In Media Res

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....

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.

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!

Oh my god. PeaPod sells Turducken.

*BUYZ*

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.

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.

Hi, Guys. I know a good many of the S2 themes are kinda hosed right now. Something changed with the LJ migration to their new data center. The Bloggish and Style Contest themes have their CSS hosted at LJ. That's by LJ's design, with how the code is distributed. The code is set to use LJ's CSS proxy to handle the access and display of the CSS settings. Since LJ's move, though, the CSS proxy has been kaput. But the CSS itself at LJ is still working. Until we can find a way around all this, a couple users have a way that you can use the Custom CSS in your customization area to get your layouts pretty damn close to the original for that layout and theme.

You'll enter two sets of code in that area. The first one would be the code from this URL:
http://stat.livejournal.com/sixhtml/themes/common/base-weblog.css

Just go there, copy it, and paste into the custom CSS box.

And the second set you enter will be from the direct CSS URL for your specific theme. You can locate this URL by viewing the source of your journal in your browser (View Source code). If you scroll down to the <link rel="stylesheet" section of the source code, you'll see the direct url to your theme's CSS at livejournal. Go there, copy that code, and paste it after the base-weblog.css code above. Make sure you have "No" selected to use the included base code (it's a dropdown), and that the URL field above the custom CSS box is empty. Click to save changes, and your theme will display much as it is supposed to. There is occasionally an element like a border that doesn't come through, but it's pretty close. As an example of the CSS URLs, this is the one for the Baby theme for the Bloggish layout: http://stat.livejournal.com/sixhtml/themes/lilia/theme-baby.css The CSS URLS will be start with http://stat.livejournal.com/sixhtml with the rest varying by theme and layout. I'll still be looking for an alternative to having to futz with custom CSS, but in the meantime, that method of applying the CSS will get your Bloggish and Style Contest journal themes put back together pretty well. Thanks, Robin

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.

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!

Dear My Apartment:

HOT WATER
UR DOIN IT WRONG.

More fragrantly than I prefer,
Sam

R: *burps*
Sam: Classy.
R: I aimed it the other way! I wasn't raised in a barn.
Sam: Just near them?
R: In the area of barns.
Sam: Outside a barn.
R: I lost my virginity in a barn.
Sam: You WHAT.
R: Zepplin was playing on the radio.
Sam: Oh my god.
R: It wasn't what you're thinking, there weren't animals there or anything.
Sam: I wasn't even thinking about animals. I was picturing straw and a rusty tractor.
R: No, no no. Well, there was a tractor.
Sam: Oh my god.
R: It wasn't rusty!
Sam: This is like Footloose gone horribly wrong.
R: Yeah, I keep trying to qualify it, like, it was a classy barn. I'm going to shut up now.
Sam: PLEASE.

Nothing I can say would add anything at all to the beauty and horror of this conversation.

Jack and Ellis has been updated!

I am ten thousand words behind where I should be. In my defence -- you know what, I can't actually think of anything to say in my defence. Other than OH LORD WRITING IS HARD. Anyway. It's a complete chapter, which is something.

Chapter Thirty Five: Up The Res. Ellis negotiates, Clare has the most awkward conversation ever, and Purva and Jack are remarkably quiet.

So this weekend while staying in the hotel I happened to notice that the lighting in the bathroom was far better than any lighting I've ever had in any bathroom anywhere, and I was making faces at myself in the mirror when I noticed that I had a billion gray hairs.

Okay, ten. Yes, I counted.

And this was unsettling to me, because I thought the universe and I had gone over this whole thing where I am never going to age, back when I was twenty-three and found a grey hair and ripped it out in horror. (Although this was not as awful as the time in Boston when I discovered a hair growing out of the middle of my forehead, at three in the morning. I'm still not entirely convinced it wasn't a dream.)

(It was also not as bad as the time a random woman in a shoe store told me to have my "young friends" explain pop culture to me.)

But then today walking home from work I saw a family with two young children and instinctively started following them because obviously THERE IS MUM, MUST KEEP UP WITH MUM OR SOMEONE WILL STEAL ME. So clearly while I may be getting older physically, deep down inside I am five, and I'm okay with that.

Either that or I can blame it on the internet. Because I think if you look at my online life for the past five years you will find some justification for my hair going prematurely grey.

In short and to sum up: I am buying some hair dye. Possibly I am going to re-dye it black like I did in undergrad, which caused the admin of our theatre department to decide I was making a cry for help and ask me if I needed a hug.

Also, I am going Christmas Shopping tomorrow. Pray for me.

There is only one word for this. And that word is beautiful.

And then the entire world decided that I was indeed the Buddha, that I possessed the answers to all questions, and that if I said I could not procure the answer/object which was required, I was merely being coy.

I'm not kidding you, the entire world. A casino in Korea called me today. Twice. Someone from the 18th floor insisted that I had to have access to AA batteries. Building Security wanted to borrow my copy of some paperwork that they wouldn't allow me to have, back when I asked for it three months ago, because they'd misplaced their own.

I am only one ninja. I can only do so much.

I have started shopping for Christmas but I am pants at this because I am totally unobservant and lack empathy. As a defence mechanism I have developed and fine-tuned a reverse-engineering coping mechanism, since I can't actually think up stuff people would like and then go find it. I have to go out, into the world, and wait until I see something that someone might like, I have to let the gifts find me.

I am buying one thing specially on Amazon, but this method of gift shopping makes it very hard to fill the whole "$25 and you get free shipping!" thing. You can't really browse Amazon, it requires quite a large degree of specificity even for browsing. HOW DO I KNOW SOMEONE I LOVE WANTS A BOOK? Can't I look at books AND housewares? What if they want an action figure but I don't get to see the action figure because I'm busy browsing books?

I often suspect that I am not built for this reality, but unfortunately it's the only reality I've got.

Bit of a fracas for one of the Cafe last night/this morning -- aura218's not-necessarily-stable aunt is getting out of an abusive relationship and asked me to link to her post about it to see if anyone could offer advice or a link to a good organisation in the PA area to help her out. Thanks, guys. :)

This is going to be a high-post-volume day, I can tell.

Good morning!

I would like to present you with a cat on a roomba (thanks bodlon!).

Training my cat to ride a Roomba is not the only reason to adopt a cat, but it just shot way up there as one of the many top reasons to adopt a cat.

Making it home in one piece! That's the way I roll.

The number of things I broke today do not include bones, but only just. It's cold, there's ice, I wasn't very awake, I have an aura so thick it knocks things over without me touching them, take your pick.

But! I bought new glasses. They won't arrive for days because I have freakish mutant eyes, but they're small and gold-rimmed and designer and made entirely out of splendid. So there's that.

I also learned two things today. The first, via one of the ex-Navy guys in the office, is that if a Gunnery Mate is ever shouting at you, if you take your keys out and shake them, everyone nearby will laugh and the Gunnery Mate will shout louder, but you won't care. Apparently it's a big joke that Gunnery Mates like shiny things.

The second thing I learned is that there is an area of northwest Indiana known as "The Region" and if you say you're from "The Region" to any native Indianan they will know you are authentic.

So if I ever end up in Indiana, or the Navy, I'm all set!

I can't decide which is worse.

Bit small compared to the past couple of wanks but full of fangirl rage and lulz.

Some information to better understand the wank. In Japan there is an agency called Johnny's that is the major male idol agency in the country. Most of the most popular boy bands are signed with them, one of these groups is called NEWS.

A few days ago a German NEWS fan chyco_chan decided to share scans from a German J-Pop magazine, that is notorious for poor research and nabbing whatever pictures they can find on the net for their magazine, as this time they snagged two pictures of NEWS/Kanjani8 member Ryo Nishikido for an article about gay life in Japan.

In the words of chyco_chan:

BUT why??? Ryo = gay??? XDDDD
That's bashing XD (not even by us sou~ XD)

She then tries to get people to contact Johnny's about the magazine to tell them about it in the comments as she's afraid of being blamed if the magazine goes out of business.

And then cue the fangirl rage and lols at the article in the seven pages of comments this post has spawned.

There is someone that questions the 'calling someone gay=bashing' of the OP but then goes on about homoerotic the pictures are, despite them being, y'know solo shots.

And we have some minor capslocking of rage against other fangirls by bugattack.

Plus rage against the magazine as this would 'hurt' Ryo if he ever saw it from yamapilovergyal.

And many, many 'Poor Ryo' and 'Johnny's should sue' than it's worth counting.

I don't want to bitch or anything, but it just doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to send a mass email to your users that your site is going to be down for four hours. Or, you know, to do a server migration that didn't occur during peak user time for a significant minority, if not the majority, of your clients. Isn't this a case for a midnight-to-four-am kind of a deal? I'm happy to chip in for hot coffee and breakfast danishes for you guys.

IDK, if LJ is down that means I have to do work or something. I'm not sure I'm prepared for that.