other colleges. My closest friend in the class.

( ... )

Former Schoolmates

Darkside: Graduated October 25, 2002. I gave him a rose, he hit me over the head with the rose. My best friend.

Dawn: Graduated with Darkside. Another good friend.

evealone: Was a CIS freshman until he moved back home to Arkansas. Interesting guy. Evil and stuff. Sometimes.

Shrimpy: Formerly a guy from Darkside's class group. He graduated in June 2002. One of the least clueful people on the planet. Shares Darkside's given name. Very annoying, with few social skills, and cluefulness points of -2 -1d20.

Dude: A former roommate, from June 2001 to mid-September 2001. CIS, while he was attending DeVry. He and Chick are now the parents of a darling boy, born 13 Oct 2002.

previous entry here.

Cast of Characters, Continued

Assorted Random Other:
( Read more... )

Fwd: Thanksgiving Humor

It's Over

---

A man in Phoenix calls his son in New York the day before Thanksgiving and says, "I hate to ruin your day but I have to tell you that your mother and I are divorcing; forty-five years of misery is enough." "Pop, what are you talking about?" the son screams. "We can't stand the sight of each other any longer," the father says. "We're sick of each other and I'm sick of talking about this, so you call your sister in Chicago and tell her." Frantic, the son calls his sister, who explodes on the phone. "No way they're getting divorced!" she shouts. "I'll take care of this." She calls Phoenix immediately and screams at her father, "You are not getting divorced. Don't do a single thing until I get there. I'm calling my brother back, and we'll both be there tomorrow. Until then, don't do a thing, DO YOU HEAR ME?" and hangs up.

The old man hangs up his phone and turns to his wife. "Okay," he says, "they're coming for Thanksgiving and paying their own way."

Morning

Feeling much better about stuff, though a lot more sleepy. According to alanj at the Livejournal Status site,

LiveJournal was down from approximately 2:15-2:50am PST (GMT-0800). The site was sluggish, and the support board and certain other functions were down, until about 4:00am. Things should now be back to normal.

I went to bed before it came up again, though.

Evidently it got lost in the bit bucket...

It's morning, and I'm feeling halfway coherent.

It's going to be another day, is all.

I think I need some more sleep now.

Would like to be spending family time, but it's really far too sleepy for me, and talking at the wrong moment while cooking is a bad move.

265 Shades of Grey

I had a co-worker, back when I was in the Sam's Club bakery in Fairbanks, who couldn't see color. She was completely colorblind. She used to have to explain the effect to people as watching black-and-white TV. She had been the Queen of the Muffins, but when I arrived and took over the position, she was training to be a cake decorator.

I suppose, technically, that you'd consider it a disability. It wasn't something that got whined about, though, it was just a fact of life that got worked around. All the tubs of frosting were labeled with the colors that went inside, both lid and bucket, and I made up a color wheel (in black and white), and wrote down where the colors that we had went on that. I gave her some crash courses in colour theory. We all made sure that the buckets of frosting were correctly labled (nothing worse than thinking it's purple because it says purple, but having it actually be orange), and all went smoothly.

That was a good year. Even through the depression, I enjoyed my time in the bakery.

Finally awake...

I slept somewhere around eleven hours. This was a good thing, as I'd been running on empty for a while.

Today looks like a good day for at least a little housecleaning.

Witchy

My Big White Candle O' Mass Healing ran down sometime yesterday afternoon or evening, probably while I was asleep or in class. It was a nice 7-day candle, and it was good.

Blessed be.

Doing Things:

• Made bed. Finally.


• Fed fish.


• Vacuumed floor.


• Put Healing Heart and Healing Spirit oils into the Household candle, and lit it.


• Cleaned change pocket on wallet into the Shrine of the Cute Guy, leaving $1.60 in change in case of phone call/unexpected bus trip.


• Sent e-mail to Mama detailing some of the things that might be nice in the Christmas box.


• Caught up on most of my comments


• Took my vitamins


• Cleaned my wallet


• Cleaned the living room


• RSVP'ed to Dawn & Dave's wedding

Doing things...

• Pulled monitor for Nephew's computer out of closet so Marx can use it until he gets a replacement


• Put away clean dishes


• Updated MSN IM


• Updated Y! IM


• Cleaned out the spamtrap


• Put dishes in dishwasher


• Cooked bacon and stored in fridge


• Transferred bulk rice from original bag in closet to ice-cream tubs in hall closet


• Wiped down stove


• Swept kitchen floor


• Took out garbage

Oh, yes.

I got a 93% on the paper about Rational's XDE, the points off being for not citing stuff properly in-text. He used this paper as an assessment of our l33t writing skillz, more than anything else.

Home again...

The family's home, and it feels like home. votania hit it off with marxdarx's grandparents immediately, which is unusual for her. They are very nice people, and great fun was had by all.

The discomfort of past years, what I was picking up from Marx when he talked about it, was all due to his progenitor Scumbucket being present, which would make anyone uncomfortable.

They came home with leftovers and interesting things. Everybody got a little stained glass hanging thing. votania picked out a cluster of butterflies -- spring azures, it looks like -- for me.

The one point to the day of grouchiness was actually not in the immediate family at all: votania's mother is hurt and angry that her daughter would even dream of going elsewhere for Thanksgiving. But that's what happens when the official Capulet Family Thanksgiving is an affair of tension, bad feelings, and mediocre cooking, mixed with rivalries and spiced with just a dash of bigotry.

Tomorrow is our family celebration. The turkey is still thawing in the fridge. I've started the salad. There will be mashed potatoes, corn, pumpkin pie, fudge, and whatever else winds up on the table. I sorted through some of the stuff in the fridge beforehand, to make sure that there will be enough room. I've got a bottle of wine chilling, and a bottle of sparkling apple cider. The living room's as near to spotless as it can be easily gotten. All is just about in readiness. Stuffing will be made, and will include my special (and experimental) mixture of garlic, onion, sage, parsley, and white wine.

I ought to call my parents, and Narcissa, to say hi.

Cast of Characters: Families

Assorted Families

Votania's Family: There is no love lost between Votania and her family. Some of them are cool, some of them are not. All of the ones mentioned here so far are resident somewhere in Arizona.

( ... )

Glyph: The husband of That Woman, who adores his daughters as is right and proper. His location is currently unknown.

( ... )

( ... )

marxdarx's Family:

Mom: His mother. Calming down from being an absolute control freak.

her boyfriend: An okay guy, still a hippy from back in the day.

Assorted brothers/sisters: Marx is the oldest.

Scumbucket: Marx's genetic father. The less seen of him, the better. I informed him that he was not welcome to call this house. Ever. Go to hell.

Grandma & Grandpa: Marx's maternal grandparents, very nice people.

Darkside's Family:

Mr. Malfoy, Malfoy Senior: Darkside's father. Can be overly bossy. Likes golf.

Mrs. Malfoy: Darkside's mother. Reminds me of my mother, only with a sense of humor that includes sex.

Assorted Relatives: the variety that live out of town.

( ... )

Former entry here

Parents...

I called my mom and talked for almost an hour. My pseudo-aunt is very angry at her sister-in-law for splitting up with my pseudo-uncle Skippy over the foster kid. My pseudo-aunt just doesn't get angry.

It's been very quiet at my parents' house. My father wanted to know how my presentation had gone. They're getting very involved with the ham radio community. My mother asked me to say hi to Darkside for her.

I am plotting Yule, with cardboard boxes and red paint. My mother will run a list of potential books to send Nephew past me first, to avoid duplication.