copperbadge

copperbadge @ 2008-11-30T12:49:00

2008-11-30T18:49:35Z

I have cleaned my desk! I found two credit cards, $17.45, and many coupons. I have scanned all there was to scan, and I really should do a Photo Update soon but I have to clean out my "Current Photos" folder first. Getting to be time to make my photo yearbook, too (and print out last year's). I like the photo books; they're a slim, pleasant way of documenting the year. Walgreens does them up nicely and for about the same cost as anywhere else.

I now have neat piles of "Stuff that needs to go into a poster frame", "Stuff I need to deal with tomorrow", and "Bookmarks". I put old cards and letters into books, which is a habit Mum got into so that now, when I go home, occasionally I'll take down a book from the shelf and find a letter from Gran in it. It's rather nice, though after Gran died Mum didn't go near the books for a few weeks. Makes sense.

I have done laundry and taped my rent check to the doorknob so that I can't leave without remembering to put it in the Rent Check Box downstairs. I was going to do some Christmas shopping online today, but stupid Windows 2008 saved my shopping list as a ".docx" file and docx is apparently not backwards compatible, since I can't open it in OpenOffice or import it into GoogleDocs. I don't know what I've bought for whom! CHAOS!

I also hung up a curtain over my kitchen door window so now, if I want, I can cook naked. :D It's a typical work-with-what-ya-got curtain: two nails, a bit of picture-hanging wire, and half a shower curtain with holes cut in it (the other half is hanging in front of my bathroom window, blocking the draft). The place is sealed up pretty tightly, which is nice.

I spoke to Mum about staying here for a couple of years and she thinks it's a good idea; the housing market may be ripe for the picking but I need to build some credit and frankly I like it here, plus I got the parental stamp of approval for it in terms of location and setup. Hilariously, when she arrived, she oohed and ahhed over my hardwood floors and then immediately started measuring EVERYTHING -- counters, windows, floor space -- for various improvements.

I think she's really come round to the idea of me living in Chicago, which is nice. We could both wish that she lived a little closer, but you can't have everything and anyway she's the one who decided to move to Texas. :D

copperbadge @ 2008-11-30T09:24:00

2008-11-30T15:24:54Z

And jack_and_ellis has been updated!

You can find Chapter Thirty-Seven: Revelations by following the link. Ellis meets a doctor, Jack meets a chef, and the Wiradjuri tribal elders meet a very different Clare Fields...

copperbadge @ 2008-11-30T00:47:00

2008-11-30T06:47:35Z

I just woke up and wrote the bit of Jack & Ellis I've been wanting to write since, oh, about page twenty. Why yes, I am weird.

I wordcounted the whole story too. At the moment it clocks in around 150k. Unfortunately, only about 25k of that is from November, which means I Did Not Win NaNo. Fortunately no cash prizes were involved, and I'm two for three so I'm doing okay.

I'm estimating it'll finish around 200k, and then I'm going to slash and burn it down to manageable readable size. I reckon I'll end up with three versions -- this original, the hugely edited version where a bunch of stuff I love but don't need will be cut, and a YA version because folks tell me that's where all the interest is for publishers right now. After all, there's very little sex in Jack & Ellis; all I need to do is tone down the subversive subtext and I could probably get away with it.

Back to bed for me! *stealth sleepy sam*

copperbadge @ 2008-11-29T20:26:00

2008-11-30T02:26:01Z

And I am safely home!

The flight was decent, nobody in the middle seat and arrived a few minutes early. I was seated behind a family with two small kids, which normally is annoying but they were very well-behaved -- more fascinated with flying than terrified of it. Though at one point the little girl got loose and made a break for the bathrooms and I automatically put out my hand to stop her -- the standard parental palm-against-the-head maneuver that makes them laugh. I was very glad that her mum was grateful she didn't have to chase her, rather than horrified that some stranger had restrained her child.

I've had a shower to wash off the travel grit, and my flat seems intact -- the roaches didn't throw an orgy and nothing caught on fire, though all the bread is DEEPLY MOLDY. Another few days and it might have claimed the baker's rack in the name of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Otherwise, all is well. I'm going to make dinner, catch the Notre Dame game, and fall asleep.

*conk*

Zzzzz.

copperbadge @ 2008-11-29T09:12:00

2008-11-29T15:12:35Z

Good morning Saturday world!

A note to all -- I've just caught at least four spammers with actual LJs commenting in my journal. The comments are often only partially relevant; the journals themselves are filled with the kind of half-coherent babble that spam emails usually contain.

If you get a comment that seems nonsensical or only half-relevant, especially if the user has no icon, plz ignore; now that they've tipped their hand I'm deleting and banning as I go. I don't think this has anything to do with the friendbots or the hack, but I have no way of knowing. Just one more hazard of the digital age, I suppose.

Hey, when you guys see this post, does the icon show a guy in a uniform with the word "classy" on it, or does it show my "The Internet Isn't Going To Surf Itself" slogan? Because in the semagic preview, I get the classy sleeping uniformed guy.

Technology is exciting but sometimes I want to beat the internet with a large stick. Except it'd probably enjoy it.

copperbadge @ 2008-11-28T20:34:00

2008-11-29T02:35:00Z

I was going to say "Let me tell you about how much I ate yesterday" but it came out "Lwr mw twkk" and then I had to go facepalm.

But we did have turkey and stuffing and all the delicious Norman Rockwell fixings, and then had leftover sammiches today. And had the mental equivalent of a nap all day. This must be what it is like to be a cat. Also I pillaged my hosts' music library. New mixtape soon...ish.

I fly home tomorrow night, hopefully on a flight as pleasant and empty as my flight out here was. One of these days I will be a True American and go to the mall on Black Friday, but this year I was just fine not going. Besides, the El doesn't go to malls. Which should be some kind of Chicago slogan. "You can't get to a mall from here."

I've been seeing a lot of NaNo finishing banners on my flist today -- congrats to those who are getting their count in and beating the block. :)

copperbadge @ 2008-11-27T14:33:00

2008-11-27T20:33:47Z

I have just discovered that there are few things in life more satisfying than polishing tarnished silverware properly. It's just beautiful watching all that blue and gold disappear.

Yeah, there's a reason I invented Nicholas.

Other than the cooking, we're mostly lounging; I've spent the past forty hours in my pyjamas-with-cats-on, watched a metric fuckton of Top Chef, and been pwned by the magnetic poetry kit, which is Not Cooperating with my sonneteering efforts this year.

A++, would Thanksgiving again.

copperbadge @ 2008-11-27T08:29:00

2008-11-27T14:29:22Z

Good morning, Cafe, and happy Thanksgiving! Or if you do not live in the United States, happy Thursday! We will think of you as we commit ritual gluttony.

And as with every year I am Still Thankful. Particularly that I could resurrect that post.

Once the slaughtered bird has been consumed with savoury bread and roasted root vegetables, we will begin the long and dolorous preparation for Sammastide. Or, as I like to call it, a Christmas to Dismember. Get your scythes out, everyone!

copperbadge @ 2008-11-26T11:59:00

2008-11-26T17:59:08Z

Good morning! I had ginger pumpkin cranberry toast for breakfast, and you didn't. Nyah.

It's just starting to snow here, and we've been watching food network and mocking some of the more pathetic examples of the new gen cooking shows. Soon, there will be Cooking. OH YES.

Hope you're keeping warm and safe out in Internet land. :)

Currently the TV is tuned to the Dark Angel marathon and man, this show is WAY MORE INTENSE than I remember it. DARKEST ANGEL.

Still pretty amused that the goofball from NCIS is Eyes Only, though.

copperbadge @ 2008-11-24T15:43:00

2008-11-24T21:42:55Z

You guys, there is a lot of crocheting going on in this world, and all of it is for sale on etsy.com.

copperbadge @ 2008-11-24T12:52:00

2008-11-24T18:52:03Z

Hey, does anyone know if a book exists anthologising the letters between Groucho Marx and TS Eliot? Somehow I feel this is something I need to read.

I don't usually go in for letter anthologies, but it sounds like it would be right up there with the twenty-year correspondence between Bernard Shaw and Lord Alfred Douglas, which is much funnier and more even-handed than that review implies.

This morning is intense; I'm prepping the desk and "Sam's Guide To Temping For Him" as well as fielding calls from people who want to get everything done today so that they can leave tomorrow or Wednesday for wherever they're going.

I myself am taking a hiatus from Chicago starting tomorrow, staying with friends over the Thanksgiving holiday. Which is just as well because my family had Thanksgiving this past weekend -- well, when I say "my family" I mean Mum, Emmy, Lucky, and his entire family. Apparently it was a firestorm of dysfunctional from beginning to end, which is not all that shocking given Lucky's siblings and particularly their children.

I was literally hovering the mouse over the post-bar to post this when the month's rent-and-facilities invoice was delivered and I dropped everything to get it done, because if it doesn't get done today then we'll be paying our rent late. As it is, we may anyway, because I kept adding up and adding up and adding up and it kept being wrong, significantly wrong, and it took me almost forty minutes to decide that perhaps MY MATH WAS RIGHT and the building office was, in fact, incorrect. Which turned out to be the case. This says something about my relationship to mathematics, but it's nothing you all haven't heard before (short version: Math is useful but not to me. Plz to use it to build bridges and rockets and stuff, and stop making me learn it.)
Anyway, yes, their math was wrong, mine was right, and so I have filled out all the paperwork I can and am entrusting BossBoss to actually put it in the interoffice mail tomorrow. I live in fear that the temp filling in for me tomorrow will be Incompetemp; I want whoever it is to have as little power to screw things up as possible.

And now I have to post this while I still can, because my lunch sub is coming at one and I've just spent twenty minutes helping someone from another branch who has OBVIOUSLY SHOWN UP ON THE WRONG DAY for a meeting and is living in denial that his meeting was a week ago. Oh my god.

copperbadge @ 2008-11-23T20:21:00

2008-11-24T02:21:16Z

Hey, so. Life On Mars In America.

I'd forgot it was coming out, and I'm not sure if it's tanking or what, I don't really watch live TV anymore. But I am watching episode one on the computer. I'm only about ten minutes in and the majority of it is...so visually similar to the original LoM that it's eerie, but I just hit the moment where Sam turns around and gets this stunned look on his face and says "No Way", and we cut to the Twin Towers.

Wow.

I have no idea if the rest of the show is going to suck or not, but that was a pretty goddamn awesome moment right there.

copperbadge @ 2008-11-23T17:00:00

2008-11-23T23:00:05Z

I just saw the trailer for the Doctor Who Christmas Special (I was linked ages ago, I know it's old meme, but I can't watch videos at work).

I have to say that, while informative it is not, it is very effective at inducing vertigo.

Could they spin the camera around him a few more times, maybe? Just in case we hadn't got the 360 already?

Also, smarmy Doctorgänger is smarmy.

And yet, my instinctive reaction is to make the toddlerfists of glee and shout THIS IS GONNA BE AWESOME.

Fanbrain. Go fig.

Review: Cosmicomics, by Italo Calvino

2008-11-23T22:43:59Z

I've been meaning to write a review of Cosmicomics for about a week and a half, and if I put it off any more I'm going to have late fees on it, but I'm really not sure how to talk about it.

As with much of my high school lit classes, when I read Italo Calvino's work I'm often haunted by the feeling that I am missing something. Something important, some vital theme that's just out of my reach. Which makes it hard to review his books, actually. I don't know that I am missing anything, I think maybe I'm overthinking it, but I dunno. It's not unpleasant, and no reflection on the book, but it makes it hard to be coherent about it.

Cosmicomics, like Invisible Cities, is very episodic in nature. Calvino takes several of the laws and theorems of physics and the creation of the universe and retells them as if one person had lived through them all, linking the impersonal science to the personal experience. It's kind of like what would happen if Stephen Hawking and Rudyard Kipling had a love child.

The narrator, Qfwfq, tells several stories about the creation of the universe and of the Earth as if he were telling stories to kids around a campfire. Most of his companions also have names that are either palindromes or reminiscient of mathematical formulas, and the implication is that most of them are immortal as well. Or perhaps immortal is the wrong word; everlasting consciousnesses would be a better way of describing them.

Calvino is practically a genre unto himself, the way he writes; you have to just kind of accept the way he warps reality. It's not unpleasant, which I think is why I like him so much, because so many people who try to twist the world up in order to get a point across make it ugly and brutal, and while I'm sure ugly and brutal has its place I don't think it should have every place.

The stories range from a love-triangle thwarted by the moon to the personal experience of the last of the dinosaurs, living amongst the new animals who have succeeded his race. A lot of them are romances, which is probably the reason I don't like Cosmicomics as well as I like Invisible Cities. I don't know that I enjoy the way Calvino illustrates interpersonal relationships; they always seem cartoonish and a little bit cruel. I prefer it when he's talking about places and sights, basically things that don't involve people. This may be my natural misanthropy coming to the fore, however.

Cosmicomics isn't an illustration of physical principles or an explanation of the complex theories of creation. It's closer to a modern day mythology, based on those principles and theories. Sometimes they're used to show elements of human nature, but I'm sometimes dissatisfied with the way in which it is shown. The story I liked the most, about the last of the dinosaurs, was a good combination of history and social analysis; I really liked seeing the New Ones from the Dinosaur's point of view, and the journey of the Dinosaur outsider to understanding what the extinction of his race means. I also liked the story of the galaxies drifting further away from each other, but only because I thought the signs that Qfwfq used to draw distant galaxies' attentions to his triumphs were funny. And maybe a little bit because it seems to be about shyness and social anxiety, so I could relate.

Interestingly, when I was reading the beginning portions of the book, I often thought that this would make a good tie-in to a Torchwood fic. I think Jack Harkness would like Cosmicomics immensely.

I enjoyed reading it, but to be honest ten days later I don't really remember it very clearly, which means it didn't make much of an impact.

Quotes!

According to my great-uncle, the lands that had emerged were a limited phenomenon: they were going to disappear just as they had cropped up or, in any event, they would be subject to constant changes: volcanoes, glaciations, earthquakes, upheavals, changes of climate and of vegetation. And our life in the midst of all this would have to face constant transformations, in the course of which whole races would disappear, and the only survivors would be those who were preparing to change the bases of their expistence so radically that the reasons why living was beautiful would be completely overwhelmed and forgotten.
--p. 78

I realised that with what seemed a casual jumble of words I had hit on an infinite reserve of new combinations among the signs which compact, opaque, uniform reality would use to disguise its monotony, and I realised that perhaps the race toward the future, the race I had been the first to foresee and desire, tended only -- through time and space -- toward a crumbling into alternatives like this...
-- p. 90

What was I to do? That night I couldn't close my eyes. The call of my blood insisted I should desert and join my brothers; loyalty to the New Ones, who had welcomed and sheltered me and given me their trust, demanded I should consider myself on their side; and in addition I knew full well that neither Dinosaurs nor New Ones were worthy of my lifting a finger for them. If the Dinosaurs were trying to re-establish their rule with invasions and massacres, it meant they had learned nothing from experience, that they had survived only by mistake. And it was clear that the New Ones, turning command over to me, had found the easiest solution: leave all responsibility to an outsider, who could be their savior but also, in case of defeat, a scapegoat to hand over to the enemy.
-- p. 106

I had no use for this pity of theirs. Pity for what? If ever a species had had a rich, full evolution, a long and happy reign, that species was ours. Our extinction had been a grandiose epilogue, worthy of our past. What could those fools understand of it?
-- p. 109

In a certain sense, I could set my mind at rest: no action of mine, good or bad, was completely lost. At least an echo of it was always saved; or rather, several echoes, which varied from one end of the universe to the other, and in that sphere which was expanding and generating other spheres.
-- p. 136

The important thing was that, in everything I did, it should be clear what was essential, where the stress should be placed, what was to be noted and what not. I procured an enormous directional sign, one of those huge hands with the pointing index finger. When I performed an action to which I wanted to call attention, I had only to raise that sign, trying to make the finger point at the most important detail of the scene. For the moments when, instead, I preferred not to be observed, I made another sign, a hand with the thumb pointing in the direction opposite the one I was turning, to distract attention.
-- 136

Meanwhile, the galaxies for whom I was most compromised were already revolving around the threshold of the billions of light-years at such speeds that, to reach them, my messages would have to struggle across space, clinging to their accelerating flight: then, one by one, they would disappear from the last ten-billion-light-year horizon beyond which no visible object can be seen, and they would bear with them a judgment by then irrevocable.
-- 138

copperbadge @ 2008-11-23T16:06:00

2008-11-23T22:06:06Z

jack_and_ellis has been updated! I will finish this story if it KILLS ME. :D

Chapter 36</b> is up in its entirety; Ellis plots an economic crisis, Jack investigates "aeroplanes", Clare is inadvertently charmed, and Purva's job future is secured.

copperbadge @ 2008-11-23T12:39:00

2008-11-23T18:39:35Z

Yesterday I did not go out, as intended, because OMG Michigan Avenue Lights Parade and Michigan Avenue was where I needed to go. Also it was cold. Also I am lazy.

Instead I stayed in and did stuff around here. I assembled my new TV stand and got the TV up onto it. I apparently had the Digital antenna plugged into the Analog antenna jack, which was why all I could get for a whole day was "THIS TELEVISION IS NOT READY FOR DIGITAL TV" on every single channel. Now I get cable-quality visual and about four versions of every channel. I get two channels dedicated to weather.

I have not yet managed to get the DVD recorder hooked in again, but I suspect that might be something of a lost cause. The problem is that the DVR/TV connection needs to be two-way, because I have to be able to record from the TV but also to see the function screens on the DVR in order to program it correctly. I'm positing that an S-Video cable between TV and DVR might fix the problem. Mission for the day: Locate the S-Video cable!

But the TV gets great images now, so yesterday we watched two football games before R fell asleep on my floor (the floor's better for his back than sitting on my admittedly awkward futon, apparently). He slept through me doing the dishes, making dinner, and prepping for Epic Laundry (I've just finished folding the fourth load). I finally sent him off home around six, I think.

He had initially come over to bring me a CD so that I could burn him a CD of various covers of Tobacco Road, since I have the tech to record them off YouTube and his laptop currently isn't working anyhow. I heard ten different versions of Tobacco Road in a single morning. I'm pretty sure I could sing most of it off by heart, and I would like to warn you all that The Nashville Teens cover of Tobacco Road is not the blues.

The real problem is that Tobacco Road is a very simple song with a very basic blues riff, so a lot of assholes out there think it's not enough and want to improvise. Cue ten minute guitar solos and lots of wailing into the mic.

Lou Rawls did it best, especially the talky version where he talks about all the regional names for the poor part of town.

I was born in a dump;
My mama died, my daddy got drunk
Left me here to die or grow
IN THE MIDDLE OF TOBAAAAACO ROAD!

copperbadge @ 2008-11-22T15:19:00

2008-11-22T21:19:45Z

R's over today -- he came over to drop off a CD and just kind of stayed. We've been watching college football (Notre Dame and...someone in Orange), but I've been doing my weekend cooking thing too.

R: What's that noise? Is that your trash can?
Sam: No.
R: Is that the Roomba?
Sam: No, it's off.
R: What IS that?
Sam: The bread machine.
R: You live in the Disney automated house of the future.

Hard to argue, really....

copperbadge @ 2008-11-21T14:22:00

2008-11-21T20:22:45Z

Bulletproof Coworker showed up at my desk just before I left for lunch with a Crate & Barrel box for me, which was interesting because I hadn't ordered anything from Crate & Barrel. Turns out it was a reused box that was full of stuff from my Mum.

You know what's coming next.

She sent me:
2 shirts (too small), a pair of trousers, and a pair of pyjamas with cats on (U CAN HAS NAPTIEM NAO)
1 garland and approximately 1,000 christmas ornaments for my tree (I will still use some words!)
1 bag each: Mini Snickers Bars, Mini Kit Kat Bars, Mini Peppermint Patties (for the office)
1 quart bag of "brown sugar shortbread mix" (?)
1 box of quart bags (??)
1 package of paper bowls (??!)

AND A GODDAMN TOTE BAG.

Seriously, I have a tote bag full of tote bags. I'm thinking of just passing out tote bags on the street. Except that would make me look insane, because who owns that many tote bags?

ME.

copperbadge @ 2008-11-21T12:12:00

2008-11-21T18:12:11Z

So, I have this tree. This tiny tree. That I would send you photos of, but I think my camera is broken (another whole post that I'll get to later). And for this tiny sad Christmas tree I have six whole ornaments. Which obviously is not enough.

Back in undergrad we had a Christmas tree for the department and in my junior year we were forced to get rid of several of the better ornaments, including the garland of condoms and lube that I had made sophomore year, because we had a huge shipment of prospective freshmen coming in late that year and we didn't want to terrify their parents. So we had to come up with new ornaments, and I decided to take a bunch of photos I'd snapped of the students and faculty, on and offstage, paste colour printouts onto green and red construction paper, and hang them as ornaments. Because I'm just that awesome.

I've kind of done the photo meme thing, so I thought instead I would make a literary tree. My tree is too small to hold a word if everyone donated one, but please feel free to suggest a word (note: A SINGLE WORD. Don't post me a word list!) that I should hang on the tree. I will choose the ones I like most, print them out, and hang them up. Foreign languages welcome.

And....GO!

copperbadge @ 2008-11-21T11:35:00

2008-11-21T17:35:06Z

Oh my god. PeaPod sells Turducken.

*BUYZ*

copperbadge @ 2008-11-21T10:25:00

2008-11-21T16:25:24Z

Part of a molar fell out of my mouth a few months ago.

I have brittle molars, because as a child I had a fever so high that it destroyed the calcium matrices in my adult molars. I have one steel crown and a few very, very elderly fillings from when I was thirteen or so, and those are starting to dissolve. So now I'm shopping for a dentist to fix the problem, because my parents have a dentist in Austin but the last time I got a filling there it crumbled within four months. To be fair to them, they've since sacked the dentist who did that filling.

My favourite Chicago dentist so far -- not for me, just in general -- is the dental office in the heart of the gold coast that offers concierge services. IE, if you are coming to their office from out of town they will arrange your travel and hotel for you.

I just.

Why. Why? Surely if you have enough money to fly to Chicago expressly for the purpose of dental work, you can find somewhere closer to you that will provide the same level of service.

Or perhaps I'm just cranky because dentists are uninformative. They never tell you on the website what you want to know. I have very few requirements, but they are ironclad non-negotiable: must be accessible from work (loop/gold coast area), must be willing to bill my insurance themselves (MetLife doesn't do reimbursement), and must be willing to use nitrous oxide.

This makes me sound like a nitrous fiend, but I don't fucking care -- I've had non-nitrous oral surgery a grand total of once in my life and as long as I have dental insurance I will never, ever do that again. Especially as last time it took them four tries to get the local into my jaw. Fuck that noise with a sledgehammer. And there's now some kind of pill sedation, apparently, but it requires you to have someone to drive you to and from the appointment. I love R and all, but he's not the most reliable of people to depend on in a dental-surgery situation.

MONEY AND DRUGS. How Chicago of me.

copperbadge @ 2008-11-21T09:22:00

2008-11-21T15:21:58Z

Gay parents have children, children need books. Film at eleven!

In short, Selkie wishes to provide LGBT and LGBT-friendly parents with books for their young sprogs. She would like your opinion on what kind of book because, as she says, on the internet everyone has an opinion. Go ye and comment.

Unrelatedly, I am much happier this morning, because my hot water has been returned to me. This is some conosolation for the fact that I have EPIC LAUNDRY to do this weekend and many errands to run.

I've been cleaning one room of my flat per evening after Hurricane My Mother hit it (we bought a lot of stuff and kind of left it where we dropped it) and now the only room left to clean is the bathroom, where really all I have to do is sweep up the boric acid, lay new boric acid down, and hang a shower curtain over my Very Drafty Bathroom Window.

Note to self: Buy groceries. Man cannot live by ground beef alone.

copperbadge @ 2008-11-20T18:31:00

2008-11-21T00:31:47Z

Unorthodox uses for hot cocoa powder, #s 4, 5, AND 6!

Number four: Trash can deodoriser!

I have this trash can OF THE FUTURE, which opens when I wave a hand in front of it (and then closes on my hand if I am scraping something into the trash). The problem is, when it closes it kind of hermetically seals. I think you could use it to shoot small things into space and they would return safely. So when I throw something fragrant into the trash, it holds in the air and consolidates the smell until when you open it again the smell leaps out, assaults you, and steals your valuables.

Remembering that hot cocoa powder mixed with boric acid makes my no-longer-roach-ridden bathroom smell pleasantly of chocolate, I mixed up a paste of two large spoonfuls of powder plus about 1/4 cup of water, and poured it over the trash liberally. Now my garbage smells like cheap cocoa! Which is infinitely preferable to week-old garlic butter.

Number five: Fruit fly killarz.

hija_paloma, expert on all things Fruit Fly, recommended this to me because having got rid of the roaches I seem to have developed a slight fruit fly problem. This also requires a bit of instant oatmeal.

Mix one packet (or about a quarter cup) instant oatmeal with a few spoonfuls of hot cocoa mix -- Dove suggested yeast or sugar -- and add enough hot water to moisten. Tape a paper cone over the top with a hole cut in the tip, so that the flies can get in but can't easily get out. Set in the affected area and be very, very sure to remove the mixture (to an outdoor dumpster) every two days, otherwise maggots will breed and hello, fruit fly orgy in the kitchen! Nobody wants that.

Number six: Inspirational living.

I have reached a point in my domestic life where if I encounter a problem, be it physical, emotional, or financial, I immediately think, how can hot cocoa powder solve this?

There are many things that hot cocoa powder can never fix. SAF, for example, does not accept student loan payments in the form of delicious powdered chocolate. But even so, when I think about solving the world's problems with cocoa, I feel slightly better about life in general.

copperbadge @ 2008-11-20T14:12:00

2008-11-20T20:12:20Z

Best. Conversation. Ever.

Sam: Hello?
Coworker B: Sam, can you call the building office?
Sam: Sure, what's the problem?
Coworker B: The smokeless ashtray is on fire.

OH YES.

We have a little spot behind the building for smokers, and two smokeless ashtrays. The ashtrays have a small cup on top with a hole in it, then a looooooong neck, then a bulbous base. The neck screws off so you can put a pail in the base with water in it, which is why they're smokeless -- the cigarette drops straight into the water (I've seen building maintenance changing them, oh so disgusting).

Anyway, yes, the water in the pail FROZE this morning and someone threw a cigarette in and it lit all the other cigarettes on top of the ice, which made huge billows of smoke pour out of the little cup on the top. Very impressive!

copperbadge @ 2008-11-20T08:13:00

2008-11-20T14:13:30Z

Dear My Apartment:

HOT WATER
UR DOIN IT WRONG.

More fragrantly than I prefer,
Sam