Interview, interview.

From elance:

1. What's your favorite thing to cook?
2. Which store would you like to own, if you could own any one store?
3. What is your favorite restaurant to eat at, if price isn't a factor?
4. What do you see yourself doing in ten years?
5. What is your favorite song?

( answers )

Anybody wants me to interview them, you know the drill.

Preparedness as a way of life

minakochan visited recently, and commented in pleased surprise that our apartment actually had food. That reminded me of how it had been in the beginning...

votania and I come from utterly different backgrounds. She was raised here in Arizona, in a working class/poor family. I come from Alaska, and my family was upper-middle-class. Given the weather, and the nature of things, we could expect that we could wind up with the power and phone out for a day or so in the event of a bad storm, and if things were really bad, the roads would remain unplowed or the car could break down. And if it was -60 or lower, no way was anyone going anywhere -- too dangerous in the event of a breakdown. So FatherSir always kept the house stocked with enough in the way of staple food items (and spare other things as well) to be able to weather these things with no problem.

Having only enough food on hand for a week panics me. While we were first moving in, I was very nervous. votania was fine, but I saw that we had virtually no flour, no sugar, no beans, no rice, no powdered milk... barely even ramen! We got what she thought was enough, and I was still spooked.

So when we became slightly less broke, I made sure to have enough stuff on hand. I may be lousy at cooking basic things like bread, but there are such things as recipes, and I can follow them. (Mostly.)

So if the refrigerator is starting to look barren, and there's not a shopping trip budgeted immediately, I don't have to worry. I just make rice, throw together some soup, or make chili, and everybody's happy. (Only I've gotten used to cooking for a small army now, and generally I make a little too much. Only we don't have digitalambience or ralmathon over enough to soak up the excess, which means too many leftovers.)

So when people are getting all hot and bothered over preparedness, and having enough food to last a week, I really can't get my mind around what the big deal is. In my mind, everybody keeps a 50-lb bag of flour on hand, and as much rice. That's a minimum.

It's not because I'm paranoid that someone's going to attack Phoenix. It's not because we're not going to be using the car until gas prices go down (we aren't). It's because it's the way I was raised, and it makes it more convenient. I don't believe in the "just in time" system when there are so many things that can go wrong.


Next on the equipment list? A bread machine. Mmm. I want to make my own bread like FatherSir started doing, but I don't have the patience to deal with dough.

Cool!

Mr. President used to actually be our neighbor! We were sharing where we were living, and he recognized the complex name, and then when I said that we were the scary witches with the runes on the door, he knew which apartment we were in; he'd loved that.

Whee! That's quite cool indeed.

Testing. Not much to see here.

lj-weather: dust storm

Tired. Headachey. TV on in living room. Dust storm brewing outside.

Morning

Dragged my zombie ass into Web Dev class, and amused myself in toying with the (rather late) lab 3. I just need specific information on the database to be able to retrieve stuff, and for that I shall make an appointment with the teacher in her Academic Support Center hours.

(Yep. You heard right. I'm not falling behind and then being too proud to ask for help. I fell behind and now I'm actively catching up, which is... even better than never falling behind to start with.)

Instead of doing the smart thing and catching a nap, I did the dumb thing and spent time on LJ before the GSA meeting.

Linkage--

Oh, iroshi... you might want to check this post out.

GSA Meeting

Mr. President is such a cutie. And, it looks, completely gay.

Confirmed: I am the oldest one currently in the club, at 23. It is scary that Mr. President is the second oldest, at 21; he says that therefore I can come clubbing with him. *snerk*

I shared palmtop files with the cute little gayboi with all the spiky hair, the one who looks like a prep. The spiked-hair kind of prep, rather than the kind of prep that Mr. Treasurer is. Memorable lines from this: "What are you doing, looking at the kama sutra?" --Mr. President; "Yes." --me. (We had sort of giggled in the middle of something he was saying.)

We voted on shirt colors. We're going to be like a fraternity, and have Greek letters and everything! Mr. President was suggesting black with white letters for the guys, and white with black letters for the girls. At that point, I went *hmf!* and crossed my arms over my ample bosom. It was then polled, and everybody wants black shirts. So, black it shall be. *grins*

I put in my commentary about the Day of Silence, being a veteran of a few. Letting people know about it beforehand is a good plan.

After the meeting was over, we socialized. Learned that Mr. President had in fact been a neighbor of ours for some time until he'd moved. He'd seen our door, with the rune plaque, and liked it. We made tentative plans to see Rocky Horror together at some point -- probably the movie together, and then Out In Public. (Mr. Treasurer was apprehensive about being a virgin, so I proposed the half-devirginizing, so he'd at least be familiar with the thing.)

It was a good meeting. Fun kids. I feel so old.

Afternoon

After attempting, and failing to finish "lunch" (a bottle of Live Wire Dew, accept no substitutes except for carbonated Tang with a caffiene pill crushed in it) I hit DBA lab.

Fun stuff, having to do with creating tablespaces and mucking with them and with tables. Was v. frustrated the first time.

Spent half an hour trying to get the computer to boot -- was a networking problem, with the wrong DSN addy. Oy to the motherfuckin' vey. Got that fixed.

The guy with the nifty star ring and I are sharing a lab manual. Cool.

I am realizing how much I need my e-mail and posting to LJ to be accessable to me while I'm working with computers -- it distracts me long enough to retrieve me from the headache, and gets me back ready to focus.

Yay for e-mail.

Photos--

swallowtayle, here are those photos of Darkside playing with me.

And other stuff too.

Evening

Came home to find good (old) (70s or 80s) music blasting, and votania painting.

--random note-- I have the Little Fayoumis dump his shoes outside and wash face and hands immediately after he gets home from school. He'll thank me for the habit of washing his face and hands as soon as he gets home when he's a teenager, trust me...

Zonked out for a good while, just reading. Have now finished Sir Apropos of Nothing, Peter David (and will be embarking upon The Woad to Wuin soon). Was delighted by how the clichés got turned on their asses.

marxdarx came home. Eventually, everybody else went out to retrieve something supper-like; I remained (zonked) with book.

They returned. Yay, supper.

After a goodly amount of time, the shower and I preyed upon the flocks of unsuspecting kittens. (Nope, not washing the raver-girl.)

After that, cleared dishes out of the sink ready to be loaded into the dishwasher, and dumped the bag of catfood into the bucket. (Bags are insecure; Moshie will shred them if they're in his reach.)

Now? Hopefully, bed, and sleep.

Beauty?

Noticed in the mirror this morning, after I brushed out my fuzzy morning-hair, and put on some concealer and lipstick (I don't know what the weather's doing, but my skin is not happy with it, or maybe it's too happy...) that the woman in the mirror was gorgeous.

I've been noticing my hair a lot lately. It's down past my shoulderblades, but it somehow doesn't feel that long. It's finally as long as Francine's hair in my userpic. It's odd -- I've been staring at that image so much that it's starting to overpower the image in my mirror of "me" -- not a bad thing, just odd.

I suppose that this may be part of why I look in the mirror and see myself, and see differences in myself from my mental image of myself, and I note approvingly that my hair is longer, with richer color, and I'm wearing my glasses so I don't look half-blind, and I have bigger boobs, and I have more color in my face so I look more alive, and my hair is smoother and softer and shines more.

Now, I do consider Francine beautiful.

And it boggles me, when I find that the woman in the mirror could give Francine-in-the-icon a run for her money and win.

Images of Power: the party

It's still an image that haunts me. It's related to, but not quite, "The Necromancer's Prayer"...

It is the middle of a loud party. The driving beat of the danceable kind of techno-ish stuff resounds, with crisp high percussion. A strobe light flashes in time to it. It is a house party, and this room is a large one, with a high ceiling and sturdy furnishings. There is a large window, and the curtains are drawn back so the city lights below can be seen.

A girl, the girl, kneels on the seat of the chair, leaning over the back, faced away from the party, faced towards the window. She is awash in the energy of the party, but feels it ripple cool and comforting as water slightly below body temperature, surrounding her, lifting her up as she watches the quiet, wakeful, watching city.

Again, there is the swirl of incense, caught analog-frozen in the digital strobe light, the rich tones of a woodwind undercutting the digital drum track.