The Truth About Celia

To Do: (A fall cleaning list)

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:42:48 GMT

Clean bathroom
floor
sweep
mop
toilet
sink
tub
shower walls
shower curtain

Clean kitchen
floor
Robot
Handheld vaccuum around the edges
mop
Fridge (just the scary stuff)
countertops
stove
possibly the pans.

Living room
Robot the floors
wash the ~~bear bed~~ couch cover

Laundry
All of it.

Catbox

Huge stack of unread magazines in my room

rest of the library books

As much tv as necessary, including SGU and Sanctuary.

Thankfully, the sheepskin is not on my schedule for today, so the dog should be okay. My room in general is not on the list, though it should be, but apparently I don't mind living in a pit of untidiness so long as the public areas are clean. (I think it's because I have an excuse for not cleaning my room: I was very busy cleaning the rest of the house, honestly, don't you people pay attention???)

New Hair color

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:58:31 GMT

I figured, why not? I've already got the coloring for it, might as well try something a little crazy. (The color is called Cherry Cola.)

Fun note: as always, hair dye dyes skin. I felt the strands stick to my face a couple of times, but wasn't really worried about it because I figured on my skin it would be almost exactly the same color as my freckles. And I was right. To the point that not only did my hairdresser not get some spots off first try, but when I was correcting him (once I had my glasses on), I pointed out a few places on my face that were still stained, one of which turned out to be an actual freckle.

The Awesomeness of my College Reunion

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 02:37:03 GMT

I am trying to write a post about going to my reunion and remembering my college. It is not working.

In the mean time, if you still live where you went to college, know that I kinda envy you. Not that I wanted to stay in K, and not that I don't love Boston. Just that I wish others had moved here with me. :)

What I would have said if I went to meeting today

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:40:52 GMT

I thought about going to meeting today. I slept in instead, but I thought about it before and since, and if i'd gone, I think I would have stood up and spoken, which I have never done in meeting. If I had gone and had stood up, I would have said something like this:
*
When my grandmother was little, she lived about three streets away from here. She watched people come here Sunday mornings, and she decided that she liked the look it. Of the meeting house, of the people, or of the religion, I don't know. But when she grew up and had kids, she raised them as Quakers, at State College Monthly Meeting in PA. I was born in that meeting, and grew up being Quaker, and knowing how much my grandmother valued Quakerism. When I started coming here, every time she asked if I had a meeting, and I told her I was attending meeting here, she would tell me again how she found Quakerism though this meeting.

She died Friday night, in her sleep. I will miss her.
*
Of course, there's a lot that I wouldn't have been able to say in the meeting. Like how she went back to school after her youngest, my dad, went to college. And she finished her BA and then got a PhD. And moved to New Jersey to teach. How we went to get her when she moved to my home town, and I was 8 or 9, and couldn't even remember what she looked like I'd seen her so rarely. She had loong hair, down to her waist, that she wore in a bun. When she moved to Lewisburg, she cut it short and wore it that way from then on. When I went to Italy on study abroad, I read a book called Mothers of Feminism, about Quaker women in the early days, and I wrote back to Libby about how brave these women were, to tell their husbands they were going ministering, and leave their children behind and travel the country on horseback, going to meetings and talking about god. And even the old women would do it! 75 years old, and traveling around ministering! And she wrote back and reminded me that she was 75, and moving to Philadelphia to work for the Quaker UN.

She was 85. She was living in a nursing home, in the first level of it (independent living?), and she was rapidly approaching the time when she wouldn't get her own apartment, just a room in the next level (assisted Living). (my father made a Dante reference here.) She had been getting more and more forgetful every time I saw her, but she approached it in a wonderful way, as suits a scientist. She was curious and interested in everything new to her, and everything was new to her. She'd say, "Now who are you?" to me, and I'd explain it all, including my parents, and their names, and their relationship to her. And she'd say, "Is your father here?" and look around interestedly. For a while she would write it all down, but that didn't really work because she'd just ask you the same thing again, and then write that down. The last time I saw her, I went with her and my uncle to Woods Hole, where she grew up, and she had a wonderful time. She knew everything! Where she'd lived, where other people had lived, how she had dated a boy with a motorcycle who lived over on the rich part of the bay, and her parents had disapproved. And she told me about her dad, who discovered the Redfield Ratio, and worked in the Woods Hole Oceanographical Institute, and showed us their house that is now part of the WHOI, and we had a wonderful day. And we drove back to my aunt's house, and got out, and she asked me again who I was, and I wondered if she had ridden the whole way back, wondering who I was in the back, and how it didn't matter to her at all. She wasn't scared or fearful of the unknown, she liked learning everything just as much every time.

I will miss her. But, I have been missing her for the better part of 10 years now, I think. Definitely 6 or more. I miss the grandmother I grew up with, and I am sad because even though that woman was gone, now she will never come back, not even for the split seconds i'd see now and then.

Slow Cooker Awesomeness

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 01:54:27 GMT

Okay, my best efforts recreation of the AMAZING tagine I just made.

Spice mix:
2 tsp ginger
2 tsp coriander
1.5 tsp cinnamon
1.5 tsp pepper
1.5 tsp tumeric
1.25 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp allspice
.5 tsp cloves

Take a non stick pan, add a splash of olive oil and 2 tsp of the spice mix. Heat it up (as if you were doing curry). Throw in 2 sliced (vidalia) onions, and like 6 cloves garlic. I added water on and off to keep them cooking till they were soft. I had intended to use the tiny sliced plums from last year, but they'd gotten freezer-burned/dehydrated down to nothinginess. I threw them in anyways, since it had originally called for prunes. I dumped it into the crock pot. I chopped up the steak meat (about 1.5 pounds), which was frozen, and browned it quickly in the skillet, then dumped it in the crock pot too, along with a cup of water, 1.5 tsp salt, three generous squirts of honey from a squeeze bottle and, because I wasn't sure about the plums, two tiny chestnut crab apples (best apples ever). And then I cooked it for about 4 hours in the crockpot.

When I was done letting it cook, I made couscous with 2 parts water, 1 part broth.

Serve them together. Scarf it up. AWESOMENESS.

And it was AMAZING.

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 02:49:55 GMT

So, I love Eureka. I have loved it since the first moment I saw ads for it, whereupon I went to the internet and found all of it to watch. And the first season one of the BIG plot points revolved around the son of the love interest/head of the company. Who has not only disappeared from the show, he has NEVER BEEN MENTIONED this season. This season when his mother has been pregnant and talking about having a baby, blah blah blah, there has been not even a "gosh, X (I can't even remember his name any more) is doing so well off in Y, where he is doing Z." I mean, I don't require small children to stay on shows forever, but they could at least pretend he still is a human being and talk about him from time to time. They talk about other people who have left the show.

That said, I still do love it, and its interesting view of science. Not as much as Psych, though. I love Psych so much that would like to marry the writers from Psych. Well, really I would like to marry James Roday (who write scripts too!), but if he is taken, I will settle.

How I Lost My Teeth Today

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 19:10:32 GMT

The actual removal was no big deal. He did the one he was most worried about first, and it was completely painless and no problem (he'd been worried it would break when he was pulling on it.) The other three were more resistant to the idea of coming out, and he ended up having to pause and give me more novacaine for each of them. But no problem, really. Once I was numbed up properly I walked home, stopping on the way for the prescription and some other stuff from CVS. Of course, because I'm contrary, I can't keep the guaze pads in my mouth to stop the bleeding completely because I was like to choke because I couldn't swallow with the stupid lumps of gauze in my mouth. So they came out. I've been dribbling blood a little ever since, but that's preferable to how it was feeling.

I slept for a few hours while the novacaine wore off, and when I woke up, I had this hollow, numb feeling in my jaw that took a while to figure out was probably the holes hurting. Numb from drugs segues neatly into numb with pain. I drank soyprotein and milk (least fun milkshake ever) and took my T3. And it took a lot longer to kick in than I'm used to with pain drugs, but hopefully it will last until 5, like it's supposed to. (It still hurts, I just care less.)

And while I waited for it to kick in, I handled tickets from techsupport. working on my day off, go me.

Dragoncon 2009, part 2

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:19:37 GMT

This video was stuck in my head for AGES at Dragoncon.

I posted it on my facebook page as well, so some of you have already seen it, but I feel that ALL of you should have it stuck in your head. Why *IS* he climbing the mountain?

Dragoncon 2009

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:37:25 GMT

My wisdom teeth come out in two days. I am terrified. I predict a very miserable weekend for me.

Dragoncon was, as always, Dragoncon. Last year had more awesome panels (mostly due to the huge number of stargate peoples.), but I actually watched more because they broadcast some good panels on the hotel tv stations. The dealer's room had more crap than anyone could ever in the world need. This year, there was steampunk fixings on top of the geek tee-shirts stands, corset stands, weapon booths, gaming tables, and Browncoat stuff. The exhibit halls were more sedate, as usual, but basically the same stuff in better layouts, and more. The Art show was smaller than last year. The glass making woman whose stuff i love looking at wasn't there. There was the usual scary stuff (Please, universe, we have enough paintings of anthropomorphic animals and sad panda-girls, so we can stop making those now.), and the occasional spark of quality.

I bought an insane amount of books there. I mean, usually I try to buy a couple, but resist because I don't buy all that many books at all. But I had taken The Patriot Witch there with me, and I started it, and then finished it, and NEEDED to have the other two right away. (I didn't actually read them right away, but I had them, which is all that was necessary at the time.) But they were only like, 14 or 16 or so, and the minimum charge was 30, so...so I picked up a sequel to one of the paranormal vampire romances that I do like (Molly Harper, "Nice Girls Don't Date Dead Men."), and a first-in-a-series fantasy novel that looked good (The Accidental Sorcerer which was AWESOME (despite less than stellar copy editing) to the point that I HAD to buy the sequel in the airport, and read it on the flight home.), and some fun-looking Space Opera Romances, (my all time favorite genre): Sandra MacDonald "The Outback Stars" and a Wen Spencer. And I think one other I have forgotten. I also made a list of the others that tempted me: more SOR, the new C. E. Murphy Urban Shaman book, etc to look up in the library.

The costumes were awesome as usual. I'm SO over steampunk for the sake of steampunk. That said, Steampunk Ghost Busters(Apparition Hunters? I missed their Steampunk name), Steampunk Professor X, Steampunk Green Lantern: all approved of. I still approve of steampunk with a purpose. I am also over people stopping at the top of escalators, people stopping in the middle of the hallways to take photos, people stopping to have their picture taken, people stopping.

Finished!

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 03:55:43 GMT

Finished!
Originally uploaded by tanaise

Of course, this is the only thng I've started recently that i don't have a goal in mind for. It's pretty much free to a good home.

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:24:26 GMT

On my way in to work today, I finished the Sword-Edged Blonde. Toby had recommended it a while ago, and I'll admit I was highly dubious, even after I started it. It's basically noir detective crossed with Conan, and yeah, that sounds really hard to do well. But I liked it. I don't think you really need to know more than that when you pick up the book, so go forth and do so.

Posted using TxtLJ

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:38:58 GMT

Last night i was sitting on my bed, and i thought god i'm uncomfortable. So i turned my fan off. Best day this month!

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 14:51:15 GMT

Yesterday my final school loan payment cleared. So, to celebrate, a poll.

View Poll: No School Loans!

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:30:12 GMT

Times of the year working on a baby blanket might be a bad idea: now

Guess I'll work on the wedding sampler instead.

Story draft!

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:36:13 GMT

Last night, I wrote an ending to Hoc Vale, also known as Exposing the Dead. I'm pretty sure it's not *the* ending, and it probably needs some significant pruning in the middle, as well as a scene or two before the end. But I consider it a draft, just the same. And it's about 400x better than the ending of Light Up, Light Up (ie, no one gets eaten by bears). I suspect I will print it out, and leave it lying around until I feel like revising it. It's in present tense. That's probably a mistake. It is also missing some motivation. On the plus side, I had temporarily lost this draft, and was reading an older one thinking "omg, I know I'd come up with better reasons than this." And then I found this draft, and I totally had! Yay! It is 6220 words, which is 28 pages. I believe it's my longest story yet, and that's not counting the suck that needs to be fixed.

In other news, the smoke alarm went off at 5:30 or so for about 4 minutes. Nothing gets the heart pumping quite like that. It then went off again at about 7:30 (just before I was going to get in the shower) and again at 8:30 (as I desperately rinsed conditioner out of my hair). I believe it's another battery failure issue, as it was last year--there was a little red blinky light on the one in my bedroom. So the battery has been removed (leaving it meeping angrily at me), and hopefully it will not go off repeatedly all day today. But just in case, I left a note at the main door apologizing. Last year, it went off periodically while Hannah and I were at work, but others in the house were at home. We'd come home to polite little 'your smoke alarm's been going off for 30 minutes" notes on the door. Of course, it never did that while we were home, so we had no idea what they were talking about, or ways to troubleshoot it.

Also, the heat index in Somerville is 4 billion again today. Well, 4 billion, 108 to be exact. I do so love working in an office with air conditioning on days like today. Sure, it's kinda freezing because I am wearing a skirt, but I can breath, and move without sweating, and it's just nice.

Today's shopping list

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 02:49:27 GMT

1 gallon milk
1 bag catfood
3 bags assorted cat treats

I called my mom from the checkout line and told her what I was buying. She said it was fine, she already has a grandchild, more would just be greedy.

Hello Stress, Goodbye weekend.

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:55:00 GMT

I am ever so very grateful that my breathing drugs are working as well as they are, and that my mom makes me drink my soy protein in the morning, because if I was handling today with low blood sugar and no air, I would be in the er already, I think.

And classes start over the next two weeks. I predict approximately 45 million bugs, on top of everything else I am working on.

OMG, Summer.

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 16:24:04 GMT

What is up with this? Do I come over to your house and breath on the back of your neck?

It is 104 outside. I would shower off yesterday's 98 degree sweat and party fun, but that would require standing up, and I'm right in front of the fan, so I'm only like 90 or so at the moment. Any moving, though, and it will be hot and sad.

(new cat game for the day: attempt to chew on the cord for my hands free headset. Bolt when I say "hey!")

Posted using TxtLJ

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:58:06 GMT

Park street smells of new mown grass. Not at all a bad thing, but kinda odd for a subway station.

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 02:20:48 GMT

I have grown used to the dog looking at me in a disgust/reprobation blend and walking out of the room when I cough as he was trying to sleep. It is one of those little quirks that makes us love pets, like how for the first few weeks he was here, Okie would sniff my feet as he was walking by and then recoil in horror.

But Casey just got up in disgust and walked out because the cat sneezed, which seems a bit extreme.

Posted using TxtLJ

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 23:05:53 GMT

I don't know what exactly is coming but it'a cold grey and damp and already engulfed boston

Dear weather channel, I think you are sick maybe

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:20:19 GMT

Weather channel weather:

Weatherunderground weather:

It's not that I blame the weather channel (and the weather on my workMac dashboard). I too would like it to be 77 degrees, even if that came with high humidity. But it is still a mean trick to play on people.

Technically this is a spoiler

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 04:16:44 GMT

the new Karen Chance has the strangest threesome in a SUF yet. Pythia/mostly human girl, Vampire A, and Vampire A two weeks before.

Timetravel threesome.

Stephen Hawking, eat your heart out!

Why July was extra sucky for me.

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 16:46:44 GMT

Right now EVERY TIME it is hard to breathe, I start getting anxious and having obsessive thoughts (I will be alone forever/never meet a boy is today's theme) and want to cry. And being as it is a really evil sucky summer, there have been some very bad days in the past few weeks. I think I spent most of the weekend of the 18th crying, obsessing, and hating things--I didn't want to eat anything, I didn't want to read anything, I didn't want to watch anything, etc. And a couple of days later, I spent the whole day feeling like I'd been exercising too hard and was shaky, even though I didn't actually shake (nor had I exercised at all, other than emptying the cat box the once). That was when my mom (who has asthma, and must have mentioned 40 times while I was home with her that she's usually better, but it was just so humid, she had problems breathing, but apparently I paid no attention at all to them.) suggested it was a lack of oxygen, aka return of my exercise/allergy induced asthma, and most of the previous week plus started making sense. I'd thought it was anxiety attacks, which I have a history of, and my biofeedback mechanism for dealing with anxiety is to sit up straight and take deep breaths in and out--calms the system down when it's anxiety, and thus also works when it's lack of oxygen, which appears to be the cause of a lot of my anxiety. By the end of the bad weekend, I'd started taking deep breaths every time I started worrying, and it would work for a while, and then I'd get distracted again, etc.)

So at this point I've been dealing with this for like three weeks now, since the weather got hideous and humid and sucky, and i've got some coping skills in place. When I start getting ditzy or anxious or obsessive about how alone I will be forever or want to cry--I just sit up straight and take deep breaths, and it goes away just like that. It's kinda like magic.

Work has also been slightly triggery lately--Fun fact: when I am concentrating on things, I apparently hold my breath. This does not work so well lately. And I've also felt bored of everything, and unable to concentrate. These are all also things that lack of oxygen will get you. At the doctor's office Monday, which was a very good day, lungs-wise, the 'peak flow meter' (used to measure how much air your lungs are holding) was measuring about 300-350. Normal is like, 450. When they tested me at the ER last week--after I'd been sitting in the air conditioning and relaxing for an hour or so, I was measuring 200. I don't have any idea what I would have been at if I'd been measured while I couldn't catch my breath at all (which was why I'd gone to the hospital.)

And it's also been nearly impossible for me to eat, since the post nasal drip has been putting me off my food for a while (feeling queasy always makes it hard to care about food). I think it was aggravated by the fact that breathing through my nose has been extra hard lately, so eating anything that required more than 5 seconds of chewing started making me worry about not being able to breath. Lack of food doesn't help with the feeling crazy and sick, obviously, so like I said, not a good few weeks there, even with the coping skills and the cold, easily chewed food (I have had a lot of salad, soy protein and milk, and beverages, just trying to get enough calories into my system that I feel okay.).

The doctor gave me Flovent for my lungs and Flonase for the stuff that wants to run down the back of my throat, and I have the rescue inhaler I got after the emergency room. And yesterday and Tuesday were pretty good--I actually could eat food, which is more than I've done in a while. And the weather is cooler and dryer than it's been in a while, so I should be fine, and I thought I would be when I woke up, but as soon as I was getting ready for work, I started fretting and my stomach started grumbling and meh. It's not as bad if I do remember the deep breaths, but it's a lot more work than it has been all week. I think most of it is just that I am overly tired, as I stayed up too late last night, and apparently my still not 100% body just can not deal with that, so I am a wreck today--I think I keep slouching out of tiredness, and that makes it harder to breathe and starts triggering the anxious behavior.

So I am going to go downstairs, and get a fruit salad and eat all the melon out of it, and sit up straight in my chair, and pull my keyboard closer so I don't have to lean forward over my desk, and find work I can concentrate on on. And in a little bit, it will be 1, and I can use my rescue inhaler again, and will stop coughing intermittently, and feel better again.

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 02:51:05 GMT

My first world problems are many at the moment, let me just tell you. First off, I wanted yogurt and honey. But not Lemon Verbena Honey, cause I just had that earlier, and not Lavender Honey, or Mint Honey, or Dandelion Honey, or Australian Honey, *or* local raw honey. So I put Orange Blossom honey on my yogurt instead.

AND I broke big old chunk of my nail off during the honey choosing. (I don't know how, that's not important.)

AND I have serious problems getting the stupid corticosteroid inhaler to let me inhale vs spray my tongue with really nasty tasting that probably works better in my lungs than on my tongue. No wonder this supposedly takes a few weeks to start making a difference. (I think I need to get an extender tube thing for it, which should make the inhaling easier.) The albuterol must be lighter, since I don't have this problem with it, as much.

AND my cat is glaring at me and chewing on my library book.

AND I have to use my tiny computer to log into my work Mac so that I can use the virtual machine to open IE because the program we use to track tech support bugs ONLY uses IE 6 and 7.