I spent the better part of the weekend dogsitting at my aunt's. Deacon is getting old, deaf, and incontinent, so it's best not to leave him alone for more than two hours.

He wakes up at 2am and barks needing to be let out. This ... did not do good things for my sleep schedule, given that I'd not remembered to bring the bare minimum of the pillows required for me to sleep comfortably.

There was a nasty twitter-account-compromise wandering around. The compromise was easy to spot amongst the people I read there, as very few of them would voluntarily tweet in support of a fad diet. I thought the first one might have been legit as I was expecting a scathing takedown of the latest fad diet, in fact, but unfortunately that was also a compromise.

On Sunday, I wound up with a migraine, so I was in excellent condition to meet my Infamous Cousin's new girlfriend (who works as a stripper). I wasn't having a good time actually locating my words, I was still half asleep, and fucking headaches. I did wind up discovering a fascinating item. In my search for the shower of a thousand tentacles, I found the Vado "Sculpture" tentacle shower, which she also approved of. (I think I like this one. Also the handcuff earrings.) And what hazing of the new girlfriend would be complete without sharing the Chocolate Penis Saga?

So I came home and basically slept for the remainder of Sunday and a good chunk of Monday, though I was awake to ask some salient questions in e-mail; there was less swearing than you'd think under the circumstances, although some of this was replaced by locutions such as "Also the previous query, [redacted], except louder, with a dance number and maracas."

I was in fact awake enough to go to a NaNo kickoff, which was fun. I recognized one of the people there on sight, not from previous NaNo stuff, and the shirt confirmed it. "Hello, co-worker!" I greeted him. There may be a sufficient number of $WORKPLACE folks doing NaNo to sort of club together.

Jennifer Christine Marie Elizabeth (fictional) spoke up at one point during all this, declaring that her name was in fact Lydia. GOOD TO KNOW. ... Oh god, she's got one of those alphabet names, doesn't she. Anna Bethany Christine Dagny Elizabeth Francine Gilda Heloise Isa Jennifer Kathryn Lydia Marie. Jesus christ that's a mouthful. Happily they ran out of steam halfway through. (It would have been Glinda had her mother not been too stoned on pain meds to remember how it was supposed to be spelled.) Poor Lydia.

The recent fad in "color blocking" makes me think of one thing, and I was fortunate enough to find a shirt illustrating this. I have plans for Wednesday.

I came home to find out that the promised changes to LiveJournal friends pages are in previewable state. I am so opposite of thrilled. I should really get around to RSSing-on-DW all the public journals I'd like to follow, and subscribing-to-notifications for the friends who post locked. Now that Carrie's clear, I just want to say that I hope the company reaps the benefits of its brilliant user research and customer service, and that the highest-up management gets to share in their full share of that result.

Today I discovered what lurks in norabombay's building's laundry room: really, not much of anything, but it's chilly. Also, stairs. Ow. I also discovered coffee or something that had been sticky before it dried splashed on the corner of my lovely black wool trenchcoat. Alas! It did wash right out, though, and I hung it up to dry over the bathroom radiator. (Mmm, radiators. So lovely.)

Nora got home from work and we got ready to go out on the town. I got dolled up in my performative femininity (for me, this involves eyeshadow and glitter; skirts are just standard) and Nora described the way that Tucker will get in arguments with people over electric blankets. (Tucktuck wants the electric blanket ON, tyvm, and will let you know this.)

There was a parking spot within a block and a half of the restaurant (Tapas Barcelona). It would have been a pleasant little walk if it hadn't been so chilly out; it was ~23 and kept dropping.

domtheknight and daydreamer were there! Hooray! We started out at one of the tall tables, but that wasn't working out so well; a short table cleared up and we wound up there instead. Dom told hilarious tales of how zarhooie had ordered the snails the last time they were there, and no one else wanted to share them, so Kat ate all the snails. Octopus was right out, as several people did not eat tentacles as a rule.

When the sangria arrived, we toasted: to the Internet! All such gatherings should be greeted with this toast, I am determined.

Hilarity and good fun was had by all. The especial favorite of Dom and Susan is the bacon-wrapped dates (Datiles Con Tocino), and lo, they were good (even the sauce). Other dishes included: Patatas Alioli, Tortilla (omelet, not corn pancake), Salmon Ahumado, something with meat and little bow-tie noodles (one of the specials), Mejillones Plancha, Queso De Cabra Con Tomate. So good.

I pulled out my phone to see that Kat had called. As I was preparing to text back saying that we were having dinner and what was up, Dom's phone rang. One of the professors from Kat's old college had died horribly. Kat told me that I should finish dinner and have fun, and also have the snails because they were delicious.

Thus, I ordered snails (Cabrillas Barcelona). The rest of the table told me that I was eating all of them. I took my serving, and then Dom decided to try the tomato-sauced bread under the snail (also delicious). I reached out with my fork and snagged the snail off the top of the piece of bread. Susan elected to try the baked potato beside the bread under the snail, this being as close to snail as she was getting that night. I wound up eating at least three of the snails. General hilarity.

Dessert: they didn't have one of the things we contemplated, so we wound up with Pitisu Con Helado and Tarrina De Chocolate. Om nom nom.

We stayed pretty late gossiping. Good times. I had a bit of a moment identifying which long black wool trenchcoat on the hooks near the table was mine. Fortunately I remembered the label name. I directly produced my Sharpie and added my sigil and initials.

Nora gave Dom and Susan a lift home. We took the scenic route after that.

Kat didn't answer when I called, so I am pretty sure that she fell asleep. Nora went through her closets for things that she doesn't/can't wear, and played fashion show upon me. There is now this pile of assorted clothing on the other chair that may well take up quite a bit of the spare room in my suitcase, which is going to make it that much easier to handle on the way back. There is this badass brown linen jacket, which goes with a pair of pants that probably won't work for me, but they go with me anyway on the grounds that the set should stay together. Hooray fannish pass-clothes-along time!


Tomorrow's plans are still being hammered out but involve sleeping in, and dinner (if that turns out to work with the other people involved, as it's a bit last-minute). (Other random friendly Chicago locals, feel free to holler; this totally isn't the Do All The Things time, so I'm not going to try for ALL the things, and I will have to come out here again, but I'm still open to suggestions.)

Icons picked by elf. Again, same rules as before: If you'd like me to look at your icons and pick ~5 that I'd like you to talk about, please include the word 'sigilism' in your comment.


Keywords: thesis thesis drunk, drunk
Comment: colortoy by sithjawa. Also http://www.livejournal.com/users/chavvah/119984.html?thread=22929
Description: Abstract blobby colors, captioned "thesis thesis DRUNK"

So there I was, minding my own business, drinking more then than I do now (still not much then, really not much now) and there was a hilarious parody of the llama song, and at the same time sithjawa had a thesis project, a little lava-lamp color-toy that one could click on and make fun colors, and at that time we were talking to each other on IM very regularly and often none too sober. It made sense at about 3am.


( 4 more. )

12:27 PM 3/17/2011
Wearing: Green skirt with all the cord embellishments and the velvet stripes, black shirt, black sweater, green, orange, and black rubber bracelets, my star (very pointedly, without the other necklace I usually wear) and my snake ring. Also lipstick (magenta) and eyeshadow (green). HAPPY ALL SNAKES DAY. Someone on twitter mentioned that today is in fact a Thursday. I passed this advisory along to Amal, because apparently we are still fifteen. :D

Picked up packages from office. SO MANY PACKAGES. There were only two things in that whole Amazon order that were shipped together. Also, the package from nnaylime! Complete with photo of dog! :D

Went to farmers' market with aunt. Cabbage, cauliflower, onions, strawberries, limes. I'm thinking that it's a good day for sangria.

There was a stop after that, and I looked at luggage but today was not a good day for it, and got a laundry cart.

Unpacked, the packages proved to contain:

BPAL from nnaylime, with the aforementioned photo of dog. I shall squee with my aunt later, also.

The book from Amazon, one that someone had recommended.

Extract of violet, for the cunning energy drink scheme. Though I fear that this one is more for the herbal benefits of the violet and less for the taste. May have to order something else.

Liquid B-vitamin. Alas, it is cherry-flavored. We shall see if that upsets the balance.

Pure anhydrous caffeine powder. I tend to find out about the world by sticking my nose in things. It occurred to me, as I was bringing the bottle to my nose to see what it smelled like, that vigorously sniffing near white powdered stimulant was just an all-around bad plan. So I very carefully and delicately inhaled, careful to not create a breeze big enough to pick up much in the way of particulates. No particular smell of note. Tastes fucking nasty, though.

A little scale, on the recommendation of the bodybuilders who tend to buy caffeine and taurine and liquid B-vitamins, because getting the wrong amount of whatever you're measuring is just an all-around bad plan. The scale is small, adorable, and most worryingly, extremely -- one might say excessively -- portable. It looks as if it was designed by a reputable scientific electronics company who nonetheless were aware that this was probably going to be used by drug dealers as well as health nuts, and designed it with their needs in mind. It's really clever -- the box it came in is hard, stiff cardboard with embedded magnets, and a foam pad that holds the scale and its accessories in place. So you can just basically leave it in the box and use it. I find the extent to which the portability concept is taken to be vaguely disturbing, as I do the likely assumptions of Amazon's computer system after I visited it and bought it.

(Previous boxes had contained the Roomba filters, the taurine, and the set of itty-bitty measuring spoons that the bodybuilders had also recommended. They are wee, and perfect for dumping tiny but measured bits of white powder onto the scale. Oh god. I am going to have to tape a note inside the scale box with the weight/substance pairs that I have found best for energy drink composition, so that if someone ever does notice that I have a bitty scale with traces of white powder, they will come to the correct conclusion, not the obvious one.)


1:43 PM 3/17/2011
I mixed up a drink with all of the energy and flavor components that I was planning to use, and it tastes sort of like [metaphorical] ass. (Also, it looks like pee, and that is a worrying color in a bottle of liquid.) The taurine has been previously tested, and does not impart any noticeable flavor that my taste buds (semi-supertaster for the ick in cilantro) can discern. The caffeine is strong and bitter, but I think the ringer is the B-Complex. (Which is definitely the component responsible for the pee-like color.) So that's out next time. Failure is always an option!


9:52 PM 3/17/2011
I have figured out a hilarious costume for Halloween or some costume party or a convention. Today I was wearing green eyeshadow (not subtle) in honor of the holiday, and I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror in the kitchen (not hard, the whole blamed closet door is mirrored) and observed that my eyes looked like something from a Boris Vallejo painting. I'd used lime green, bluegrass green, and as close to pumpkinfucker orange as the set of eyeshadow had (more of a bronze). I decided that should the opportunity present itself, I should dress up in some fantastic costume, and paint every inch of exposed skin in pearlescent eyeshadow of various supersaturated and slightly improbable colors, and attend the masquerade as a Boris Vallejo painting. amberfox found this just about as hilarious as I did.

Amber and I did not get to talk on the phone as much as we would have entirely liked, due to both of us keeping getting calls of the kind we could not ignore. In my case, it was $AGENCY-related (yay!). But other than that, I sliced strawberries and limes and chattered with Amber.


11:24 PM 3/17/2011
Discovered that my bag of potatoes had grown tentacles. I'm a touch on the exhausted side, so going out tonight to get more is not on the books. Tomorrow, though! I have the boiled-cabbage part of the colcannon-in-potentia boiled and sealed up awaiting the potatoes.

Also, there is strawberry-lime sangria steeping. I use a ridiculous ratio of fruit to wine, and I can only imagine the SIZE of the batch that would result if I used a whole $20 or $30 on it. (One $10 gallon of wine, the sort that comes in a carboy and leaves it stained when it sits after opening. A half-flat of strawberries is $10 this time of year. Four limes are $1 if you're paying for them, $0 plus transit if you know someone who has a tree and needs to do something with them. Sugar is cheap. Soda is cheap and you can use the inexpensive stuff.)

Tomorrow: shopping shenanigans scheduled.

Saturday: see seanan_mcguire's journal for details; hilarity is to ensue at Borderlands. I will be part of the adoring crowd of fans saying "Yay!" at all sorts of moments, both the appropriate and inappropriate. (Seanan has a book coming out in the fall? Yay! Seanan would like to unleash horrible bloody viral death upon the world? Yay! We are ... somewhat disturbing.)

( Poodle, really stop with the humping. )

( Best friend, April Fool's Day. )

( Friday: shopping with Tif. )

( Saturday: assorted misery, then social with foxfirefey and others!! )