It's just an ordinary day - Recent Entries

So aside from that whole wave of distraction on Saturday involving my favorite Time Lord, highly enjoyable stuff did actually happen over the holiday weekend.

Friday afternoon, solarbird and I went down to Tacoma for the Tall Ships festival therein, and specifically, the Tricky Pixie show being held. Lots of fun, that; it was very cool, as I mentioned in a previous post, to see actual tall ships sailing along the water and in interesting contrast to supersonic planes in the sky. Cooler still was watching the Tricky Pixie show, which had the liveliest crowd of any of the performers there. Dara joined in on the chorus for the final song, the Lost Girls Pirate Academy alma mater. Very fun.

It is also highly worth mentioning that stealthcello, one third of Tricky Pixie, wrote a lovely new song about the ghost of a dryad clinging to her dead tree which has been used for the mast of a sailing ship. Highly appropriate song for the setting of the show and very wistful and sad as well.

Also, I am still coveting her guitar. Or else s00j's guitar, I'm not sure which yet, because Sooj's is a loverly shade of green. Though Betsy explained to Dara and me after that she's actually swapped out her previous black guitar for a wine-colored one she's named Sangria, which is the instrument she wrote the aforementioned song on. I'm swooning at the thought.

Dara and I hung out for a bit post-show and yakked with Betsy a bit, and Dara (mostly Dara) and I yakked with Alec (that's Alexander James Adams to the rest of you, another third of Tricky Pixie). My main contribution to that conversation was a sheepish confession that horses intimidate me, which of course led to Dara telling the story of how I fell off a pony at her behest. Hee.

We decided, though, that next year scratch that, next time they're having it again, which will be 2011, we need to come back to the Tall Ships festival. And actually, y'know, get on some of the tall ships, since they do tours and mock battles and things. And that would be super-cool.

On the way back we stopped in Shoreline to get a few things at the store and also Chinese takeout at Black Pearl. This is worth mentioning mostly because Black Pearl has become full of EPIC FAIL because they are no longer serving the delicious green onion pancakes that were a traditional staple of any order we placed with them. Dara and I were quite sad over this, and Dara learned that apparently making them is quite expensive for them, and hardly anybody ever orders them anyway. Hopefully Dara can find a tasty recipe to stand in for this loss.

Friday evening, of course, went to fireworks. As we did last year, we only had to go down the street a little ways, look right, and watch the show firing off over the lake. This year, we stayed out a little longer as well so we could also get a look at the Lake Forest Park show. Off in the distance to the south, we could even see the top of the Lake Union show... and at the very farthest opposite end of the lake, as far south as I could see, I saw teeny tiny flashes firing off over the skyline. I'm not sure which fireworks show that was, but that was amusing to see too.

Saturday, of course, pretty much went to the Doctor. <3

Sunday was supposed to be me going with Dara to busk at the Lake Forest Park Farmer's Market. But on Saturday afternoon, Rags popped a string--annoying. I'd tuned him earlier, and was rather startled to discover that all six of his strings were down by a half step. But he seemed fine after I tuned, so I played for a while (trying to see in particular if I could transpose "Captain Kidd" down to C, where I think I actually sing it more comfortable) and then went and did other things... until the high E string went PANG, while Rags was just sitting there. Grf.

I had an extra string, but as with all the other times I've had to swap strings, this one needs time to stabilize to its proper note. So I had to skip busking this time around. But at least Dara had an excellent outing and came home with $23.

mamishka came over Sunday afternoon, though, and we had a fun time watching Eureka and New Amsterdam. She also brought me more of season 3 of X-Files, and it's been delightful reminding myself that OH YEAH at least for the first several seasons, that show really did not suck.

New week to get through now--but on Thursday we'll have folks over for video gaming. On Friday, we will go to the Paramount where Mr. Eddie Izzard will very likely deliver us a heaping helping of Funny. And Sunday is JAM!

Say what you will about the Doctor Who finale, it's triggered off a boatload of plotbunnies in my brain. Way more than I have time to write! I'll have to see if I can whip up at least a few drabbles for some of these, though...

( Don't look back here if you haven't seen Journey's End yet... )

Whoa! Whoa, I tell you! Also: mizkit called it!

( Spoilers crossing between the worlds... )

( Massive, massive spoilers... )

To echo some of the sentiments I've seen going around about this weekend's episode, "Russell T. Davies, you bastard!"

Also, I must now also admit that the first words out of my mouth after the intro were, "The Earth has been STOLEN, GIR!" (Okay, surely I couldn't have been the only person flashing on Invader Zim while watching this?)

( What? What?! WHAT?! )

Dear gods, what a fabulous episode to get my wind back for review posts. Clearly, Russell T. Davies went in for his Awesome Shots for his last hurrah on the show--because I mean, DAMN! Russell T. Davies, sir, I salute you!

( Turn left to the spoilers... )

I see I've picked up a couple new folks reading: hi there, mrgoodwraith and sar_anon. Things have been slow around here lately since I haven't had much brain for posting--or doing much of anything else, for that matter. However, things should soon be picking up.

Most of this past week has gone to various appointments (chiro, massage, talk therapy), as well as hanging out with the fantabulous mamishka--who's come over a couple of time and introduced me to the TV shows Moonlight and Pushing Daisies. Moonlight is better than I've expected, at least based on the first couple of episodes; it's got a few amusing moments of self-aware humor, and it makes me grin that it has the actress who played Reinette in "Girl in the Fireplace" in it. Pushing Daisies, on the other hand, is hilarious in a quirky, dark-humor kind of way.

As I feared, the replacement X-Files DVD set that Amazon sent me turned out to also be missing the season closer. To wit: argh. I shall have to find alternate means to acquire that season, I fear. But I also jumped ahead and watched the first X-Files movie, on the grounds that okay yeah fine I'm going to go see the new one and I want to be reminded of various plot points. At least the ones from when the show was still good. ;)

solarbird and I went and saw Speed Racer finally, which I liked way better than I thought I would--and I have to admit, the techno remix of the theme over the closing credits was awfully catchy, and I may have to buy it off of iTunes. Coming home to watch the two actual episodes of the old cartoon I have on laser made me doubly appreciate the movie. The cast really did do a good job nailing the various characters, and sure, it's cartoony, but hey, it's a movie based on a cartoon. Though I can see how, if you never were a fan of the cartoon, the movie wouldn't work for you.

spazzkat and Dara and I went to see Indy IV last night. And, after seeing it a second time, I've found that I've downgraded it to a nice enough coda to the original three movies. Dara has said that she feels that Indy as a character really belongs back in the 20's and 30's, because back then, so much of the world is still Unknown and Mysterious to Western culture--but after WWII, not so much. I think I find myself in agreement with her.

We've had one jam session, about which there will not be a Jam Report still because I haven't had the brain to write them. But it was fun to have folks over, and I hope to resume writing Jam Reports with our next session on the 29th. In related news, Dara has started busking at local farmers' markets--and has made quite a bit of pocket change, which is awesome. I hope to join her next week to help her out, and we're hoping to use the busking money to get us a couple of the new iPhones when they come out.

My energy levels are slowly returning to normal; I've been able to do some decent walking the last few days, going to the aforementioned appointments as well as running errands down to the shops. And my brain's coming back enough that I'm starting to feel a little guilty about not working on the writing (in fact, I finally had an idea occur to me about how to fix one of the skiffy novels I'm working on, about which I need to be taking notes).

I think that's everything for now. A few more days of zzzz and then I'll have to go back to work; in the meantime, though, I got more Nethacking to do!

So there I am tonight, burning through the last several episodes of the season 2 X-Files DVD set so thoughtfully purchased for me by risu, when I realize that the season closer is missing from the final DVD.

I zoomed up to Amazon to look this up, and found that the Slim Set package for Season 2 apparently has had this problem reported by other users. One even reported that Amazon tried to send them a replacement, but that the replacement was also missing the final episode. To wit, ARGH!

I have flung them a customer service email to ask them WTF, and in the meantime at least got caught up through the second to the last episode. Any of y'all out there who don't already have X-Files on DVD, keep an eye out for this; the slim sets are nice because of minimal packaging and lower price, but this missing episode is annoying. Grr.

Ladies and gentlemen, the surgery as expected will be TOMORROW.

I had my pre-op appointment with Dr. Towbin this morning; we confirmed that yes, even if I keep the left breast, it's okay for me to ditch the Tamoxifen since for the left one, it would be purely preventative rather than active treatment. And since the MRI told me that the left breast is clear, I'm reluctant to do anything to it. We are therefore doing a single mastectomy only. Later in the year as appropriate we'll look at reconstruction now that we know what the best options there are, courtesy of talking to Dr. McMillan.

So yeah. I report in at oh-god-no-o'clock (read: 6:45am) for a procedure at 8:30am at Evergreen. I am to stay overnight, and assuming that nothing scary happens, I go home the next morning. solarbird will be staying with me overnight. I'm told by the admitting nurses that they'll be putting me into a new section of the hospital where all the rooms have little sleeping nooks for family and visitors and such. That will be useful.

Then I come home and fall over and think very calming thoughts for the next three weeks, as this recovery will be part physical and part mental and I am in desperate need of a vacation. The plan will be:

• Pet Dara
  
• Pet cats*
  
• Watch a lot of stuff on DVD**
  
• Read a lot
  
• Play a metric fuckload of Nethack
  
• Assuming I can manage to boot my brain back up after a few days, edit something
  
• Listen to a bunch of recently purchased music***
  

Wish me luck, folks.

* We expect the cats to be massively confused as, at least for the first couple of days after I get home, we're going to open up the sofa bed so I can sleep on it downstairs. The tricky part will be keeping the cats from sleeping on me.

** Watching of things has already included the first season box set of The X-Files, for which I must issue much public gratitude to cafiorello and her family. THANK YOU CATHY! MmmmmmmmMulder.

*** By way of retail therapy, I just dropped fifty bucks onto iTunes to buy a lot of music that's been on my To Buy queue, including various folks who have opened for Great Big Sea shows (Liam Titcomb, Jeremy Fisher, Ashleigh Flynn), the Carbon Leaf EPs, and the latest from the Irish Descendants. I also bought a CD at Folklife by a group called the North Shore Celtic Ensemble, who were pretty cool.

Just to pay appropriate note to the various and sundry other things that have been going on in my life:

Jam Reports. There have not been Jam Reports for the last couple of Jams, and I apologize in advance, but there will probably not be. I just haven't been focused enough to get proper Jam Reports written. However, it is worth noting that there is much promise with GBS' "Chemical Worker's Song" with the current set of voices. cflute in particular has some very impressive harmonies coming together for that, and kendaer is feeling some potential for rumbling out the lead on this on days when mamishka isn't available.

On a related note, solarbird and I went to go visit stealthcello this past Friday night, which was made entirely of Win. She and her family have a lovely home full of lovely large Maine Coon cats as well as six two-week-old kittens, with whom we visited as well and ZOMG TINY KITTENS. Dara shared some of the music she's been working on, and Betsy answered with some of hers, and me, I was impressed by Betsy's shiny new black carbon-body guitar.

One giggleworthy moment of the evening: Dara hitting a chord on the mandolin and announcing that that sounded like "ass minor". Betsy's daughter lost it laughing, and Betsy herself pondered the question of what precisely "ass" sounds like. Dara's response, entirely inevitably: "Here, pull my finger!"

I will also not be doing review posts for the most recent BSG and Doctor, again because short on general levels of cope. I will however say that the most recent BSG was quite solid. We actually haven't watched the most recent Doctor yet, but will hopefully be getting that in soon.

Current book on the queue: desperance's Bridge of Dreams, which I have scarcely begun, but already I am impressed by the liquid rhythm of the prose.

And because I could, I went and got RAM upgrades for both my MacBook and Dara's. Now Winnowill and Kiliandra both are at 2 GB, though I have observed that I'm still taxing the CPU a bit if I try to do too many things at once. Less so than before, granted, but the problem hasn't entirely gone away.

Working on listening to s00j's Sirens, to be followed up by vixyish and tfabris's Thirteen. I have however also squeezed in Capercaillie's shiny brand new album Roses and Tears, as well as Nickel Creek's first album, since I've been meaning to listen to them for ages. This marks the first official time I have ever purchased an album calling itself country. However, listening to it, I find it definitely upholds the Alexander James Adams Principle of Celtic and Country Music, to wit: same music, different whiskey. ;)

Dara and I are planning our assault on Folklife this weekend and we are for once actually looking at doing three of the four days. We definitely want to hit the Celtic Band Scramble on Saturday, but there are things that interest us quite a bit on Sunday and Monday as well. I'm thinkin', a great big (not to be confused with Great Big) glorious burst of Folklife just before surgery should be a good way to get ready.

And, it has occurred to me that as I am about to be lying flat on my ass for two weeks, I can finally read Deathly Hallows.

And have another Movie Suckoff. Because there will be another Movie Suckoff, oh my yes.

Last but most definitely not least: tomorrow night, JONES. Meeting casirafics and mamishka for the midnight show at the Cinerama, and there will be much fangirling. What can I say. There are only a few people in the world that can really get me to fangirl, but Harrison Ford is one of them.

And, just because I haven't done this in ages, here's an exercise update as well. I am now on my way back to Hobbiton!

Miles since April 5th: 107.6
Miles out of Hobbiton: 2863.8
Miles out of Minas Tirith: 26.8
Miles to Hobbiton: 1598.2

ETA 10:42pm: Oh yes, I forgot to mention: my Ubuntu VM problem has been solved thanks to help from blargh. The issue seemed to be that VMWare was confused by my machine's having both a CD-ROM and DVD drive, and when I changed the VM settings to tell it not to auto-detect a drive, it started behaving. So now I have a functional Ubuntu VM to use as a test platform at work. Go me! And thanks, Traest. :)

Dude, I am severely behind on my Battlestar review posts! Part of this, I have to admit, is that to some degree BSG is just not engaging me as heavily this season; the unremitting grim of the show is no longer adequately offset by likable aspects of the characters. I'm not feeling the Roslin love this season (with the exception, I grant, of episode 4.06), Lee has become a lot less interesting to me now that he's gone off to join the Quorum of Twelve, and even my and solarbird's TV Girlfriend Starbuck has gotten just a touch too crazy for me to really like as much anymore. In fact, the only character I'm still rather liking is Sam.

All that said, though, I'm still definitely intrigued by the overall events going on. The last three episodes have given us some tasty WTFery, and the whole building Cylon civil war? Booya. BRING IT.

( 4.04: Escape Velocity... )

( 4.05: The Road Less Traveled... )

( 4.06: Faith )

And, that'll do me for quick and dirty review comments. We'll see if I can do a full post for next week's episode; now, I gotta go edit something!

Well now, that was fun, and isn't this a new and interesting wrinkle thrown into the universe, eh?

( Spoiler samples in the machine... )

Okay! Not quite as awesome as part 1, but part 2 held up pretty well nonetheless. And, extra bonus WTF-ery in the teaser for next week!

( Spoilers in the transmat... )

Dude! So far, hands down, best episode this season. Excellent Donna mileage, some truly superb lines from the Doctor, the return of yet another classic Who alien race and the first serious appearance of UNIT in the entire New Who series--and Martha! Yay, Martha!

( Turn right for your spoiler destination... )

And, super-quick before we watch tonight's episode, my post for last week's! Hoo boy, that was one of the most depressing episode endings we've had on the show.

( Spoilers on the brink of civil war... )

Yeah, I know I'm a week late getting this one posted, but hey, it's been a busy week, what can I say? And I want to get this one posted before we watch this week's, with the return of Martha!

Picoreview: so far the weakest of the season; its primary virtues are some pretty stunning scenery, a nice bit of character development from Donna, and a little bit of character development for the Doctor, for that matter. But ooh ow the ending...

( Beware the red-eyed spoilers... )

Another late review post, just because I've had to ration out what brain I have available across the week. But! I want to get this written up before we actually watch the next episode. ;)

Picoreview: Nothing terribly surprising in the Starbuck plot, some nice tear-jerky bits with Apollo, and oh my the situation on the Cylon side just got real, real interesting.

( Spoilers now setting out to join the Quorum of Twelve... )

We actually watched this on Sunday evening, but the review post is late due to yesterday's little bit of news joy. Still, though, there are few things that are not improved by the presence of the Doctor.

Unfortunately, Pompeii is one of them. ;) (ETA 4/16/08 9:37am: Removed a "not" here, because ravyngyngvar caught me out on an accidental double negative. Oops. I plead writing this post just before bedtime!)

( Spoilers under the grate... )

Well now, that was just chock full of fun and interesting, now wasn't it?

( I'm from the Health and Spoilers Department... )

Not sure what I think about the first episode out of the gate; it wasn't quite as spectacular as I might have hoped for, after this long of a wait. At least one thing in it was actively annoying in that psych-got-ya! fashion. On the other hand, there were also some things of active interest.

( The spoilers are THIS WAY! Seriously! They're over HERE! )