Dream

Odd dream involving driving around in Mama's car in CA, my aunts, Aza buying new speakers, visiting Darkside and snuggling up to him on the couch in his living room, and the templeravenmoon family playing videogames.

Darkside was very careful of/with me when leading me to Mama's car when Mama came to pick me up, holding me on the hill so I wouldn't fall. But then when I got to the car, I did fall, because my blood count was doing bad things, and the cancer was lurking.

Just so careful and gentle.

Spoiled Reader

I suppose I'm spoiled by having been on the List so long, with the ever-vigilant Quote Pixie enforcing that people cut the endless chains of reply...

Heh.

That's a very good place. Very good.

I do not have paper, so I use LJ.

224:171 :: X:293

171X = 65632

X ~= 384

Weather

I've been loving the weather lately. It's hot, but it's moist, so I can actually breathe! This is so awesome!

I now see why votania says that damp weather dehydrates her. That was counterintuitive to me earlier, but...

Damp weather means that your body notices that oh, there is sufficient atmospheric water, so I don't have to retain all my water lest I fry. And then you sweat. And to a desert-attuned body, the amounts of water that can be dumped in that fashion are startling, and mean that you really need to have a waterbottle, or you're going to be so, so dead.

I still love it when it's like this. It's currently 95, with 34% humidity. *happysigh* If it never got any hotter than that, and it were often this damp while this warm, I'd be so, so happy.

I do think that wet, windy cold is the Anti-Good, however.

Conspicuous

I was somewhat taken aback this morning in Networking lab. You see, I am adamant that every pen I have will someday be used, and yaksha42 gave me a pen for Valentine's Day. So, I've been toting it around with me for the past few days, because I know that if I leave it at home, it'll never be used all up. (I have another little obsessive-compulsive streak about using pens all gone.)

So, bright and early this morning, my pen and I were in the networking lab, merrily jotting stuff down in Sam₂'s lab workbook. I felt very ... loud.

The networking lab is a large room filled with narrow rows of long tables, at which are placed rolling plastic desk chairs. On the tables are flatscreen monitors, each marked with two IP addresses on stickers. Below the monitors, below the tables, are the computer towers, which are on wheels. The walls are white, with posters about connectivity and frequencies and the seven-layer OSI model. The floor is tiled in white-with-grey-streaks, with occasional squares of blue. The tabletops are pristine grey. At the front of the room is a large whiteboard. It is a new room, and has not yet gained the scuffs and scents of a well-used computer lab.

And in this room, I am sitting. I am wearing unrelieved black, and I am writing with a ballpoint pen that is wrapped in white grosgrain ribbon marked with red hearts. There is a white plush heart topping the pen, with the words "I Love You" stitched on in red machine embroidery. The heart is two inches wide at the widest point.

As if that were not enough, at the place where the heart joins the pen, there is a fluffy glob of marabou trim, bright red.

Shedding.

Little wisps of red feather, drifting off into the clean computer lab...

Dead Bodies Everywhere

marxdarx has entered the film class at school (going for a computer art degree, specialty 3d design) and is required to produce a film.

So...

Music video. Song: "Dead Bodies Everywhere", Korn. Little Fayoumis doing the hack & slash number.


He throws open the door (with bandanna on head that has skull & crossbones all over it), stomps over to his toybox, flings toys all over the floor, and comes up with his sword. Arr! (He had to be coached on how to fling his toys for the video; he was taught to not do that.)

Then he is playing a videogame with Death. (Seriously. Scythe and everything, or at least that's what the camera angle shows.) (It's actually his mom in a black velvet cape with a staff.)

He hacks stuffed animals to pieces with his toy sword. Arr!

He kneels at an altar with all sorts of nifty stuff on it, and drinks from a chalice filled with blood. (Gingerale + red food coloring = ghastly results.)

He hacks marxdarx and votania to bits, and their very messily ketchuped bodies lie (on a carefully placed sheet) on the floor.

yaksha42 takes the videogame controller away from him, and yaksha42 also meets the ketchup.

He lies asleep, cradling his sword. Awww.


The best of all the takes of this will be put together into an interesting music video. Ahh yes. Everyone is amused. Realistic violence wigs him out (don't let him watch The Fellowship of the Ring unattended, because that bit where Saruman spins Gandalf around violently makes him freak out and cry) but pretend violence that isn't actually violent is very, very funny. (His toy sword has a plastic handle and a Nerf blade, painted silver; no way could someone get hurt from that easily, when used properly.)

Horoscopes from the Onion

Gemini: (May 21—June 21)
Although you honestly believe you do a better job of it than they could, finishing other people's sentences for them is still a real dick move.

Cancer: (June 22—July 22)
It's true that they say all is fair in love and war, but be advised that some still consider the use of nerve gas barbaric in either circumstance.

Conventional Wisdom

If there is not a con that meets in Texas to celebrate written forms of the art, called "ConText", I will be surprised.

Happy. Very happy.

I timed it very well, and called my dearest, and got to talk to him for four minutes before it was time for us to go our separate ways, both to bed: he directly, and I, indirectly.

He didn't remember Professor Burns when I described him last tri; this tri, however, when I mentioned "Burns and Bruyn", he immediately recalled, "Ah, the tag-team teachers..."

He listened patiently to me sketch the scene, of the three hour lab ("A three hour tour," he interrupted to sing) that took five hours, with Naomi babysitting the Little Fayoumis (he hadn't been introduced yet; I shall, at some point)...

He gets to sleep in tomorrow, which means I shall call sometime in the afternoon.

I feel warm all over.

Household

One of votania's stress points is, quite understandably, a messy house. Given the way her parents' other daughter chooses to maintain a household (or not), this is very, very understandable.

So, when she gets home today, the kitchen floor will be clean, the stove will be if not sparkling, at least shiny, the dishes done, her kid asleep, and general order reigning.

I can do that, at the least.

I also made something resembling supper from the remaining hamburger in the bottom of the fridge. When you fry, add cheese, onions, and mushrooms, it's not quite cheesesteak, but it's not bad either. marxdarx, the legendarily picky eater, snarfed his portion. Yay, me! It also helped that I cooked the mushrooms separately, so he wasn't subjected to them.

Little Fayoumis argued once about bedtime. "But it's not even dark yet!" Asked him whether his bedtime was when it was dark outside, or a time on the clock. "*sigh* A time on the clock." "So if you argue again about it not being dark, that won't even make sense."

No more argument. And he brushed his teeth without verbal armtwisting. Yay, me?