All my maps will only show me how to lose my way...

It was a banner f****n' day at the old Bender family.

2009-11-06T12:35:41Z

Submitted my art for the SGA Big Bang.
Went out for anniversary dinner. Fondue is yum.
Proposed to significant other, proposal accepted. Shiny black stainless steel wedding bands deployed. Really like our rings, they're interesting enough and no conflict diamonds were involved. (I don't care for diamonds or traditional wedding rings, so I wanted something fairly simple that would still stand out. And I especially hate gold-tone jewelry, no matter its material or form).

Ignore my wrinkly "old man" hand. My hands super dry because of the recent shift in weather.
Mrs. Bunny chewed my main mouse's cord in half and nibbled at my backup mouse's cord. Mea culpa, I should have been supervising her but wasn't.
Finished reading In the Cut. I don't know why, but all of the sudden I wanted to read it. Must have lost my mind, as I knew how it ended and knew I wouldn't like it. Not my most shining example of the return to bookdom.

Mini-review: Needlessly dense, dull, distant, stuffy, waste of time.

Long review: Any possible edge is blunted by the slow meandering crawl towards a resolution. Dull vagueness isn't the same as mystery.

The use of an unreliable narrator coupled with first person voice is pure laziness on the part of the author. Why bother writing the important parts when you can just say that the character doesn't have that information?

There is no urgency from the characters, despite the protagonist's multiple brushes with murder and mayhem. She is attacked and also stalked by multiple men, yet doesn't seem to care. If anything, I felt she was suicidal and was simply waiting for death to conveniently appear, generously meted out by one of her improbably numerous male admirers.

The ending appears as if by magic, and while clues and hints are scattered throughout the story and the plot inevitably to leads up to a climax, the build-up is incomplete and unfulfilling. It's probably meant to seem sudden and shocking but is instead abrupt and jarring.

The book was considered edgy in 1996 for its portrayals of sex and female sexuality, but I find the sex suffers from romance-novel omission and euphemism even while struggling to shock with its pseudo-explicitness. And I find the faux-feminism of the book useless, the female characters are passive, letting things happen to them that most women I know would rail against or take precautions to prevent. In almost all the sexual encounters the men all take the lead. The lead character just accepts everything they do, she wants it in some way - even when she professes otherwise.

The book is short, and doesn't make use of that at all. It could be a one-two punch in the gut, visceral and sharp but instead it's like one of those nightmares where you try to run but never move. I don't know what I was thinking. ::smacks own hand::

I need some art beets. (NEED ART BETAS)

2009-11-03T13:03:54Z

MBGNPOMGWTFBBQ in search of willing (or unwilling, I don't really care) art betas. Likes: Long walks on the beach, constructive criticism, helpful comments. Dislikes: hairy toes, brown eyes, orange Kool-Aid. Will make exceptions for brown eyes. Will not make exceptions for orange Kool-Aid.

So, I'm nearing completion of my SGA Big Bang artwork and would like some eyes that are not housed in my skull to peer at it. I'm still poking at it, but I'd like to know if it's generally acceptable and/or won't cause spontaneous eyebleeds (I'm not really picky).

Am I now "newly efficient"? I'm kind of afraid to find out.

2009-10-17T06:24:32Z

Wednesday I pretended to be an IT project manager so I could attend Microsoft's Portland Windows 7 launch. I went for a variety of reasons: for the novelty, to experience the sheer ridiculous geekery firsthand, to observe the ratio of men to women (50 to 1, without a doubt). But most of all, I went for the much vaunted free copy of Windows 7.

The advertising slogan Microsoft is using - "The New Efficiency" - sounds like some creepy Cold War-era code name for Nazi medical experiments or something. I don't know that I would have chosen it for my advertising campaign slogan. Too bad I don't have any need of advertising slogans. "The new mapsandlegends, same as the old mapsandlegends!" "mapsandlegends, not synonymous with cheese wheels!" "We switched your regular mapsandlegends with this instant mapsandlegends. Let's see if these pygmy mountain goats notice the difference."

The first hour and a half was boring as hell. First, I wandered around because I apparently got there super, ridiculously early, then I sat through two short talks by IBM (blah Hyper-V, buy our blade servers for $10,000 blah) and En Pointe (we do stuff, but we can't really articulate what that is without 5.2 million buzzwords). At least it was somewhere I could relax while I nommed on my peanut butter granola bars.

Scant snackery was provided, two kinds of granola bars, one bag of trail mix, a bottle of water or a can of soda. And pears. I hate raw pears because they're usually not sufficiently washed and they have that bitter aftertaste to the skin. Were apples just too expensive, or was Microsoft afraid that they might be indirectly referencing the competition? I'm jealous of the morning attendees with their fancy continental breakfasts. But hey, at least I didn't have to roll out of bed at six a.m. to get ready for my prentend career day. I should probably be grateful that there was even any free food made available. I'm sure I could have toddled over to the Little Caesar's just down the road and jawed at some cardboard pizza slices, but thankfully that wasn't necessary.

I expected the Windows 7 presentation to be as dry and dusty as the first two, but the speaker, Chris Avis was actually informative and interesting, as interesting as four hours worth of technical minutiae about new operating systems can be, anyway. I didn't care about the whole DirectAccess and security group policy bits, though that was more because I find them inherently boring and ultimately useless for my purposes. I'm not sure if I like BitLocker, considering that I like to use my USB cards and drives to move data between computers and I don't want the added hassle of dealing with encryption and passwords just to transfer files. I don't like that it makes USB thumb drives invisible to Macs and unusable to PCs without Vista or Win 7 (you can read files if you have the password, but you can't write to the drive).

All in all, it was a worthwhile five hours, with the end result being that I'm now the owner of one shiny, free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate. Retail for this version of Win 7 is $320, which I think is completely insane. It would need to be able to cook me dinner and run a hot bath before I'd be willing to fork over that much cash for a single-license operating system. I'm not sure I'll be upgrading right away, considering that I'm not having any problems with XP on any of my computers, but some day I may feel the urge to get with the times and stop using my eight year old operating system.

Unpacking hell.

2009-10-08T01:23:23Z

I put it to you, internets, that no one these days needs 30 or more SCSI cables (along with 10+ SCSI terminators). You remember SCSI, right? Back when it ruled the computer age, before this newfangled IDE and SATA crap, SCSI was a mysterious force to be reckoned with because if you didn't terminate your SCSI chain just right your devices and drives would petulantly refuse to show up.

Why, oh, why do we have 30 SCSI cables sitting around in a box? And that was just one box. I know we've got a least two or three more boxes of mixed power/computer/a-v cables. Oy vey!

I also found like 15 pairs of size 50-56 men's pants. The lowdown here is that in my early 20s, I felt strangely compelled to wear giant pants and belt them down to a wearable size. I'll freely admit that I may have been insane, but that phase has long since and thankfully passed. Now, nobody in this household has ever come close to fitting into those pants, nor has anyone worn them for many, many years, yet there they are, sitting in my closet, taking up space that could be filled with more SCSI cables (when I find them). Out with the pants!

Untangling myriad serpentine cables and sorting through ginormous pants is backbreaking work, I tells ya. Time for lunch.

1 metric ton of towels, 2 quadrillion t-shirts unearthed. How the hell did I end up with so many t-shirts? And none of them are my Smiths shirt. ::shakes fist:: At least I have three boxes of clothes that I'm leaving by the dumpster and an entire trash bag of clothes that I'm putting in the dumpster. And ewwwww, they're all so musty and dusty after two months in storage. I don't even have allergies but my nose is still very angry with me for breathing this noxious odor.

While I approve of the large amount of Legos that we (as mostly grown-up adults) apparently own, I think it would be nice if they were all in the same place. Do I really want to root through 30 boxes to make that happen? No.

Damn. I found a letter from my dad in an old photo album. It's 20 years old. Written only three months before he died. I just...I can't believe it's been hiding in an empty, unused photo album for eight years and I just now found it. I can't believe he's been dead for 20 years. On one hand I'm glad I've had time to grieve and heal but something like that, the way I found him dead that morning, that's something so visceral and immediate that you can't ever really forget. Normally, I'd be all John Sheppard-like and just ignore my feelings, but this is actually making me cry. I couldn't reread the whole thing, it just makes me want things I can't ever have.

I will now take a break and watch NCIS to recover from emotional fragility and crick in back from picking up heavy, cloth-filled totes.

Boo, yay.

2009-10-02T20:51:38Z

I'm made of fail on memes this week. Bun has been sick and I've setting her back to rights. She's doing well, though, so I'm happy. Will pick up posting again once I've had some solid, contiguous hours of sleep.

I had a package show up today, but I was so tired that I couldn't even make it to the door on time and the UPS guy took it over to the office. Still haven't mustered up the energy to go get it. (I don't care if the office is only 100 yards from my apartment, it's sooooooooo faaaaaaaar awaaaaaaaaaaaay.)

But I did actually manage to set my alarm and wake up in time to claim which story I wanted to do artwork for in the SGA Big Bang. So, I'd say my priorities are all in their right and proper places: 1. Bunnies. 2. SGA. 3. Packages. 4. Sleep. (Shut up.)

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

2009-09-20T02:34:36Z

Arrr, me hearties! Today, of course, be International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Should you wish to be celebratin' this glorious and grand day by talkin' like a pirate, or by just singin' like a pirate, I be directin' ye ta last year's ITLAPD post, where I was postin' an aaaaaaaaaaaaaar-ific music mix fer just this here occasion. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

Avast, ye landlubbers!

One week: day two.

2009-09-19T09:52:39Z

I skipped a day, but I don't want to take away from the beauty that is today's photo by posting two day's worth of content at one time.

For one week, recommend/share:

Day one: a song - Sarah Siskind - Falling Stars
LISTEN TO THIS SONG. Because it's catchy and Sarah Siskind's voice is gorgeous and you won't be able to stop singing it afterwards. This is a song that I'm going to use someday in my SGA fanmix, if I ever get around to finishing it.

Day two: a picture - NSFW!
Found this on Fleshbot, but the blog it's posted to doesn't list any credits and I don't think they took the photo. Too bad, I wanted to find out if this was a series of pictures. Le sigh. I'll just appreciate this one some more.

You don't even know how badly I want to paste in John Sheppard's face.

Day three: a book/ebook/fanfic.
Day four: a site.
Day five: a youtube clip.
Day six: a quote.
Day seven: whatever tickles your fancy.

Nuh-uh, no way.

2009-09-17T09:41:55Z

The Freecycle Portland mailing list is like Craigslist except everything's free and most of it's used because. People try to give things away because they don't want it to end up in landfills. It's a laudable goal, to be sure.

But the people offering the nasal hair trimmer? The USED nasal hair trimmer that's been "cleaned with alcohol so don't get too grossed out"?

HOHNO. I will get grossed out and you can't stop me. Aside from the fact that it's had someone else's snot all over it, alcohol isn't nearly strong enough to kill everything that could be potentially living on it. I'm hardly a germaphobe but I think that's pretty disgusting. Maybe for their next trick, they can offer some used retainers or contact lenses that they've cleaned with alcohol. Because that makes everything okay.

Please just throw the freaking thing away already.

Meme-ry. That's right, I just made up a word.

2009-09-17T08:57:48Z

I have now stolen this "one week" meme from the internets, including gblvr.

For one week, recommend/share:

Day one: a song - Sarah Siskind - Falling Stars
LISTEN TO THIS SONG. Because it's catchy and Sarah Siskind's voice is gorgeous and you won't be able to stop singing it afterwards. This is a song that I'm going to use someday in my SGA fanmix, if I ever get around to finishing it.

Day two: a picture.
Day three: a book/ebook/fanfic.
Day four: a site.
Day five: a youtube clip.
Day six: a quote.
Day seven: whatever tickles your fancy.

Just venting, don't mind me.

2009-09-07T04:52:06Z

Oh. My. God.

You want the fucking dishwasher out of your house ASAP because it's taking up space in your kitchen where you want to put your new shelf.

But you wait over 24 hours to get back to me EVERY TIME I EMAIL YOU TO ARRANGE A TIME FOR PICKUP. WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK, LADY? Do you actually want to sell this thing or are you just toying with me?

Also, the name she assigned to her gmail account is "ACCOUNT". So that every time you see an email from her, it says it's from "ACCOUNT" rather than the name or username of the person. Get off the goddamned internets if you can't figure out how to use Craigslist, you rackafrackin' bejesused douchebag.

I am alive.

2009-08-23T19:32:07Z

I swear. (Don't pay attention to the teeth-gnashing and moaning, I swear I'm not a zombie. You don't need that pesky brain, anyway, right? Mmmmmmm, brainsssss......)

What? I have a LiveJournal? What's that?

2009-07-28T06:41:59Z

So, obviously I've been super-lame about updating recently. I'm reading my friends list every day, but things are completely off-the-hook insane right now.

The basics:

We're in the middle of a month-long stealth move out from under our psycho roommate. Yes, we can has new apartments, thank you internets and my RL friends.

J got offered a job making $50,000 a year as a web programmer, which we've been on tenterhooks about. I almost can't believe it, I have to pinch myself sometimes.

Craigslist has turned out to be a real boon in the secondhand furniture department. I can find good-quality inexpensive furniture that's still attractive and doesn't look like it's been a beer-soaked wet-dog-roosting porch couch for the last 15 years (not that those aren't in abundance, as well). The hard part is arranging transport when you only have a truck available on specific days.

So, yes. Furniture transporting, stealth moving, job hunting, and working full-time haven't left either of us with a lot of free time.

I promise to be a better mapsandlegends in future. ^__^

Maybe I'll make a music post to celebrate the new digs when we've got internet available at the new place.

Is it Xmas in July?

2009-07-16T00:13:09Z

No, it's gblvr's birthday! You are one of my favorite people ever.

Present to follow!

Meeeeemmmmm'rrrrieeeees.

2009-06-22T22:05:52Z

I lose things sometimes. Like, say, two or three copies of Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend album. So I *cough* downloaded it on the dl *cough*. I don't feel especially bad considering I alone have paid him (or the record company) thrice over for this album.

Let me tell you that the most vivid memory I have of this cd is listening to it one Saturday afternoon during the summer of 1992 and eating a taco salad while simultaneously watching a horrible beach volleyball movie and playing the NES game A Boy and His Blob. That was such a great game, though it turned out to be really easy in the end. I played it via emulation a few years ago and I was surprised at how hard it had seemed back in the day. I do think it was a weird concept for a game, especially the part with the cornfield.

Even at such a young age, I was listening to music while watching television and playing a game (and eating!). At last I know where this crazy multitasking habit started. Curse my teenage self!

Absentee Father's Day

2009-06-22T00:02:57Z

So I see that today is Father's Day, which I wouldn't have really noticed except for the fact that my friends list has a lot of Father's Day posts on it. Lots of lovely David and Baz photos. While I normally don't like children, even I can admit that Baz is cute. David seems like an amazing father.

I don't really pay attention to Father's Day because I don't have a father around to remind me of the day. He died 20 years ago last Sunday, Flag Day. If there's anything to be grateful about such a thing, it's that he didn't die on Father's Day itself.

The problem is that my father was absent for much of my life. My parents weren't married and after they broke up I saw him occasionally, but not regularly. I was almost given up for adoption, but for some reason my father chose to assert his parental rights. Not that him doing so ever did me much good, because that was pretty much the last time he really seemed to be all that interested in me. (And maybe if he'd allowed the adoption, I wouldn't have to deal with the one thing in my life that does haunt me every day, childhood sexual abuse at the hands of my uncle.)

I only knew my father for 15 years. He died at age 38 of a massive heart attack, caused by congenital defects.

I have no memories of him before about age five (because I have almost no memories of anything before age five) though I do remember once being woken up around 7am on a Saturday morning and being made to wait outside my grandmother's house for my father to pick me up. It was foggy and cold, the way some spring mornings are, and I waited alone while my mother sat in the kitchen watching. I thought this was an unusual thing, having not been involved in one of these weekend visitations before. It seems strange to me now that a mother would force her child to wait alone outside for a visitation pick up, it's something I would never do if I had children (which I don't, and never will).

I remember seeing my father most when we lived in three particular houses, from the ages of nine to thirteen. I think that the only reason I saw so much of him then was that he was married to a woman with children and she probably urged him to spend time with me. I remember spending weekends at their trailer, playing Space Invaders and Tank on the Atari 2600, staying up by myself to watch The Ghost and Mrs. Muir on late night TV. I remember the tadpoles my erstwhile stepbrother and I caught at the nearby creek and the time I cried the night before we went to King's Island. I remember seeing The Last Unicorn and Return of the Jedi with my dad.

One Saturday evening during a visit, he asked me to go find the stepkid, who was out somewhere in the trailer park, so we could go and pick-up fast food for dinner. While I was out looking, the kid came back on his own and my dad took him and left without me. This is one of the few things he did that still actually hurts me. He asked me to look for the kid, then left me behind. It just underscored to me how unimportant I felt he always considered me. The stepkid was good enough to go, but his own, real, flesh and blood kid? Forget her. That seemed pretty indicative of our relationship as a whole. (As an aside, who leaves their ten year old daughter alone to wander around a trailer park without supervision while they take the other kid and go get dinner? I know it was the 1980s, but come on. Apparently, neither of my parents was very fond of making sure I was supervised in my youth.)

There was another winter night near Christmas when I waited hours and hours for him to pick me up, sitting in the dark living room, watching every car to see if it was his wife's green whatever with the round tail lights. I think he finally showed up. I was probably nine.

When my dad and his wife moved into a small neighbohood close to mine, I went to see him instead. Those were better times, when I could see him at my convenience rather than his. I remember making steak and the birthday where he gave me $50, most of which I spent on magazines with pictures of Duran Duran. He stayed in that house after he and his wife divorced and I watched The Breakfast Club for the first time ever on cable tv, back when you changed channels with those little converter boxes with the sliding channel selector. I stayed weekends and he bought me my favorite foods and we finally had some time without interruption to have a real relationship.

That was too good to last, of course. When I was thirteen, he packed up and moved to Florida for some reason. He wrote occasionally and I gave him a hard time about the lack of contact, but there wasn't a whole lot I could do, except miss him. He asked me to come and visit him, so I got on a plane for the first time in my life (alone), and naturally missed my connecting flight in Atlanta, had to wait four hours for another flight to Gainesville, which I spent riding the inter-concourse tram and wandering around the airport. We spent a good week together, he bought me all my favorite food and critiqued my taste in music. There was no money for the return trip, so I had to take a Greyhound bus for 14 hours just to get home.

The next time I went to visit him in Florida, I was fifteen and it was part of a family vacation with my aunt (his sister), my uncle and my cousin. Because I hadn't seen him in so long, I chose to stay with him for the week while they went galavanting off around lower Florida. Things went along just fine until Wednesday morning, when I woke up because his alarm was going off. My dad lived in a tiny duplex with no bedroom, so he slept on the couch and I took his air mattress. I lay there for several minutes wondering why he wasn't getting up to turn off his alarm. I stumbled over to the end table and turned it off, and when I stepped back far enough to see into the kitchen, to my horror, he was on the floor.

I tried to revive him in the way that a naive fifteen-year-old would, and having no luck, ran to the other duplex unit to get his neighbor, Neil. Neil, I think, knew my father was dead, but he told me to run across the yard to another neigbor's house so they could call 911, and to stay there. What happened next was pretty much a blur. I think my dad's landlady ferried me around. I had to go to the hospital to say goodbye before they did the autopsy. I called my mom from there and at first I couldn't talk. The conversation went something like this: "Mom, he's dead." "Who?" "Dad, he had a heart attack, he's dead."

Since my aunt and her family were somewhere in southern Florida, my dad's landlady, one of the few Christian people I've ever met who has actually lived up to the name, took me in until state troopers could track down my aunt. She let me stay in a spare bedroom, fed me, made her teenage daugters take me with them on a trip to take their niece to the movies. She was so nice and I couldn't have needed it more.

The police eventually found my aunt and I've since forgotten or blocked out most of the rest of the trip. I don't remember how we got home.

The real tragedy of him dying at this time of my life was that we'd just begun to reconnect. I was getting old enough to have common interests with him, I wasn't as much of a child that he might have felt was a burden or maybe didn't know how to relate to. I was becoming someone he could actually talk to and debate with. And then, in a flash, it was over.

My last memory of the whole summer was after my brothers set fire to our house (another great event of the that summer) and going over to my aunt's house, where I could hear her arguing with my mom about how I stole some of my dad's belongings (some VHS videotapes) that had been brought back from Florida. All I had to remember my dead father were some VHS videotapes he'd made from old school A&E programs and HBO/Cinemax movies, which I was legally entitled to anyway as his sole heir, and she was quibbling over them. (What a fucking bitch. Is it any wonder that I ended up disowning her a few years ago?)

The fact of his death was ever present that summer and I made sure to remind myself that he was dead every time I woke up so I wouldn't have to remember it later, so it would be in my memory and undeniable, so I wouldn't wake up and not know he wasn't alive anymore. Time has healed that wound, if by healed you mean inured.

I don't think about him anymore because there's no one here to remind me. I'm away from my mother's side of the family and I don't associate with any of his relatives because they're pretty much all assholes like my aunt or super-concentrated yuppies who don't even care that I exist. And it's not because I didn't love him, or that I don't wish he were still here, it's because this was the pattern he established over my whole life. I didn't see him for years at a time, and to some part of my brain, this is just the longest absence yet. Maybe that part of me is still watching for him, out the window, to show up in his ex-wife's green whatever with the round tail lights.

State of the Map, an aggragation of recent events.

2009-06-13T21:25:08Z

Sorry I haven't been posting much, we're looking at apartments right now and preparing to move, so I'm not especially focused on writing journal entries at the moment. I always read my friends list, every day, though, so don't think I've forgotten any of you.

What have I been up to, otherwise?

Watching a lot of Monty Python on Netflix while I'm cooking. I think that Monty Python is completely to blame for my entire worldview. Taking nothing seriously, contempt for authority, complete silliness, random quotes and blathering, it's all there.
I am officially addicted to America's Test Kitchen. I get seriously tetchy when my local PBS station is doing their endless fundraising on Saturdays and they preempt America's Test Kitchen. It's like science and cooking in the same show, two of my favorite things together. I love the unique approach of experimenting to find the best way to prepare food - and since they do it, I don't have to.
I keep reading Star Trek XI fic, but I wouldn't say that I'm really into the fandom. I blame sol_se, with all of the those recs. :D I keep having to look at pictures of the new actors, because every now and then my mind flashes to the original series actors and it just freaks me out. I just can't think of William Shatner having sex, at any age, no matter how much I love Denny Crane.
Regarding Star Trek XI, I thought the movie was a bit weak, but better than I expected. Though it's not actually his fault, I think that Chris Pine looks too much like Michael Weatherly and I consider MW to be much prettier. Mmmm, Tony DiNozzo. I'm sure someone will consider this opinion blasphemy (gblvr?).
I've spent approximately $50 on forensic supplies to use for fun invitations to the CSI Experience at OMSI. I may have pretty much divorced myself from CSI at this point, but I'm still ridiculously excited by this exhibition.

When worlds collide.

2009-05-30T22:32:12Z

I'm watching some cooking show on PBS, it's not very good, but what captured my attention is that the chef helping the host looks disturbingly like Richard Belzer. It's like I'm watching John Munch, dressed in cooking whites and an apron, cook eggplant parmesan. I don't understand why he's not breaking out into conspiracy theory about how eggplants are the tools of the man.

Too much caffeine.

2009-05-02T11:27:04Z

The bad thing about the fact that I quit drinking soda (cutting out HFCS as much as possible, plus there's all the empty calories) is that now I drink tea instead. And let me tell you this, the caffeine in tea is much, much stronger, faster acting and longer lasting. I had no idea at first that there's such a marked difference, but even though I know now, it's still hard to remember that drinking just two glasses of iced tea will keep me up all night, not to mention make me hyperactive.

Which is why I'm up at 3:42 am. And how I decided that I should color my hair. With an old box of L'oreal hair dye that's been under the sink for over two years. Yeah, sane people know this could be a bad idea, but my caffeinated mind is thinking, "Ooooh, dye your hair before you go on vacation!".

The mixture turned out normal, thankfully, but the bottle was so brittle from age and chemical storage that it crackled every time I squeezed it, like that time was going to be the time it decided to break wide open and fling dye all over the bathroom. The other thing is that somehow, along the way, I'd used the gloves that came with the kit for another dye job and so I had to improvise something or end up wasting the dye. My solution? Sandwich bags, which I secured to my hands with rubber bands around the wrists. I hate to say this, but they actually worked almost as well as those flimsy gloves you get in the dye kit, and they didn't split open between the thumb and forefinger the way that kit gloves always do. I did look rather silly, though it being nearly four in the morning means no one's around to see.

And now it's time to rinse, because I can't stand the itchy creeping drip of the dye on my scalp. Ick.

Yeah, so I'm a sheep. BAAAA.

2009-05-02T07:09:36Z

Of course I can't afford the 12 months account at Dreamwidth right now, but I popped over and bought a month's worth of time just to open an account. Same old username, mapsandlegends. I'm sure I won't post more often, but I'll be around. Since I'm about to go on vacation, I don't have a huge amount of time to work on uploading icons and updating my user profile, but I wanted to sign up now before I forgot to do it (as I'm wont to do). I feel better about giving money to DW instead of LJ after the various debacles LJ has been party to. It's kind of a novel experience, and now I feel like LJ and I (as well as the rest of fandom) have been in an abusive relationship and DW is my therapist or something.

Oh, man, I go off to plan a vacation and things go all to hell.

2009-04-20T23:02:07Z

So I gather that the former sardonicsmiley purged her journal for some reason (if anyone wants to fill me in, feel free)? It's sad because there was a lot of good stuff there and I liked her writing. Judging by a couple of other people's entries, she got upset over lack of comments for stories? That seems sort of crazy to me, so I hope it's not the case. I think I've written some decent stuff, though not a great amount of it, and I had to get used to the fact long ago that I'm not going to get five bazillion comments. Based on the stories I've read in her journal, it seems like she gets (got) a boatload of comments for nearly everything she's ever written.

I don't know what set her off , so I don't want to pass judgement without all the facts, but why delete a journal that so many people read, even if you're not currently writing in that fandom? I'm pretty far from being in love with CSI anymore, but I won't just delete all the content I created based on it. I may not feel motivated to ever finish that CSI WIP, but I'm not just throwing it in the garbage. (Maybe I'll get around to finishing it someday, and I do apologize that I haven't.)

I think you should write because it's something you enjoy, something you want to give as a gift, to share, or collaborate on, as an expression of your love for your subject, or your passion to get the story out of your mind and into the world. That's why I do it, when I can manage to make myself do it. I'll never get a lot of praise for writing, and I don't really mind. I sincerely doubt that I'm the next Hemingway, but I think I do all right when I can be bothered. My enjoyment stems from the craft of writing, the process, the picking and prodding at words and phrases to make them work just so. I enjoy working the language, fussing over structure and meaning and symbolism. So if someone else likes it, good. If not, I still had a good time, and I'll still be crazy enough post it. I don't worry that I'm not a big name fan, that I don't have a cadre of followers, if everything I say doesn't get a response. I just have fun over here in my little corner of the land and celebrate the small victories.

Yes, I can verbify Seattle. Just watch me.

2009-04-17T03:31:11Z

So, I'm Seattling in May. Even though I live in Portland, I've never been to Seattle before now. I'm absorbing all kinds of media about where to go and what to see and I've booked the hotel and the transportation. So, dear friends list, given two and a half days, what should J and I do in Seattle? Bonus points for extra cheapness, since we're on a bit of a budget.

UGH, a Cupid remake? Seriously, ABC?

2009-04-06T21:50:19Z

I was watching ABC for all of five minutes the other night and there was a commercial on for a new show called Cupid. Except, it's not really a new show. No, it's a remake of 1998's Cupid with Paula Marshall, Jeremy Piven, and my personal favorite, Joe Flanigan.

I loved Paula Marshall in the original show, and I loved her with Joe Flanigan. They were h-o-t. I liked Jeremy Piven as Cupid (though I generally consider him loathsome), and using a Pretenders song as the theme was inspired. Everything about this new version is different, set in L.A. instead of Chicago, sleazy guy instead of wacky, lovable guy, bleach-blond anorexic doctor with artfully tousled curls instead of flustered, serious, beautiful Paula Marshall. At least the scripts are all new, even if they do reuse most of the plots.

Based on the commercial, I've extrapolated the quality of the remake and have come to the well reasoned conclusion that this remake will be awful. Though maybe ABC will actually let it play to some sort of conclusion this time. The best thing about this is that maybe it will spur ABC to release the original series on DVD. I can only hope.

Tipple taxle tips taxes! Taxes and tips.

2009-03-13T00:33:58Z

Hey, USians! Have you filed your taxes yet? Don't wait! Unless you owe 50 zabillion dollars - then you should probably flee the country.

If you're like me, you're an unlucky schmoe who makes a pittance, but that does work in your favor during tax season. The IRS has a partnership with over 20 sites that will file your taxes for free. Check IRS.gov to get a list of available sites. You have to either make less than $56,000 or $30,000 to qualify depending on the site. And as an added bonus, 20 states sponsor free state filing - including Oregon, so I didn't pay anything to file my federal or state taxes this year.

My personal favorite is TurboTax Online's TaxFreedom.com, which I've been using to do my taxes online for almost ten years. If you have an account already, they've decided to stop charging for federal returns with TurboTax Basic but WILL charge you to file your state return. The key here is to create a new account on the TaxFreedom page - you can use all of the same data: same email, password, personal info. This will keep you from being defaulted into TurboTax Basic, because if you already have a TurboTax account you cannot use it with TaxFreedom.com, no matter how hard you try. TurboTax Basic has exactly the same functionality as the TaxFreedom site, the only difference is a few unnecessary frills.

If you don't have last year's return handy, you can use your existing TurboTax account to get the .pdf file and save it, then create a new account on TaxFreedom. I usually do this because I forget where I've put my tax return from the previous year. You'll need access to your 2007 Adjusted Gross Income amount for use as your digital signature. And voila! Tax returns all filed!

Zombies are like bacon. They make good things even better.

2009-03-04T02:35:54Z

I want the World War Z movie to get out of development hell and get into theaters already. Want want want!
Thinking about buying Pride and Prejudice and Zombies when it comes out. Oh, yes, it's an actual book, using the text of Pride and Prejudice and mashing it up with a zombie story. I'm sure it will be a travesty in terms of the disservice done to Jane Austen, but I'm going to choose to view it as Jane Austen crackfic. With zombies. And we all know that zombies are like bacon. They make good things even better.
I actually read Confessions of a Shopaholic and do not approve of the movie. Even though I profess to hate chick lit, I do occasionally read it. I enjoy the lightheartedness of the stories, though I find very few to be actually well written. But that's not the point, really, is it? You don't read a Jackie Collins novel for the literary value, you read it for fun and sex and glamor! And if there's literary value, it's just an added bonus.
My knee does not hurt. This is good.
I've been ignoring the shows I normally watch. SGA because the latter half of S5 is vomit-inducing. CSI because most everyone has left. Can Nick and Greg just start fucking on screen now? I'd tune back in for that. NCIS and House because I'm lazy, Dexter because I'm forgetful. I did catch up with NCIS and House, though. Can I just say that I fucking hate Cuddy's bangs? Her hair in general this season has looked like refried ass. Also, what's with all of the constant random firings and rehirings on this stupid show? It gets old after a while, this whimsical "now you have a job, now you don't" game.
I still have the cold, but it's almost gone. Just the lingering cough and ear congestion to get rid of.
YAY!!! FUN CRAMPS!!! Three days worth, to the point where I had to lay in bed with the heating pad and hold J's hand for comfort on top of taking ibuprofen. The red tide is pretty much done making my life hell this week, but won't have gone without a struggle. I wasted an entire 15 minute break rinsing a sizeable bloodstain out of the seat of my pants. What a joy that is, let me tell you, especially when all you have to work with is hand soap and paper towels. My uterus has been working ~~hard for the money~~ overtime and now I think it needs to go on a vacation until next month.

State of the Me Address

2009-02-27T02:05:00Z

Head cold of doom has invaded. ::wheeze, hack:: I can't laugh because it devolves into coughing fits. ::wheeze, cough::
I want the 1990s back. Music was awesome. And the internets were born. And I was young(er).
Red tide on top of head cold, bah. I'm not fit for company this week, I might kill someone. And then cough on their corpse.
Have been diagnosed with Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome in the left knee. What this means is that I've been hearing creaking noises from the knee for more than a year when walking on stairs. Which doesn't bother me so much, since there's not really any popping or grinding, but it's been occasionally aching over the last few months. It's not serious, but the doctor recommended a short course of physical therapy to strengthen my quadriceps muscles to help support the knee. Also, I got to have x-rays taken of the knee, and they talked me into getting a TDAP vaccine shot (tetanus, diptheria and pertussis [whooping cough]) since I couldn't even remember the last time I'd gotten a tetanus booster shot.
I'm pissed that my eye appointment for today got cancelled this morning. I made this appointment back in the early days of February and now I can't get in any earlier than March 17th. For fuck's sake, is it really necessary to wait six weeks to get my eyes checked? It's because I'm doing it through my HMO that it's taking so long, but I have my reasons for doing it that way. First, I only need the eye exam, I'm not buying glasses from them. Anywhere else, it would cost more than my $25 co-pay for the exam without glasses. Second, I need the complete prescription from a doctor who will actually give it to me, and most places are not inclined to give you your prescription if you're not buying glasses from them. Even if it's the law, they try to weasel out of it since they're not making a huge profit by selling you overpriced glasses. I'm going to do the smart thing and use my prescription to order glasses online and save myself $300.
Yes, you can buy glasses from the internet, and it's reliable and inexpensive. Seriously.
Thank you gblvr for the Valentine's Day card, even though I'm super-late responding. ::snuggles you::
Did I mention I miss the 90s?
I was very sad to notice the Last.fm was incompatible with my former version of iTunes, so it didn't log six months worth of music listening. I suppose I'll live with only 241,000 plays.