little turkey

So my nephew? Pretty damn cute.

Yesterday it was my birthday. I am now 26 years old.

My mother and my mother-in-law got me identical oxo top-view measuring cups, independently of each other. It was strange. But I am now very well equipped to measure any liquid at a moment's notice.

What more can you ask for in a birthday?

Have you read Twilight? Do you hate yourself for it?

I'm starting a book club on Twitter and this is the first book. It seems people either love it, hate it and think it's anti-feminist slop, or both at the same time. I'm willing to find out...

Rick Astley personally rickrolled the Macy's parade.




Wait, what?

My cats have decided to support baCroc O'Llama. They said the smear campaign, "O'Llama, what a croc!" run by Swan McCrane didn't sway them.

But I think that no matter what, the cats just wouldn't vote a bird into office. Stewart says it's a classic case of the Bluejay Effect, but it's probably also because we already have a lame duck president.


BaCroc O'Llama:


Swan McCrane:

I've been reading a book about Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots, and I decided, Elizabeth was a hermaphrodite.

Who's with me?

Anyone?

Anyone?

Surely 500 year old gossip has to matter to someone besides me.

I just used a neti pot. It wasn't bad at all.

stone_reader and I are back from England. We had a great trip. Click here for photos.

I'm leaving the country with stone_reader in a few hours. I'll see if I can actually post updates while I'm gone. I'll definitely be posting photos to flickr if I find a decent internet connection.

Goodbye, my lovies!

Confidential to samfeasor: I'll email you when I get in, if only to establish that my phone actually works over there. Also, I bought you a spoon rest.

This is a reminder to myself to go outside before the world freezes. It's nice out there.

stone_reader and I have been planning a trip to England. This is where it looks like we're going:



We're going to hit up Bath first (Roman Baths!), then head to York (walled city!), then go to Whitby (home of Bram Stoker, Captain Cook, pterodactyl fossils, a Hand of Glory, and a slug-operated barometer!). Then we're taking the train back down to London and hang out there for 3 1/2 days, with a possible day trip to include Stonehenge and Oxford.

I'm so excited. Hopefully I'll be able to meet up with samfeasor while we're there. Sam, do you have any interest in a Stonehenge/Oxford/Windsor Castle day trip on one of the days your sister is working?

I am planning a trip to England!

I know that some of you have been. Recommendations/suggestions?

Eeeeep!

I am trying to embroider. It's not going too badly, actually. I saw this cute tea towel someone did on flickr:



and decided it'd be a good first project, since I already own the kit that has those designs in it. It's coming along alright, but it doesn't look as good as the one above. I may not end up posting photos of my own embroidery (I know you're all soooo disappointed...ha), so just imagine a kind of crappy/lopsided version of the photo above.

It also has the side-effect of me looking at every piece of fabric in my house and wondering if I should embroider it. I know, in my heart of hearts, I shouldn't embroider swear words on the couches, but a prettily-stitched "asshat" would really liven up the place, don't you think? And I saw (somewhere on the internet) that someone embroidered a uterus and ovaries onto her underwear, and that looked pretty awesome.

The crafty part of my brain must be hyperactive, because I have made a muppet (it is blue) and now I want to sew a skirt. For me. And maybe one for the muppet.

Also, I'm sad because we "invested" in crappy particle-board bookshelves years back, and now they are saggy and gross looking. And over-full. If I were to replace our crappy ones with nice ones, I'd probably need to buy five, and that's a lot of moolah.

I'm thinking I should name my sewing machine.

I fell asleep on my face, and now my left eye has blurred vision.

Stewart is hand-sewing a muppet. He is orange.

I'm hot. Too hot.

I just finished The Time Traveler's Wife, it was good but now I'm sad.

I want to make dinner but I can't bear to purposely make anything hotter than it is right now, even food.

I am rather cranky at the moment.

WAHHHH.

I have been making a valiant stab at becoming a better email responder in the last few days.

Usually I get emails, and I read them and think about them, but while I'm thinking about them, I get other emails that push the previous emails into a crowd of other emails, and then I see something shiny and remember I forgot to read a web comic and then everything falls apart. Then it's two months later and the person emails me again thinking their email must have gotten caught in my spam filter.

No, it didn't, I'm just a terrible person. I start WAY too many emails with, "So sorry for the delay!" Ugh.

I had well over 1000 emails in my inbox, and I finally cleared them all out. I deleted those which were crap, archived those which I didn't need, and responded to a bunch I should have a long time ago. I even now have a special folder labeled "VYY Needs Reply" where I can place all the blog related emails I get but don't feel like responding to right away. This is working out great. I've been adding the emails to it the last few days, and today I sat down and responded to 24 of them.

24!

That is unprecedented productivity for yours truly. However, this is also how I work. I let things (anything, really) pile up forever, then I turn into PRODUCTIVE GIRL and fix my life up in a highly-focused frenzy. Lather, rinse, repeat. This usually isn't a problem, especially when it involves things that only affect me (like laundry), but it's a pretty crappy way to behave when other people are involved. One of these days I'll be a real adult and learn to take care of my shit when it needs taking care of. Maybe.

Right now I only have two emails in my inbox, one from my old and great best friend Laura, and one from my new and great best friend Sam. And I've contacted to both of them today, so I am hardly tardy when it comes to them.

I just wrote a whole entry on responding to email. Sorry about that.

Fresh Tossed Salads.




I <3 Pride.

My crazy downstairs neighbors who scream at each other ALL THE TIME are moving! Hooray!

Though, I might miss the moments when Stewart and I are quietly reading and we hear a shriek of, "GOD DAMMIT, PAUL!" Never failed to make us laugh. Because really, they're fighting is SO ridiculous and SO over the top, it quickly went from frightening to hysterical. Especially once we realized they would never kill each other, because if they did they wouldn't be able to keep fighting.

I got to take photos at Cone's tea ceremony today! It was beautiful, and the tea was yummy.