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Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.
| Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 | ||
| copperbadge | 8:48p | It has gone beyond Cold As Balls out there. It's cold enough to freeze your Winnebago, guys. (Gratuitous Muppets reference is gratuitous!) We just watched epic amounts of Wheel with Bland and Blanda. Bland's actually not too bad at Wheel, apparently he used to watch it with his grandmother a lot. And then I had to walk home and lost feeling in my fingers through my leather gloves. Thank christ for parkas and long underwear. I got a very cheery note from the Super that he's fixing my bedroom window on Friday. I guess that means tomorrow night I have to peel off all the tape I was using as a draft-stopper. Properly sealed windows, for great yay! |
| copperbadge | 2:55p | What is Hetalia and why is ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} fandomsecrets covered in it?Ahem. I am done with the phone interviews, thank god. On the other hand, I mapped out the Meatloaf Bakery and it's actually off Fullerton, not Belmont, quite a ways from the El stop. So I am not going to be paying them a visit anytime soon, most likely, and thus R is going to be disappointed when I do not show up with meatloaf for our Wheelfest tonight. But I will pick up some Byron's, 'cause I know what sandwich he always gets there. I can't actually get in touch with him, since his phone service has mysteriously vanished. Poor lad's feeling the pinch a little at the moment -- he's cancelling his cable tv soon, and thus we will no longer have pre-queued Wheel to watch. I'm getting a converter box for my DVR, however, so on the other hand I can set the DVR to record it each night, which is almost as good. A man's gotta have his Wheel fix, after all. I've been working on the self-publishing project on-and-off and I'm just about ready to do final prep for Other People Can Smell You -- tonight I need to make the cover and then begin the process of figuring out how to upload everything properly. I suspect that I find the prepwork so entertaining because seeing to tiny details sooths me. I've tweaked the page numbering four or five times, and spent an hour or two mucking with the formatting of the front matter. It should look pretty splendid when it's done, though. It's taught me a lot about the basics of using the new Word as well -- having to relearn the location of nearly everything, from scratch, is such a pain in the ass. I wouldn't mind the buttons if the menus were more intuitive, but some buttons show up in three different menus and some buttons are in menus that they shouldn't be in at all. Plus some menus only show up if you click other buttons, what the fuck. It's like a really boring video game. (Speaking of which, I am totally pwning the Temple of Time in Zelda. Who loves the ball and chain? SAM LOVES THE BALL AND CHAIN.) |
| Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 | ||
| copperbadge | 10:07p | So I was going to watch League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and instead I wrote a space operetta. Uh. Oops? Title: I Were The Heavens Fandom: Torchwood Rating: PG for language Summary: A sixteen-year-old boy from Boeshane is going to win the war. The Time Agency has a vested interest in children like him -- and so does the Admiral of the Fleet. |
| copperbadge | 5:42p | So, I did not get meatloaf. It was a very icy snowy evening, and I decided coming directly home would be more intelligent. I had something else to post about, but hell if I can remember what it was. Something to do with the interviews I spent all afternoon doing. Blah. In other news, I mentioned ter369 the other day; she was a friend and fellow-fan who died recently and is much missed. cluegirl and juliefortune noted that the twelfth is her birthday, and are going to hold a fic-fest in her honour. I will probably not participate -- I don't know, I don't really cope with death well and writing for Ter would make a bit too sad, I think. But I think people who do want to write should. If you'd like more info about Ter's Birthday Fic Party, or to participate, you can check out Clue's post. No rules, just fun, as Clue and Julie say. :) |
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titti |
6:36p | So today, I thought I had the day from hell today: 1. Lost $30 metrocard 2. Got a shitty schedule 3. Worked for 10 hours in the federal building with no access to internet 4. I couldn't RP I got home and find out that LJ might close, except not. I'll be here until LJ is, but in case you want to find me elsewhere Titti at IJ, Titti at JF, Titti at CJ and Titti at Inksome. I also have a MySpace, Facebook, and Vox, oh and one of those Twitter thingise, but they have never been used. Finally you can put all of your links at The Directorium Then I thought about things that happen the world: 1. People are dying in Gaza 2. I've seen about 10 people detained by immigration today, including one of my clients, a woman with 2 US children and a husband, because she had tried to enter in the US back in 1997. 3. People are losing their jobs Suddenly my problems don't seem so bad          !to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} cordelia_v and for tomorrow, ridicu_lizNo clicks required:                 |
| copperbadge | 12:48p | Like all true terrible fantasy, Fire of the Crystal Elven Magesword of Dragonstar: The Pegasus Chronicles, Book Three: The Moonwand Cycle really never does end. iambickilometer wrote some of it. And added illustrations. Jack Harkness with elf hair, you guys. Rodney McKay with elf hair. The woman of Sibur is in the forest! |
| copperbadge | 10:48a | Y HELO THAR WURK, U CAN HAS A SAM! I had seventy new emails when I arrived this morning. Fortunately most of them were easy fixes/helps and that freed me up...just in time for BossBoss to pounce on me and ask me if I would do telephone interviews for a bunch of candidates for Coworker J's job. Coworker J pretty much has it sewn up, but we have to go through the motions to make it look legit. Which means I get to call people and ask them challenging questions! HOORAY. Or, you know, not. My Swaptree stuff is already starting to arrive, for great media yay. I am going to go home tonight and watch The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen! Thank you Bernard, your love of crap fantasy is going to greatly enhance my DVD library. I might stop off at Belmont and try the new meatloaf restaurant there, though. I feel like my life may not be complete until I have tried a meatloaf cupcake with mashed potato topping. Meatloaf and cheesy steampunk action flicks...can't beat it! |
| Monday, January 5th, 2009 | ||
| copperbadge | 10:48p | This afternoon R came by and woke me up with his buzzing at my door and kidnapped me. We ended up at his place with Bland and Bland's girlfriend and Porkchop (just...don't ask, that's actually what we call him), watching the Fiesta Bowl. Then R broke out a Christmas gift from his mum, who thinks he drinks way more than he does to judge from how she always sends him home with wine. This time she gave him a Rabbit, which is not a vibrator as many of you are right now thinking but is in fact a really fancy wine de-corker. So to test it out we naturally had to open one of the millions of bottles of wine he has. And see, my Guests left me cupcakes, and Bland's girlfriend's mum sent HER cupcakes, so... We had wine. And two kinds of cupcakes. And watched football. My head is spinning with cognitive dissonance. I mean, it was dessert wine, if that makes it any better. Do you think it would be seen as chauvinistic to name Bland's girlfriend "Cupcake"? She's going to need a name... And now to bed. Again. |
| copperbadge | 3:06p | PHOTO POST! I am home and unpacking, albeit slowly; I have to play with all the toys I got for Christmas as I unpack them. I am wearing fuzzy yellow slippers, drinking herbal chai, and I've been working my way through the first few days of my Kirigami calendar -- it's like really advanced paper snowflakes. There will be photos. In the meantime, however, a few images from the Blanton: You know what's missing from modern currency? Porn. I did a sketch of this, because it captivated me -- it was a print, I think 17th or 18th century -- of "Actors in the Italian Theatre". Looking closely I noticed one of them was masked, a veccio mask that's probably Capitano though it might be Dottore. I love this style of mask, because it's just nose and brow, and leaves most of the face free to express emotion. I'll have to scan the sketch next time I have the energy. This is the Embodiment of Astronomy. I like her neat globe thing and the chef's hat she's wearing. :D This is the Cildo Meireles installation I was talking about, How To Build Cathedrals. That's six hundred thousand pennies on the floor, eight hundred communion wafers in a vertical column, and two thousand lit cattle bones on the ceiling. You can walk inside the black gauze, which is where I got these photos of the installation and especially the ceiling. It's just marvelous. The best surprise when I got home, however, was that my guests, who stayed here a few days after I went to Texas, cleaned the flat and left me a Treasure Hunt. :D A post-it note on the fridge informed me that there were nine treasures hidden all over the flat, and I should find them before I have R over. Now, my Guests know me IRL but also read my journal, so they're aware of the porn. Oh are they aware of the porn. And that is what they left me....a flat covered in porn. ( HOW COOL IS THAT! Uh, but not worksafe... ) But I think this is my favourite. Yes...that's ROOMBA/TRASHCAN PORN.  And then they said, "You have to blog this!" and I said OH YES, and here we are. I'm going back to sleep now. :D |
| Sunday, January 4th, 2009 | ||
| copperbadge | 12:42p | Outgoing: Five shitty fantasy novels. Incoming: Two books of essays for me, two DVDs for Emmy, and a Jill Scott CD for R. \o/ I also found Bernard's stash of marginally terrible pop CDs, so those are going up too. Unfortunately everyone on Swaptree wants to get rid of their old Jewel albums as well, so there aren't many takers. Meanwhile,we continue the saga of Fire of the Crystal Elven Magesword of Dragonstar: The Pegasus Chronicles, Book Three: The Moonwand Cycle. As a scholar of the series I bring to you the tale of The Elves of Atlantis and their allies, the inhabitants of the Torch Wood. I'm pretty sure iambickilometer and I hate ourselves a little right now. Tomorrow I am taking off early early early for home. Last night I texted R because I was watching the Colts-Chargers game and wanted to know if he saw that AWESOME INTERCEPTION, and he texted back "Yes I did! Come over, I have snacks! We can watch SNL!" I texted back, "I'm still in Texas. See you Monday?" To which he replied, "We have six hours of muthafuggin WHEEL to watch. Bring Byron's." So apparently tomorrow I fly home, unpack, and then get to spend most of the day watching Wheel and eating onion straws. DOUBLE WIN. |
| Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 | ||
| copperbadge | 8:25p | Sometimes I read my flist and I think, there must be some subtle way of hooking X up with Y. They were made for each other! And then I remember I'm not subtle, and also reading someone's LJ != knowing them or who they would want to go out with. Still, surely sooner or later someone will find their soulmate in the Cafe. We went to the Blanton Museum of Art on the UT campus today and I talked a lot about the use of light and colour and composition, and then we snickered at the fig leaves on the plaster statue castings. I startled one of the docents when I said "Oh, a Kouros boy!" and ran across the room to get a good look. She glanced at me and said "You knew what that was? Like, from memory?" Well, yeah. It's not like they're hard to spot, they all have that smile that makes them look like the special-needs children of the ancient world. I absolutely fell in love with one piece, How To Build Cathedrals, an installation concerning the relationship between the evangelisation of the new world and the economic benefits derived from it. It's hard to see how beautiful it is just from that one photo, but I have more I'll be posting soon. The bones glow. We got to talking over lunch about the Ransom Centre, which has the First Photograph Ever Taken in its archive. I started to explain that I'd recently seen the first photograph ever taken of a person... Sam: I saw the first photograph of a person ever taken the other day. It was by accident -- Mum: *dies laughing* Sam: Uh? Mum: It was someone's finger, wasn't it? All: *groan* This is why I will never have any particular reverence for Great Art. I was raised by someone who mentally draws moustaches on every Mona Lisa she comes across. The architecture of the Blanton is apparently much-talked-about and with good reason; it's an interesting meld of Spanish-villa and "mathematical" architecture, kind of like wandering around in a technical drafting mated with a southwestern mission house. It's extremely pleasant and suits the surrounding area well. Then we came home and I played a bunch of Okami while alternating between whining about how HAAAARD the Power Slash move is and shushing Emmy, who kept reading the walkthrough aloud. It's a beautiful game, artistically, but occasionally a little slow moving. Mum watched me play, which was HILARIOUS because she kept shouting "headbutt the vase headbutt the vaaaaaase" and got mad when I had to beat the shit out of a Taiko drummer because she likes Taiko drums. Dad spent quite a bit of time over dinner trying to explain RPG-style games to her. |
| copperbadge | 2:40p | If only to prevent the Cafe from emailing me en masse...:D I just got the casting info on the new Doctor; google around if you want the name, I won't spoiler it though you'll have a hard time avoiding them I imagine. He looks cool, can't wait to see him in action. Not nuts about that hair, though. Very scene-kid, kind of Robert Patterson, like an angry longhaired cat crawled onto his head. You can't deny it looks alien, I suppose... |
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titti |
1:04p | Dr. Who And we have a new Doctor. Now I need to wait for the actually download so I can watch the announcement. No matter who they had picked, it was still the Doctor to me, but I think I like this choice. More info here. |
| copperbadge | 10:20a | So we got to talking about shitty fantasy novels... mad_martha: Just out of curiosity, what sort of shitty fantasy novels are we talking about? copperbadge: Lots of Dragonlance, mainly; some Margaret Weis and some Terry Goodkind too. Lots of titles with words like "elven" and "sword" and "mage". It makes me want to write a satire called THE ELVEN MAGESWORD, but it's probably been done.metallumai: ...the CRYSTAL elven magesword...copperbadge: OF DRAGONSTAR!meran_flash: I remember being in Barnes & Noble once, when I passed by a display full of some series that had a bunch of fire and shirtless elves on pegasi on the cover.copperbadge: PEGASI. That's what are missing from THE ELVEN MAGESWORD! *makes notes*meran_flash: Fire of the Crystal Elven Magesword of Dragonstar: The Pegasus Chronicles!copperbadge: Book Three: The Moonwand Cycle.meran_flash: *UNLEASHES AWESOME* |
| copperbadge | 10:06a | jack_and_ellis has been updated! I didn't make my end-of-year finish deadline, but I'm getting there. Not much further to go now... Anyway, chapter forty is up and you can find it here. Enjoy. :) |
| Friday, January 2nd, 2009 | ||
| copperbadge | 4:46p | Having an estranged fundamentalist nut-job brother has had a few signficant uses in the past year, most notably as a great story to tell over dinner. Just now, however, Emmy and I raided the closet where he kept all his shitty fantasy novels and put them up on swaptree, where apparently shitty fantasy novels are in high demand. If the traders accept our swaptree offers, we will totally make out like goddamn bandits. The deal is, she keeps the books here and handles the mailing, whether or not the book is going to her or me, and I pay the postage. In other news: PIZZA. That is all. |
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titti |
12:39p | Video Morning  lupintonks85, hobbit_feet, jamaisneutral, mamoru22 and ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} venivincere- Every time I watch Start a Band, I get the sudden urge to write Brad Parsley/Keith Urban slash. I never thought I'd get inspired by country singers (although Keith is mighty fine). - simply_luriem created a very funny Arthur/Merlin video to Avril Levigne's Girlfriend. - We're still looking for evil guys at Enigma No clicks required: |
| copperbadge | 11:21a | Good nearly-afternoon! I overslept and ate a lot of toast. My sinuses are no longer threatening to explode but I am coughing up a lung, so I'm being dosed with a lot of hot beverage and reminders that I am susceptible to pneumonia (regrettably true). In happier news, however, sadcypress is a better person than I am and posted photos of her Christmas Tree, complete with many colourful word ornaments from the Cafe's interesting-words-as-Christmas-ornaments collective project. It is awesome! If you missed the ornaments the first time round, you can get them here. Best of all, though, I have introduced my mother to LOLcats. She had never encountered them before. She is, I am happy to say, a convert, despite some difficulty in the initial translation. Today we are going to the bank to deposit Mama Tickey's generous Christmas check, and then to the grocery store, and then probably I am going to pass out in the backseat or something. Most of the check is going to go into savings or to pay a few bills, but I'm thinking of setting aside a little and buying myself a new camera. Also of note: my parents have a remote controlled ceiling fan. THAT'S RIGHT YOU HEARD ME. A remote controlled ceiling fan. If you push a button on the remote the fan lamp lights up! If you push another it stops fanning! I think it might even beat out Dalek Can and Dalek Suck as the most ridiculous automated appliance my family owns. |
| Thursday, January 1st, 2009 | ||
| copperbadge | 6:56p | I was wishing ter369 was still around tonight. I was going to either send her off to watch The Opera Lover or ask her opinion of it, but to be honest I don't think she'd really enjoy it that much because it's not actually about opera. Though I'm sure the opera that's in it is pretty good. I have no musical taste or discernment so I can't tell. Anyway, my ultimate point -- aside from missing Ter, which I still do, especially when there's Opera around -- is that The Opera Lover is not really about Opera, but I don't think it's actually about anything. IT IS REALLY BORING. Also, I am super duper hydrated. Every time mum saw me and there wasn't liquid within two feet of me, she brought me a beverage. I have had eight or nine glasses of water, three of orange juice, two at least of cream soda and 7up each, and one mug of hot apple cider that she brought me while I was writing this. I have peed more in the last twelve hours than most people do all week. |
| copperbadge | 3:17p | I am coming to you live from the new laptop, which looks exactly like the old one except for where the plug is placed and the fact that it is approximately a jillion times faster. Nearly everything has been installed and all my files have been migrated over, although I elected to keep most of my video files on the portable hard drive I was using. And I have something of a treat for you... A few months ago, someone posted to fandomsecrets that they really wanted to see the season before the first season of Torchwood. I thought this was a pretty inspired idea, so I decided to write "season zero". I knew that writing it as a fanfic would be too labour-intensive, and anyway...why be normal? Instead I wrote episode summaries, quotes from the "shows", BBC Extras, and Captain's Blog entries. They're archived by episode at tw_season_zero, and I've just made them available -- you can read from the top down, like an ordinary webpage. OP, if you're out there -- not as good as the real thing, but I hope you enjoy it. As for the rest of you, feel free to frolic in the fic and write incredibly meta episode codas and reviews. :D |
| copperbadge | 12:05a | Happy new year, Cafe! Now everyone go the hell to bed. Unless it's not New Year's there yet. In which case, I am here to tell you that you're not missing much, the New Year is mostly being spent in bed anyway. My parents fell asleep an hour ago and Emmy's probably asleep by now too, so it's just me. And I am in bed. I have taken a lot of Tylenol decongestant-painkiller-cough-suppressan *faceplants into pillow, snores* |
| Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 | ||
| copperbadge | 2:54p | I am home! Have been for a bit but we were having lunch and "doing Christmas". I got some slippers and Okami for the Wii and Six Memos For The New Millenium -- which came attached to a card that read "For Sam: I don't know what this is, but I hope you enjoy it" -- and a power drill, among other things. Also got the new laptop, though I'm still writing this on the old one. The new one has Vista on it, which I don't object to on princple except that it doesn't seem to interact well with the trackpad -- the mouse keeps randomly selecting things as I'm moving it across the screen. I'm hoping it's a Vista issue and not an issue with the actual hardware. Otherwise I am mostly reposing in the bosom of my family, watching TV and having beverages force upon me by mum -- since coming home I've had a glass of water, one of OJ, half a glass of diet 7-up, and a mug of hot apple cider. Hope you guys are having as nice a New Year's Eve as I am. |
| copperbadge | 6:00a | I am through security and at the airport. That was absurdly good service -- I used Airport Go Express, which is a door-to-door shuttle pickup. Cheaper and easier than a taxi, that's for sure. Now if I could just get my head to stop leaking mucus everywhere, I'd be golden. Bit of a surprise waiting for me at the check-in gate, on the other hand. I swiped my driver's licence through the machine, so that it would bring up my itinerary, and it gave me two options: "Print Nonrevenue Security Document" or "Check Bags". Thinking "nonrevenue security document" was the new "ticket", I selected that, and it told me to go to the gate and sign up there for a standby flight. "Excuse me, it says I'm flying standby, was my flight cancelled?" I said to the attendant. "No, you're flying standby," she said, pointing to the big STANDBY on my ticket. "Except I'm not, I bought a ticket." "To Baltimore?" "Uh...no?" I ventured. "To Austin. I checked in yesterday morning." "Oh," she said, and looked confused. Then she asked what my name was. Apparently the machine read my licence wrong and tried to check me in as someone else. GO ME. We got it sorted in the end, and I am no longer flying standby to Baltimore, but I have every sympathy for the poor bastard who is. I have half of NCIS s2 on the iPhone, two books in my bag, and plenty to work on if I want to write. I'm all set...as long as my flight takes off on time. |
| Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 | ||
| copperbadge | 10:10p | Okay, kiddos, I am off into the great wild yonder tomorrow. Or Texas, take your pick. I'm leaving on a jet plane early, but I should be home by midafternoon. I'll textpost when I'm safe on the ground. Look after each other while I'm in transit, and pray for an aisle seat in an empty row... |
| copperbadge | 7:47p | I have returned from shopping with my sanity intact! No panic attacks this time. :) I took my guests out today to Michigan Avenue, to hit the sales; I didn't actually buy much for myself, just a new set of headphones for the iPhone, but they got some really good deals. AND THEN THERE WAS SUSHI. Okay, mock if you like, I know I spent eight years in California, but I was a picky eater in my teens and not only had I never eaten sushi, I didn't even know which kinds of sushi were what. My cultural ignorance, let me show you it. This being the case, I would walk past OySy Sushi every once in a while and gaze longingly at it. I even set a fairly significant event in the Torchwood Chicago duology there -- it's the restaurant Edgar and Ellis are eating at when they're photographed together for the People Magazine cover outing them. I had never been in it! You know what I knew about OySy? TEMPURA. And that's all. So I used my Guests, who have extensive Sushi Skillz, as an excuse to eat there. They guided me in what to order, and we ate much sushi, omg so much sushi. There was yellowtail and tuna and salmon and Maybe Squid, and a bunch of maki, California roll and Spicy Tuna roll and Spider roll and salad that Might Have Had Fish Eggs In It, We Don't Know. Also I ate some pickled ginger, which was startling, as I do not normally eat ginger. My guests mocked my face when the ginger kicked in and I went OH NOES MY MOUTH. Best of all, though perhaps only for Ouran fans: I ATE OOTORO. Mmmmmmfattytuna. It was delicious, and totally unlike...anything, really. And now I am home, and my Guests are making dinner, and I am sacked out on the bed. They wish to assure the Internet that I am Not Dead, and they ought to know. |