idonotlikepeas, posts by tag: journal - LiveJournal (original) (raw)

07 September 2010 @ 11:08 pm

Music Meme Day 21: A song that makes you want to break stuff

I assume this is supposed to be an active, angry song rather than, say, another Justin Bieber song (which would also make me want to break stuff, but for a different reason).

This theme is particularly appropriate today since we just found out that we have bedbugs rather than just being next to an apartment that has them. You can probably guess how we feel about that.

Anyway, I have a bunch of this kind of song. Here's one I chose basically at random.

04 September 2010 @ 08:11 am

Music Meme Day 18: An instrumental song you like

( List of day themes Collapse )

I am a sucker for violins. (And prominent organs HAR HAR HAR.) I suggest listening to at least 1:40.

On a non-musical note, I am going to be getting on a plane in a couple of hours to fly to Phoenix (hence the icon) for elyssa and stevieg's wedding. (It seems like the best way to get me in the air is to get married.) It's going to be neat to meet people I've known for ages over the Internet but never seen, but I will miss girlgonemad and the kids, and of course the process of flying is still rampantly terrifying. So it goes.

03 March 2009 @ 05:44 am

Off the grid

Today I'm going to federal jury duty. The feds have some bizarre rules about what you can bring with you; I'm not allowed to take a drink, a laptop, or a phone, for instance. So, for the first time in quite a long time, I won't have any way for anyone to get in touch with me.

It's a bit strange; since I've had a cellphone, I've had it with me pretty much all the time. There have been periods where it wasn't powered, wasn't in range of a tower, had a full message box, or otherwise was inoperable, but those were always fairly short. Today I'm going to be leaving for the courthouse at 6:30 (note timestamp on this entry - it's a bit more than an hour to get there and I'm supposed to be there by 8) and not getting back until about 6:00, which means I'll be 100% out of touch with everyone for about twelve hours. I'm not sure what that's going to feel like; I'll have to report on the experience afterwards.

Current Mood: curious curious

12 September 2008 @ 07:12 am

Writing Prompts: the kids, but mostly a regular journal entry

boredinsomniac asked me to write about my kids. Of course, not too long after that she actually met them, so perhaps her kid-jones is satisfied. I think I'll write about that, because that's also a glimpse of the kids, too. (But I will be more mindful in the future to keep you all updated about what they are doing. For instance, right now Willow is obsessed with Spore, which is hilarious and adorable.)

So on Labor Day weekend, we were visited by three ~~spirits~~ friends, jennyrhill, fweebles, and boredinsomniac. (Now I'm wondering which one would be which Christmas Spirit.) We had a lovely (but tiring) time tramping all over Boston. And girlgonemad and I had a lovely time watching our kids crawl all over some other people for a change.

In honor of a visitation from Canada, I forced the party to watch an episode of Kids in the Hall the first night they were here, despite the fact that everyone was exhausted and just wanted to sleep. Such is the power of social obligation! boredinsomniac bunked in our spare room and was a perfectly nice houseguest. The Hills brought a toy for each child, which are still actively played with (the lego truck in particular was a big hit).

The second day, the three guests, Willow, and I walked to the (relatively) nearby Museum of Science. Willow ran around like a crazy person playing with some of her favorite ~~toys~~ exhibits. Furthermore, we visited many rooms full of Mathematics. The guests got to see the Lightning Show produced by the enormous Van de Graaf generator, but Willow got a bit too frightened of it and had to be taken back to one of the math rooms to be comforted (poor thing). That evening, girlgonemad went to the Cheesecake Factory with the guests while I watched the kids. (They brought back cheesecake, which was quite tasty.)

The third day we (Willow, guests, and I) walked part of the Freedom Trail, which takes you past various historic things like a graveyard where some semi-famous people are buried and at least two of our tourist traps. I got to play pretend tour guide with hilarious anecdotes like "oh, wow, I forgot this was here" and "I haven't been down this way in like ten years, seriously". This was very tiring, but good fun. Then we had girlgonemad and Rowan meet us at the beach and had dinner at some little dinner-huts along the road, then played around in the sand with the kids until it was time to go home. Then I exposed our guests to Cowboy Bebop in my unending quest to make people watch good Anime, and then everyone crashed. (Actually, jennyrhill got a head-start on the crashing thing, which was very cute.)

The only thing I'm disappointed about is that we didn't get a chance to play Rock Band. Perhaps next time!

Current Mood: tired tired

19 August 2008 @ 11:55 am

Writing prompts: miscellaneous cleanup

So let's take a look at the comments from my writing prompt post. I'll use this post to clean up the easy ones.

solcita requests more ties. I will be happy to oblige! I have been waiting for LJ to make picture posting from Verizon work again; the reason I stopped posting them was that it stopped working. Which made it much, much less convenient to post them. (The process is, like, four steps now!) I kept thinking "picture posting can't stay broken /that/ long, can it?" Well, I guess it can. So, yes, more ties will be forthcoming at some point, I promise.

chasethestars asks why I don't like peas. Which is ironic, because I once wrote her a terzanelle on that very topic. Although I should also say that I did leave out the part where peas killed my parents. I came to realize, in time, that peas were a superstitious, cowardly lot, and that in order to combat them my appearance had to strike fear into their hearts. That is why, by night, I become APHID-MAN!

intrepia asked about other peoples' mothers. But really, it's only fun when it's your mother.

placeboweek wanted me to answer her interview meme questions. So here we go:

1. So, why do you guys want to bring a guest to the wedding, anyway? :) Does she have a thing for weddings? Is she dying to try some delicious dishes created by Wolfgang Puck Enterprises?

Well, she's always wanted to get into the top floor of the Museum of Science, and...

2. What's the deal with Ron Paul, anyway?

Like many minority candidates, he was trying to steer the course of the election by forcing the candidates with a chance to win to address specific issues. (In his case, Libertarian issues.) While, of course, hanging around the sidelines in case somebody stumbled and he could leap in.

3. Have you ever seriously considered a career that wasn't in your field?

Oh, yeah. I've thought about ditching it all and becoming a writer a few times. But there's that whole pesky thing where you have to be able to write. Kind of a problem there.

4. Have you ever gotten mad at someone enough to call them a bad name to their face? (the internet doesn't count!) What was the bad name?

Hmm. You know, I'm not sure. I've been mad at people, but I don't tend to call them bad names. I mean, explain what my problem is, even shout about it, sure, but flat-out insults... meh. When I'm really mad, it usually leans more toward cold than hot. I'm sure I must have done this, but I honestly can't remember when.

5. Favorite ice cream flavor!

Cookies 'n Cream, although as usual with "favorite" questions you might get a different answer if you ask me again tomorrow.

Current Mood: tired tired

Current Music: Utah Phillips - Hallelujah, I'm a Bum! | Scrobbled by Last.fm

29 May 2008 @ 09:58 am

Quick notes

I have two totally unrelated things to post about. It's quicker to do them both at once, so here you go.

First: a friend of a friend recently had some really rough things happen to him. Full story is over at http://jazzerat.livejournal.com/47535.html. As was said to me (via the same friend), "He seems to find comfort in the support coming out of the woodwork today. He was brutalized by complete strangers. Some concern from the same can't be a bad thing." I think you all know what to do, if you have a few spare minutes.

Speaking of a few spare minutes: just a reminder that the last day of voting in the LJ advisory board election is today. Polls close at 9 PM Pacific time. I advise any of you who care to look at the poll post, and if your candidate is one of the ones that currently has no chance of winning, please switch at least your third-place vote to one of the candidates that can still win.

06 January 2008 @ 11:20 pm

Update stew

I didn't originally intend for my holiday vacation to be an LJ vacation too, but that's how it turned out. Probably for the best.

I'm back around now, so you might see me actually commenting on your entries and doing volunteer stuff and things like that again. I'm sorry if I missed anything important; been reading friends infrequently and in large wodges.

In the meantime, I do have some news: Rowan has progressed to crawling. He does a commando-style thing; it looks as if he's trying to get through some barbed wire while under machine-gun fire. So now we have to try to move everything he shouldn't touch off of the floor and probably retire the walker. (He's getting too big for it anyway. He can now reach some of the toys on the floor while in the thing.) He also has caught on to the idea of picking up multiple toys and banging them against each other. And he's making a larger variety of sounds now. He's been calling his "mama" (actually "mamamamamamamamamama") for a while, but now he's injecting various other consonants and occasional vowels in there. And he's eating more solid foods; despite not having any teeth, he gums up cookies and bits of bread and things like that pretty well.

Hmm, what else. We started playing World of Warcraft again. I've been reading some more random books lately, but I'll probably make a separate entry about that. Just finished the third Phoenix Wright game. And I guess that's it for tonight.

08 January 2006 @ 12:40 pm

Hi, Livejournal

Hi, LiveJournal.

Yes, I haven't been using you very much.

See, I keep wanting to write this one entry, and I feel like not writing other entries until I do it. But I never finish writing it. I've started about twenty times. Just can't quite do it. So I think it's going to have to wait for the February year-end wrap-up. It'll probably be easier to write under those circumstances.

In the meantime, I'm going to try to start posting here again. Because there are other things going on, and other little ideas that come up, and this is the place I have set aside to put stuff like that.

Anyway.

Since I'm posting, I'll just mention a couple of things:

Everybody wave and say hi to my brother, herrsatan, who has started journalling recently. Welcome aboard. Muahahahah!

I ripped off an idea from a couple of friends of mine (although coffeechica was the first one I saw use it; I'm sure I'll be corrected if it wasn't her idea). If you're on my friends list, and you want to find out what filters you're on, visit this day's page. If you're not on any, don't worry about it too much (unless you're supposed to be exposed to NDA-protected LJ Support administrative details or think you have a good reason to know what my home address is). I may make more filters in the future, if I start making more posts that require them.

08 June 2004 @ 11:13 pm

Slay that mail

It's not much, but I wrote a small utility and put it on Sourceforge. Oddly, I feel as if I've accomplished something. There is also a FAQ.

Current Mood: accomplished

Current Music: Flash Gordon Theme (Queen)

29 May 2004 @ 02:11 pm

Variety

I was going to write a long post about the Magnetic Fields concert, but Trapezebear already did that for me. I will, however, add a few notes to his summary.

I was a bit worried about whether their music would translate from the studio to the stage. This was needless. Never have I been so glad to see a banjo.

The people on stage were obviously having a better time than human beings are generally permitted to have. In fact, I think they might have contravened some kind of international performer anti-fun treaty, but I'm not going to report them.

Why is it that weird combinations of instruments (mandolin, banjo, and cello?) are always better than traditional ones? (Note: this is a rhetorical question.)

All of you people who could have gone but didn't are massively lame. Next time I invite you to a concert, go.

As is usually the case when I'm posting these days, there are new cartoons. Case Closed is basically like Encyclopedia Brown, except Japanese and with shrinking potions and soccer. The best part of the show is the guy that screams "Next Conan's Clue!" at the end. Not quite a replacement for Trigun (which is over now), but it'll do. They've also started running Baby Blues again, which seems to be funnier now that we actually have a baby.

Willow's been working on the whole walking thing. She can rove around pretty freely if she's holding our hands, or if she's working her way along a wall or other tall object. She can stand without support for some time, but hasn't taken a step yet. She's also worked out that she can put an object in her mouth and hold it there when she needs both hands, which is indescribably cute. (I have pictures!) She's also gotten strong and wily enough to break through the makeshift barricades we build to keep her from going into dangerous areas (read: most of our apartment). We might get a commercial one, although finding one that will fit the area we need to block would be difficult. She's obsessed with mirrors; I think she's figured out what a reflection is, because when I move things towards her head from behind and she sees it in the mirror, she moves her head out of the way. She's also still at a stage where she likes to be tickled, and we're taking full advantage of that.

Mmm. Cookies.

Current Mood: cheerful

Current Music: Superfreak (Rick James)