Brand New Journal!

Friday I went shopping with a friend and Kohl's had If You Give a Mouse a Cookie plush mice, and the profits go to charity. This was one of my favorite books as a kid! And I still love it. And while I bought him for my neice and intended to buy the book also and give her both, I have been snuggling him since.

I might have to buy another.

Otherwise, we (the Captain and I... and the mouse) watched the first episode of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, prompted by the nifty Symphony of Science songs/videos. We will be continuing the series!

Somewhat related, worked with my nephew on his science project. Was not as awesome as it should have been.

Now to do some things I've been meaning to do.

Oh, man, I went to bed at like 10:30 last night, then slept for almost 12 hours. That is not like me. Lately I'm lucky if I get 6 hours a night. Guess I must have needed it. I crashed hard after Christmas shopping yesterday. But I got a good chunk of my shopping done. \o/

God, this is a little slice of perfection:

Gregor Tate
English Olympic Swimmer
photo by Nadav Kander for PowerAde Campaign

(If anyone wants me to cut it, I will. I'm not sure if it's worksafe or not.)


Lately I have been missing Ash from prijatelj. datenshiblue is trying to get a new RPG going over here for any of you RPers who may be interested. It's loosely based on the Prisoner TV show. I also think Sam (and Dean and John) would be a blast have play over there.

Croissants versus toast-- Note to self: croissants will not toast the same as bread. Turn the temp down to about a quarter or else you'll burn them. Over and over, you'll burn them. *facepalm*

Anyone want a Google Wave invite? I haven't quite figured out what it does, but it sounds fun. *^_^* You need a gmail or google account. Leave a comment and I'll send you one.

I haven't read any fanfic for a couple of weeks now. Haven't even looked at the newsletter. I am a bad fangirl. (Er, except for a bit of porn and drabbles. Whew, is it hot in here?)

Don't ask, just click.

Enlighten me, pilates v. yoga. What's the difference? If I want stretching and flexibility, which is better?

Brothers & Sisters? Any good? Worth watching to see Rob Lowe, one of my first girlhood crushes?


Someone really REALLY needs to vid Sam and Dean to this song. ( Explanation )

I have to post this. I cannot resist! Both of them are absolutely hilarious! Possibly even if you are not a Boosh fan?

( I don't mind the feel-up... )

They are recalling Slim Fast because of a bacterial contamination that can cause diarrhea. Hey I would get that anyway with my lactose intolerance, so I guess it's good I don't mess with that stuff.

It's kind of snowing. Very random and light snow. It's Houston that's getting all the snow fun. We don't have enough to even make a snowball.

Lunch turned out better than expected. The food still sucked but maybe it's because we are all anticipating the holiday season starting soon.

But it is freaking cold... not as cold as tameiki's 19 degrees, but still... brrrrrrr!

Supposedly by lunchtime we'll have snow. We'll see.

In the meantime I have to go to a "birthday lunch" that I really don't want to go to because... these things used to be fun "back in the day" (say 10-15 years ago) and now they are a chore. You always have the lone person who doesn't like anything no matter where you choose to go. And today because it's so blasted cold we are heading to a place nearby that used to have good food a few years ago but now their stuff is total crap. I would love to get out of this but I'm one of the "birthday people" being honored... I still pay for my meal but... *sigh*

I'll just man up and go.

I was hoping that it would be Friday... but not yet. *shakes fist at world and its many clocks* Tomorrow we are suppose to get snow. Snow. They've been predicting it all week now they are trying to decide when it will fall ... in the morning, in the afternoon? I would love to see some snow I don't think this town has any any snowfall since 2003 maybe? I hope it does happen. It would be nice.

Two weeks left in the semester, going crazy.

Finished up the latest image for my regular illustration gig. I sketched to celebrate.

( Gundam Wing - Heero - Accidental Hipster )

Okay I talked about this a month or so ago.

I and my RPG partner in crime are starting a game!

I have high hopes for it and a little nervousness. I'm going to wholesale pimp it out on the rpg comms possibly, and ask friends to pimp it to their friends. But you guys get the first look.

If you are interested, or just curious, come take a look.

Open House Invitation

We are going to need good players, who are interested in trying something that has a lot of things in common with your standard multiverse rpg, but has ambitions to be a bit different in several significant ways. For one, it's not impossible to win this game. Just very hard.

Thanks for your indulgence. :-)

Google had a press conference a few weeks ago touting their new Chromium Operating System. Basically this system is tailor made for netbooks. You basically keep all your information in the cloud (Google docs, Gmail, etc.). It's not in beta yet but they wanted to show what this operating system would look like.

Then days later there was a copy you could download and run using vmare, or virtual box. I didn't want to bother with that. Then there was an image you could run on netbooks. I downloaded that since I have an eeePC that I bought for grins off woot.com a while ago. It sits in the living room for those moments you are too lazy to get your laptop to go check on stuff. I blew the xandros OS off of it the first day it arrived in my house and up Ubuntu Netbook Remix on it. While I managed to get the ChromeOS on a flash drive I couldn't get it to boot to it. Finally my brainstem figured out last night to go into the Bios and change the order of boot up so now it boots into Chromium.

If you've every used the Google brower, then it is not difficult. Everything has a tab pretty much. The wireless didn't work immediately. I had to connect it to my router via ethernet cable and point to my wireless and put in the password to the wireless. Then I rebooted and the wireless worked after that.

Google's contention is most folks only use their computer to get on the internet so why not just do all your business there via Docs, etc.

Is this something that anyone would want for a real operating system? Not unless you are happy with your private information being in cloud management. Google's argument is if you lost your netbook there would be nothing for them to get unless they know your Gmail address and password. Also in theory if someone else had ChromeOS on their system you could log in and have your stuff handy without permanently saving it on your friend's computer. Although Google folks had to admit if you are a lawyer with sensitive papers you probably DON'T want this operating system.

Since this isn't even in beta yet, there are interesting hiccups in it. Like you can't shut it down, to do that you have to push the power button on your machine. If you do somehow manage to close all the tabs in the browser, getting the browser to reappear too me randomly pushing keys until it reappeared again. (I don't know which keys did the trick though). You have to have an internet connection to do ANYTHING on it. You can't log in. You can't look at anything because it is all on the web.

Would this ever replace Ubuntu NR on my eeePc in the future if they get the bugs fixed? I seriously doubt it. But it's fun playing with it.

Since I am part Hobbit (a half-halfling even) I'd like to wish everyone of you a very happy my-birthday! ;D

Have some cake!

^____^




source http://www.cakechannel.com/images/kid-birthday-cake.gif

It's rainy.

I'm sleepy. Really sleepy.

I'm on my 3rd cup of coffee. My coffee mug holds 2 cups of coffee so really I'm on my 6th cup. And I'm still sleepy.

It's also slow today which really makes one "perky".

I guess I shouldn't grumble about having to go to work tomorrow... We are coming towards the tail end... my work-study student workers only have two more weeks (hopefully they WON'T finish what I have put out for them because if they complete it I will have to scramble to find them work. They are dedicated folks so I suspect I will have to scramble.

Christmas is fast approaching although I am more about when our holiday starts (Dec. 22-Jan 1) than the actual holiday. My sister and I will travel to Dallas via Amtrak. I don't trust my car to drive us (because it has an engine problem which isn't a problem now but it will die at some point... I'm nursing it like a newborn and only driving when necessary), I thought about flying but I hate air travel these days ... although Southwest had nice enough prices, but via train isn't dirt cheap. It's only $62 round trip. Mind you it will take longer to get there (5 hours as opposed to 3 hours driving or 45 minutes flying), but that's okay I have my sony reader and I hope I'll be able to read. I've discovered that reading on buses gives me a headache, reading by plane doesn't bother me, so what will travel via train do?

All the holiday food is gone. YAY.

Uh oh. Rain. Feeling...sleepy...now...

*thunk*

zzzzzzz

In which I'm going to natter a bit about what we cooked and consumed for Thanksgiving and other issues, related or otherwise.

( In a word, we grilled... )

Someone on LJ reviewd Sauna not too long ago. I can't remember who, but at that recommendation I put it on my queue and watched it last night and man was it creepy. It earned several really good jumps and squeals from me, and was just in general a creepy flick. I can't say I understood everything about it, but I don't feel like that matters somehow. ( Trailer! )

In not-film news: Pie a success! It was delicious, although, as I had originally planned on a different recipe, I had no ginger and substituted it with half the amount of cloves, which was a bit strong but not bad. This time (I'm making a second pie for a Thanksgiving #2 tomorrow with the Captain's family) I was prepared with ginger and added a bit of vanilla for the fun of it, and (again, though I haven't tasted the finished product) I think this one's going to be even better! And I had a cup of potatoes leftover so I made cookies... but they are simultaneously veryvery boring and a bit over-spiced. Perhaps some icing will help them out.

Oh, and I just ended boiling the potatoes both times. It's a time-saver!

Unrelated, we got our hen today. ( More for the hen-curious! )

We went down to Salinas to J's sister's new place, and holy crap is it huge. It's got a nifty layout, and infinitely more space than their old house. We hadn't seen Natalie since before she was walking so it took a while for her to stop giving J and I the suspicious eye, but by the end of the night it was lots of carry-me arms, and where Sophie is usually all about her Uncle J, somehow this time I ended up with her hanging on me more often than not. I suspect it was that I was wearing a pink shirt so that boosted my coolness rating. It's interesting to see the ways her personality has changed now that she's a big sister. Sometimes I wish we lived a bit closer in order to visit more often.

Anyway, we hung out, ate food, played with dolls, tried to devise a plan to steal their adorable pug, and at the end of the evening I got the bonus of belated b-day gifts. See subject. I have also increased my fuzzy scarf collection by one, so I should probably put out some of the ones I don't wear often out onto the curb.

The drive was nice, and J and I talked a lot about the ways in which we'd like to focus on our projects for school and general creative things. I'm back to having a solid idea of where to go with my current assignments so I'm feeling very rejuvenated about them. Which is good, as I need to be doubly-focused this weekend, since I didn't actually get any extra days off, and the lab is closed tomorrow which is typically my dedicated time to go in and work all day on my homework!

Hope everyone is having a fine holiday. I know I am... even if dinner will be a touch late because I wasn't feeling in the mood to start it earlier. :)

I'm thankful to good friends (virtual and otherwise). I'm thankful that no one in my family is laid off. I'm thankful to cool weather that actually pretends to be Fall after all. And I'm thankful that I don't have to be back to work until Monday. :)

So my gift to all of you is the gift of a rather cool ova. It has many names... It's being called, Dogs: Bullets & Carnage. (This link is a description of the show). When you look at the videos (there are 4) it looks like it says Dogs: Stray Dogs Howling in the Dark which is the name of the manga it's based on. I really enjoyed it, slipped tameiki a copy during Y-con. We watched the first episode and she seemed to like it.

I present to you (direct downloads) of:
Episode One
Episode Two
Episode Three
Episode Four

Enjoy the videos.

T-Rex lovingly hi-jacked from Ryan North.

I am grateful for such awesome friends!

And to those of you not celabrating turkey ham, happy regular day!

PIE UPDATE: As it turned out, I needed both potatoes for the pie, and they ended up being boiled. But man oh man. I haven't tasted the finished result (which is lovely!), but I could have eaten the pie filling all by itself! It should be pretty tasty.

Anyway. A good day to all. May there be a large ham in your not-to-distant future if not today.