the only way to get it is to s, or f, or be poor and devoid and mb me

i'm going to get the good things from yesterday out of the way so i can talk about this horrible book i read. the first good thing is that i almost totally finished my mittens.



i still have to do the thumbs, which i will probably take thirty years to do, but i'm super proud of myself. my first mittens ! they aren't for me, though, they're for a trade, so i'll probably make them again at some point for myself since they were such a quick knit. my next project (probably also for the trade- i'm just making this person a bunch of stuff !) is this scarf:



the other main important good thing is that bill and christina brought me gelato while i was raiding ! they stopped at capo giro on the way home and got me a cup of half dark chocolate, half avocado (my favorite combination- i also like half dark chocolate, half single malt scotch).


this is actually half nutella, half pistachio from a year or two ago but SAME COLORZ

our raid went okay, too, but we had a less than optimal group (24 players instead of 25, and some dead weight). we got extremely lucky on festergut and then had a shitty time wiping on rotface, finally downing him on our last attempt



okay, now it is time to talk about the horrible book i read. i don't think i've read a truly horrible book since twilight (one of the worst books ever- written like a 12 year old writing fan fiction, full of misogyny and basically a manual for teen girls on domestic abuse and abusive relationships and how romantic they are), but this one was more of a disappointment because i didn't expect it to be so stupid.


liar by justine larbalestier

the premise of this book is that the narrator is a pathological liar who is trying to come clean to the reader, but finding it nearly impossible. for the first third of the book, her narrative is unreliable and inconsistent as she tells the story of who she is (including hints at a mysterious "family illness"), how her lying has gotten her in trouble, and how her "boyfriend" (really, the popular guy who made her, a "weird" ugly duckling, his "secret girlfriend") was found murdered in central park. for that first third, you're on the edge of your seat, wondering what's true and what isn't, wondering if micah (the narrator) killed her boyfriend as she promises over and over again that she isn't lying to you, while admitting lies here and there. it was engaging and exciting and a unique experience to not be able to trust the person telling you their story.

oh, by the way, i'm going to ruin the book for you now so if you were planning to read it, stop reading.

so after this exciting first third, we reach the second third, and micah reveals the "family illness" and the entire rest of the book is her lying about being a fucking werewolf. that's right ! after the engaging, awesome, interesting, real first third where an exciting whodunit is set up, it becomes a really involved and totally fucking boring book about someone lying about being a werewolf. like obviously since she's a liar and werewolves are fake, she's just lying about being a werewolf, and it is not interesting at all to read about someone telling you an obvious lie, and then there is no reveal of what REALLY HAPPENED, sooooooo the story is basically like, who knows what happens cause lol i'm a warewolf guise !!!!!@!$#$4. it's like the author had this amazing idea for a book and then when she wrote a third of it, the second twilight book with the werewolves came out and she was like, "oh shit dog i'm doing a werewolf book !!!!!!!"

i really wanted to like this book- the way the author describes it makes it sound amazing, none of the reviews i read mention the werewolf bullshit- i just feel totally snowed. the author (a white australian poindexter lady) writes a mixed race american teenager from new york city super authentically, and sets up what could be an amazing story- there are hints at gender identity problems, hints at her accidentally killing her brother, hints at being assaulted, etc. and the author chooses to cop out and turn the story from believable lies to fantasy bullshit for no reason. the author has written some cool teen fantasy books and wrote a non-fiction book about women in science fiction (jen t. have you read it?) but this was not a cool fantasy book ! it was bullshit and i hate it and i'm mad.

hey guys. i'm gonna go get a v8.

forever young, i want to be forever young

last night i off-tanked vault of archavon ! on ten man. which is basically like... nothing, but it's the first kinda "hard" thing i've done !



basically i had to like... stand on top of paul and then taunt the boss when he said "taunt" but it was still pretty exciting ! no paladin loot dropped except for a crappy piece of ret gear though.*

the other really cool thing i did last night was brush my cat and put new soft paws on her with christina's help, and then uh.... we put a snuggie for dogs on her? i got one on impulse the other night (after my horrific mushroom stew was comped, i felt like i had $10 to burn) at cvs and was waiting for grooming to try it on her because she'd already be bummed. here she is sulking between the couch and the craft table:



she finally came out and ran right to bill to protect her- christina thinks that's because he was not involved in the process of putting the snuggie on her.





in less whimsical news, dealing with ED stuff (eating disorder, not erectile dysfunction, though i have also never had a boner !) has been kind of rough lately because of the crippling stupid snow on the east coast. i haven't been able to really keep up a regular routine. sticking to my plan has been rough too because the sidewalks have been snowy and icy and that's like an awesome excuse. i'm working on it, but it's slowwwwww goingggggg and frustrating and stupid.

i'm keeping my fingers crossed for an early dismissal from work today, but i don't have my hopes up. for those who don't live in the area, we're supposed to get a SNOWICANE.

* p.s. i have decided to just talk about wow like you guys care or know what i'm talking about to get you used to it.

i can't hide it

man. i'm cleaning out my bag right now


the "bella tote" from fantella on etsy- best tote ever

and it's full of sand from california and hair from a ball of red yarn. it's pretty disgusting. i've been ignoring it for awhile but every day i'll pull my phone or ipod out and it'll be totally covered in sand or red clown pubes and like, that can't be good for electronics, right? i honestly had the best time in california but i don't need to keep the sand. and making that red elf hat was fun, but i don't need to keep the leftover fiber.

the contents of my bag
- cellphone (8gb iphone, the cheapest i could get after i smashed my blackberry huhuhuh)
- 80gb ipod (FREE !)
- checks (simpsons)
- wallet


by quietdoing on etsy

- keys (w/ pocket knife)
- moleskine weekly planner
- 2 baggu printed with abraham lincoln's weird face
- 1 pack of microgestin FE
- tide pen
- SEPTA tokens
- off-brand neosporin
- immodium chewables
- zantac 150
- neutrogena norweigian formula hand cream
- 1 set of teal/aqua polyhedral dice
- pens (black pentel rsvp, hot pink 'florida' floaty pen, purple papermate gel pen)
- lip balm (cococare cocoa butter, kiss my face sliced peach, cvs chapblock gingerbread, gal collection vanilla, eos summer fruit)
- knitting project bag


by seabreezestudio on etsy

basically telling you all of this is a total smokescreen to cover up the fact that i didn't do anything yesterday. i came home from work, napped, ate a hoagie, and raided. zzzzzz. the hoagie was good, but i didn't get any loot and i was lagging really badly and it totally blew.

more snow in philadelphia this week ! i'm hoping for a snow day but i'll probably just get a gross wet walk to work.

hole in my heart, the size of my heart

dudessss. last night, christina, bill, and i planned to go to tampopo for dinner, but it was closed. we didn't realize it until we got there (it's lucky we didn't bring our own bowls for 50 cents off !) and ended up going to local 44, which my brain sort of skips over every time i think of restaurants in my neighborhood. i'd never actually eaten there before ! their website describes them as "a small craft beer bar with tasty chow" (:O) and their menu actually looked pretty good. i considered getting a veggie burger with a fried egg, but upon finding out they use gardenburgers (grossest), i opted for the mushroom stew and a monk's sour flemish ale. i don't know anything about beer and i don't like sour stuff OR phlegm so i really took a chance there.



two important things about that beer
1) it tastes like a glass of vinegar
2) i really liked it

the mushroom stew was a different story. i'm not really a picky eater and definitely not a fussy customer and usually feel bad and try to choke down food i'm served that i'm not super into, but this was absolutely the grossest thing i've ever been served at a restaurant. i liked all the ingredients- mushrooms, potatoes, carrots, celery, and onions, and this was like... those things boiled in plain water with zero seasoning, spices, herbs, anything. not even salt and pepper ! it was like the last inch of dirty dish water plus the stuff in the drain catcher. the mushrooms were super tough and rubbery and everything else was mush. i finally worked up the nerve to tell the waiter and he took it off the check. their french fries were good, though, and i'll probably go back to drink, but their other vegetarian options are falafel (if i was going to get falafel in my neighborhood i'd go to saad's) and gardenburgers, so there isn't much there for me foodwise.



after dinner, i came home and knitted and did some heroics and watched part of i love you, man with christina (bill went to visit a friend in south philly) and finally admitted that i kind of like rush (bad experience dating a prog rock dude? though if i'd admitted to liking rush 8 years ago i would've found it romantic that he jumped out of bed to look at rush bass tabs and forced me to pick songs for him to play, which resulted in him saying, 'too hard. too hard. too hard. okay i can do that one.')

in other news, my dresser totally fell apart about a month ago



and i haven't put my new one together yet (it's leaning up against the dresser in that picture) so my room is a hilarious disaster area covered in clean and dirty clothing. not sure why the dirty clothes thing happened since this doesn't impede my hamper use? slippery slope, man.



but i'm tired of kramering on piles of clothes and i'm resolving to put it together sometime this week. and if not this week, this weekend ! and if not then, later i guess, who cares.

p.s. you guys should check out jeanne's blog cause it has some neat stuff.

recommendations to make your life better and dumber

1) klean kanteen water bottles



i saw these in the ferry building in san francisco (since like, zero stores carry them in philly) and was totally taken in by the colors. i didn't buy one because i was really pushing it with my carry-on anyway, but i made a vanity purchase of a 27 ounce orange and 27 ounce green bottle (one for home and one for work) a few weeks ago and i LOVE them. seriously, they are the only water bottle i've ever used that doesn't make the water taste like the bottle. they are super water-tight too and christina really likes the sport cap on hers.

2) baggu shopping bags



again, this is another thing where i was taken in by pretty colors and made a vanity purchase. i have a bunch of reusable grocery bags and i basically always forget to bring them because i do most of my shopping on foot or ON THE FLY, and these take up zero space in my purse and each bag holds a thousand things and are super comfortable to carry. plus derrr they come in a billion colors derrrrrrrrr. mine have abraham lincoln silkscreened on them.

3) noi sirius pure icelandic chocolate bar (milk chocolate/33%)



i got one of these at whole foods while i was trying to look mature and pick out an expensive dark chocolate bar but i decided i fucking hate those and wanted milk chocolate. these are terrific and each package comes with 2 bars, so $3.50 is a pretty good price.

4) berocco vintage yarn



i was looking for a soft, machine washable yarn recently for a few projects (mittens, a hat for a person who has gone through chemo, etc.) and the softest washable yarn i found at loop happened to be berocco vintage, which ALSO HAPPENS TO COST $6.50 PER 217 YARD SKEIN. i'm making a pair of long mittens with it and it's so soft and knits so beautifully. i love it.

i heat up, i can't cool down

heyyyy guys ! what's up? i had a decent weekend. i basically already can't remember what i did friday- i went to the grocery store (opting to walk instead of taking a car because there was still a lot of snow on the ground, and because i didn't need much) and knitted for awhile. when christina got home, we hung out and she knitted something with the yarn she spun from the fiber i got her and it looked so fucking beautiful-



this is the roving, i can't find a picture of the yarn and i don't think she took one of the little thing she was knitting

on saturday, i woke up early to go to mouse's grappling tournament. i'd been to larger tournaments with him before and they mostly are like, not a fun thing to attend because there's 6-12 matches going on at a time, there's no real set schedule, and they last for like 12 hours, but this was a smaller tournament held in south philly. mike came down to support mouse (mike also does jiu jitsu, albeit not brazilian jiu jitsu like mouse) too and wanted to make a banner for him, but i nixed the idea because i don't have any big paper. mouse competed in the no-gi flyweight (under 145lbs) division and the gi flyweight blue belt division.



he didn't place, but he did win an award for bluest gi ! p.s. a gi is that karate suit he's wearing.

after the tournament, mike, mouse, and i went to indian buffet and whole foods (where i got like $8 worth of olives from the olive bar) and then came back to my house to watch the invention of lying. honestly, it was kind of cute? like, i think ricky gervais is a really lazy comedian and his shit is getting oooooold, and it was definitely problematic (like, we're supposed to view jennifer garner as shallow when gervais is only really interested in her cause she's pretty?) but it was dumb and entertaining and cute.



i also inexplicably love jennifer garner? i've only seen her in one movie i think (the tv edit of 13 going on 30?) but i love her.

after everyone left (and christina went to go pick her friend bill up at the airport), i got in bed and started reading when you reach me by rebecca stead, and didn't stop until i was finished.



holy shit ! the book is about a girl named miranda who lives in nyc in the late 70s who is obsessed with/trying to wrap her brain around a wrinkle in time and deal with being dumped by her lifelong best friend when she starts receiving mysterious notes that predict the future. it is one of the best time travel books i've ever read and my brain has been twisted up since i read it. it's like... a super heartfelt, realistic time travel book? haha. there's absolutely nothing i didn't like about it.

yesterday mouse and i met up at green line to eat food (vegan chicken salad on a bagel for me, lentil and spinach burrito for him !) and made an impromptu decision to go to delaware for a little bit to see bj's band and josh and jane's band. it was really awesome to see them because i never leave my house anymore and only interact with them on like, facebook.



josh and jane. not sure which is which?

the house also had two great dogs (one was a three-legged pitbull ! the other was some pointy bandana dog) but delaware "punks" totally blow and the atmosphere was weird. we stayed for about an hour and a half and came home. on the drive home, i got mouse to agree to watch band of brothers with me (since i haven't watched it since... december of 2009 D:) so i can get psyched for the pacific.

i'm working on a few projects at work but i do want to post some product recommendations later.

rice is nice

ahhhh i feel like crap ! i stayed home from work today (though i will probably guiltily work from home even though no one cares and i don't have any deadlines or anything today) because i had a hard time dragging myself out of bed this morning. i went to bed at a really reasonable time for me (12:30) but had trouble staying asleep, and now i just feel... weird? that's the best way to describe it. i don't have cold symptoms, but i feel tired and achy and like i'm made of lead.

anyway, last night we went to thoreau, the new vegetarian restaurant at 10th and spring garden ! it was nice to see kati and kevin (and nice to hang out with mouse, of course) and i'm super lazy about trying new restaurants so i kind of killed two birds with one stone ! thoreau is super super tiny and poorly decorated- like, the tables are big and the chairs are big and comfortable, but there's like 400 of them crammed into a teeny room.



that picture is kind of deceptive- see how close together those tables are?

the staff is really nice, and until they get their liquor license, it's a byob with no corking fee, so i brought a bottle of crappy champagne left over from my hotel birthday party last year. we all ordered different things and everyone really liked what they got (though mine and kati's came out like 15 minutes after everyone else's because... the chef burned himself). this is what i got:



Blue Plate
Rosette of purple Okinawa sweet potatoes atop sweet corn gravy, grilled avocado with edamame succotash, brochette of Szechwan carrot syrup-glazed shiitakes.

every single thing on the plate was delicious, though by the end of the dish the giant lump of sweet potato was a little dry and the succotash had red bell pepper (i should've asked, since bell peppers are not food). i enjoyed the mushrooms especially. i guess my only real complaint is that the price point ($20-$24 for an entree) is a little too high for meals with no real protein. i also thought that their garnish of a giant sprig of rosemary or a giant whole pepper for each meal was wasteful and silly looking. overall, i'd definitely go back ! no one got dessert, though, since we were all full (and mouse is on a 'diet' to stay under 145 for his tournament on saturday).

by the way, did you guys know that champagne and corn is a miserable combination?

i came home after that for our raid and spent the first half of the raid drunk and confused and the second half post-drunk and annoyed. i think one of my main problems with playing warcraft is that the guild i'm in is like... 50% cool dudes i already knew and then like... 50% real true nerds. i know being "nerdy" is cool now, but i don't mean like, a regular person wearing non-prescription "nerd" glasses and talking about how they love math- i mean like, mountain dew drinking 21 year olds who use constant internet slang and nerdily/arrogantly talk about their character's gear and anime.



mostly i can deal with those nerds (even though "nerd arrogance" is like... my least favorite trait. we all totally blow, buddy, and the sooner you realize it the sooner we can be at peace) but sometimes it weighs very heavily on me.

anyway, today will mostly be spent checking my work e-mail and watching the golden girls. hayyy.

ay ! monstruo

i don't want to sound like a shill, but if you have a cat, i would like to recommend two very important products. the first is the furminator pet brush



which is the most amazing pet brush i've ever used. it's pretty gentle but removes all of the fur trapped in the undercoat and seriously removes more hair than i thought possible. pizza sheds A LOT and this brush is like... 500x better than any brush i've ever used, and doesn't irritate her skin like this type of brush. the second product is soft paws, which are little rubber nail caps to go over your cat's claws to prevent them from scratching furniture.



when i got pizza, i was 20 or 21, and i didn't give a fuck about furniture so i never deterred her from scratching or taught her to use a post. now that she's almost 7 she loooooves scratching furniture and these are the best deterrent. she can still grip stuff with her claws and isn't bothered or hindered by them, and they fall off when she sheds her nails naturally. plus they are fucking cute.

anyway, i bring this all up because as soon as some new soft paws come in the mail, i'm having a cat grooming night. it was surprisingly easy to get christina to help- i just said we were going to play "cat beauty parlor" and she was like, "!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LET ME GET MY ZYRTEC"



i didn't get very much done last night- i'm sort of off track this week as far as eating well and not being super lazy goes. i watched a movie on tv, knitted a few cable repeats on my mitten and tried to do a ten man ICC (but our internet kept crapping out. i don't think any daggers dropped, but they got to the lich king D: D: D:).

tonight mouse and i are going to dinner with kati and kev. i haven't seen kati since halloween and i haven't seen kevin in so long that i think our friendship reset and i don't know him anymore and i've never met him. we're going to thoreau, i think, a new vegetarian restaurant in the city owned by the same people who own blue sage.



i don't have super high hopes because most reviews say the food is kind of bland, but maybe i'll bring a container of that emeril seasoning or something. i also have been making the joke that we're going to "suck the marrow substitute out of life" and no one thinks it's funny. fuck the world.

that's about it for now. oh, mouse has a new nephew:



he really likes him so far, but i think mouse is disappointed that the baby isn't learning jiu jitsu fast enough. he'll probably give him another week.

i will follow

hayyyy. last night was a raid night, and it went fairly well despite getting a late start (the instance servers were full), though nothing dropped for me. before raiding, i made breakfast for dinner (an egg, cheese, and fake bacon sandwich on thick slices of white sandwich bread from metropolitan bakery !) inspired by some dude on the internet complaining that he hated breakfast food. most notably, i used this totally weird cheese i found at the grocery store that is bacon flavored, with no non-vegetarian ingredients



i even called the company and the natural flavors are not from animal sources? yet it has weird little pink chunks in it that you cannot feel or taste while eating it. i know that might sound gross to a lot of people, but let me assure you that it is the shit. i also got to indulge in my favorite shameful snack, unheated morningstar farms fake bacon. i don't know what it is but i can eat it like candy ! straight from the freezer. i realize that this entry so far makes me sound like a kid whose parents left her in charge of her own meals while they went on vacation, so i'm going to change tracks.

last night i read a book about bigfoot written by an acquaintance- north american primates by shane durgee. i've only met shane one time i think, at a party where we just talked about cats. all i really remember about that interaction is that he likes cats. but anyway, i have a fondness for anyone who likes cryptids and monsters and fantasy junk and animals so i thought i'd support him by getting his book.



i have to say, i was kind of blown away by this book? it's hard to explain. i want to start with the stuff that didn't work for me:

- the book was obviously a first novel and poorly/hastily edited. it's rife with typos and punctuation errors (and a character whose name changes from Sarah to Sara and back within like 2 pages), which isn't a huge deal, but it's distracting to me.
- i didn't like hearing everything the narrator thought and felt but barely hearing what he saw. it was sort of hard to really get into the story because the only thing i could picture was the woods and, oddly, a bigfoot erection. no physical descriptions of characters (small- or bigfoot) beyond some basic stuff like hair color or an item of clothing was especially annoying, and the first harrowing encounters with bigfoot weren't really suspenseful or scary or anything at all.
- the ending was very believable except for one important thing- a lot of the stuff that needed to happen to make it believable didn't actually happen in the book. my brain put it there because i got really into the story, but it wasn't actually in the book, if that makes sense.
- very little time was taken to establish relationships between characters- too much time was spent developing relationships between characters who introduce the main character to other more important characters, etc. the romantic relationship seemed to consist of like, hanging out three times with no real pleasant interactions, but when the character reflects on it at the end, lots more is supposed to have happened, even though the author didn't hint at it in the narrative.
- i don't like being inside a socially awkward dude's brain. it's so necessary for the story but i didn't like being there and it made me feel sick at points ! haha. that's also a positive because i really got 'into' the story enough to have those feelings.
- kind of gross treatment of women, but... socially awkward male protagonist, whatever.



the stuff that DID work for me
- the tenderness and attention to detail that went into the descriptions of rural rednecks and their daily lives, and the fine distinction between rednecks and Rednecks that is a nuance that outsiders could never pick up on. so many little things filled me with nostalgia for my (rural redneck) childhood, even stuff like the protagonist's best friend working for the post office and the mystical bigfoot meetings happening at the library
- the bigfoot meetings in general and the bigfoot guru guy. i can't even really get into this but the introduction of this character and the descriptions of this character were the most vivid and intense in the book.
- the... treatment of bigfoot? i wish i could describe this better without giving away major plot details, but i spent most of the book feeling like there just wasn't enough bigfoot and at the end feeling like i got exactly enough bigfoot, and felt like bigfoot was a character in the story- like he becomes queequeg instead of the white whale.
- all descriptions of the protagonist's family and childhood- while these still lacked physical descriptions, they were bursts of raw emotion and pain and touched on moments and details that are so important- all the memories that are most vivid to us but not appropriate to share or not really what people are looking for when they ask us about our family.
- "that's the mom"
- the main character's social awkwardness. it was so real and described so honestly that only a complete socially awkward freak would even talk about themselves the way the character did ! normally i hate when people talk about punk in books because it sounds so forced and awkward, but this character's interactions were supposed to be forced and awkward, so even that worked.

i guess i could go on and on, but i really liked it. it's a quick read- i read it in about 2.5 hours (with breaks for tanking some heroics) and despite only really spending a short time IN the book, i felt weird and uncomfortable for the rest of the night. anyway, i recommend this book to all the rural redneck bigfoot enthusiasts who read this !



i just dumped most of a bottle of water down the front of my shirt, so i'm going to go dry off, make a bagel with nutella, and get to work. before i go, i want to share some pictures of jeanne's friend's dog with you:







p.s. christina and i may make nutella challah this weekend.

p.p.s. weird al has announced 2010 tour dates ! my brother might come up to go to one with me, and jeanne's bf mike has already agreed to go with me and also to help torture jeanne while we're there !

you be the prince and i'll be the princess

hey guys. the ultimate disappointment of life so far in 2010 is dried strawberries. i got a $7 trail mix on saturday that's a mix of dried cranberries, dried strawberries, raisins, and almonds



shown left: the kind i should have gotten

and imagined dried strawberries to be the most delicious thing ever (since FREEZE dried strawberries are pretty excellent) and actually a dried strawberry tastes like gross gummy congealed strawberry jam.

last night christina and i watched tv and knitted, which was pretty nice for a snowy night. we watched like 50 episodes of golden girls and then we watched hoarders. as a warning, i'm just going to be a bummer about popular tv shows for the rest of this entry because i have a meeting !



i have a big problem with "hoarders" and a big problem with me watching "hoarders." i was never into "intervention" and always joked that the most successful show would be "real life suffering and pain of human beings" on a&e. i started watching "hoarders" i guess because i sort of naively thought that it wouldn't be extremely exploitative and weird, and it is both of those things, and yet i keep watching it. my real problems are that they are not actually trying to help those people, they very rarely treat the people sensitively or kindly, and the biggest one of all, making a spectacle of them makes other people less sensitive to their illness.



like, it's basically just a vehicle for viewers to feel better about their messy apartments and to be like, "those pigs should just CLEAN UP !!!!!!" i even find myself getting frustrated with people- like a woman was getting stressed about her stuff being sorted through by strangers (understandable) and kept snapping that she didn't want anything to get broken, and i caught myself thinking, "you shouldn't have put it on THE FLOOR then !!!!!" like, what? it's a sick person reacting appropriately to a situation. ugh. maybe i'll stop watching it.

my ooooooother tv problem this week is 30 rock, which used to be one of my favorite shows. i have this sneaking suspicion now that tina fey is really stupid? i somehow didn't really notice it until this season but she's gone out of her way to include rape jokes in like every single episode and the constant, tireless "LOOK HOW FAT THIS FATTY IS !!! LIZ IS SO FAT, AND EATING !!!! WHAT A FAT PIG WITH A FAT ASS EATING A FAT DONUT"



like, in the most recent episode, the rape joke would have almost been kind of funny, as it could have been used to highlight how fucked up and weird maxim is, but when it's like... rape joke #2192903 of the season it didn't really work? jeanne also pointed out that it kind of fell super flat out of her mouth and just sounded sketchy. as far as the weight/food thing goes, like... if the jokes about liz's weight/body/eating habits/appearance were an intelligent lampooning of unrealistic standards for women or something it would be totally brilliant, but as the show has gone on, it's just become more and more like, "look at fatty eat a donut, look at how undesirable this woman is because she's eating and her ass is fat !!!!"

like, i could possibly think that maybe tina fey is projecting issues from when she was "overweight" (150lbs at her largest) but.. this quote from her vogue interview really cinched the "hey, tina fey is actually really dumb" thing for me:

"People will say, 'Oh, fashion magazines are so bad, they're giving girls a negative message'—but we're also the fattest country in the world, so it's not like we're all looking at fashion magazines and not eating. Maybe it just starts a shame cycle: I'm never going to look like that model, so…Chicken McNuggets it is! And conversely, I don't look at models who are crazy skinny and think I want to look like that, because a lot of them are gigantic, with giant hands and feet."

right? a person said that ! haha. she also goes on to say that her dad was an artist and she was exposed to lots of art that showed curvy women so "thin" was never an ideal for her and she never felt bad about her body, so there goes the possible "out" of the fat jokes coming from projection, huh. maybe on the next episode of "30 rock" someone will rape a fat person and then it'll all be over and the show will be good again?

on a lighter note, here's... the underside of a mitten?



time for a stupid meeting ! bye.

p.s. an important development i forgot to mention yesterday is that for some reason i started casually calling people 'dog' a la the non-british american idol guy?

ask me ask me ask me

ooooookay. i have found that i sort of miss blogging since i've been doing it since before blogging was invented, but having to tangle with wordpress and having my own domain was too stressful and weird for me, so i think i'm going to TRY to have one again here. luckily it's been cold and gross and i've been kind of anxious for a few months so not much has changed ! let's go over the major stuff.



1) i decided to start making some healthy changes in my life. i haven't been able to stick to them 100% yet, but i've been working on it. the list:

every friday i have to:
- go grocery shopping to get groceries for the week (i signed up for philly carshare again)
- pick up SEPTA tokens
- drop my laundry off
- straighten up my room/apartment

and i have to:
- walk to work or home from work at least 5 times a week
- ride my bike downtown when i go if it isn't raining
- eat breakfast, lunch and dinner every day
- not order takeout or eat out except on weekends/with friends (exception- i'm gonna eat spinach or sweet potato burritos from the mexicali cart and big fruit salads for lunch 3 days a week and eat pb&honey and vegetables the other days)
- start saving more money
- take stuff to goodwill

and if i do that, i get to:
- collect the REMCO universal monsters i want
- play warcraft
- buy moccasins in black even though i don't NEED them



2) i leveled my paladin to 80 and have been tanking. haha. my rogue is still my main, but tanking is fun and learning how to tank is exciting, and having instant queues for heroics is awesome. like 1% of you will know what that means but whatever.

3) i've been knitting like crazy and learning new stuff and getting more confident about my skills. so far i've resisted becoming a yarn freak and only buy yarn that i have realistic projects in mind for, and it's working out pretty well and is still a pretty cheap hobby. my name on ravelry is "joanofarc" if you want to add me. right now i'm making the aviatrix hat for mouse's sister's baby (not yet borned)



which is finished but just needs a button- i oddly can't find the five billion leather buttons i bought? and i've been making these (god i hate saying this) mittens from a pattern inspired by the twilight movie??? just for the record, i totally hate twilight and think it's amateurish fan-fiction-y poorly written misogynistic garbage but these mittens are cool:



4) christina and i have kept our apartment clean and happy for the most part (we both have our weak spots but neither are particularly bothered by the other's !) and i love living with her- best roommate ever. i do think jeanne would also be a contender except i was a terrible inconsiderate slob when i lived with her so we never got a fair chance ! oh also christina and pizza are in love



5) jeanne had a bunch of art shows and is generally the best artist ever? here's the monsters she made for fun-a-day:



6) mouse has a tournament on the 20th and luckily forgot about making weight so he hasn't been a dour cookie-less phantom like he normally is when trying to drop weight ! he's been busy with class and stuff lately and i've been really lazy about doing stuff besides wearing yoga pants and watching hbo so we haven't hung out as much lately and it's a huge bummer. he also bought the old mats from his dojo so now he occasionally lives the dream:



7) oh yeah. i went to california in january and hung out with brooke (love of my life), caroline, lila, and paul. i went to san francisco and monterey (which was beautiful) but spent most of my time in sacramento. i had the greatest most relaxing trip, though i was kind of sick for most of it. i saw the pacific ocean (and put my FEET in it), ate the best produce in the world every day, saw the golden gate bridge and alcatraz, and watched 'wolverine' and also wore a snuggie.



8) i've been super productive and organized at work. my first step was cleaning my workspace:



before



after, before the cleaning staff vacuumed

and then i started making and following to-do lists and doing little things to make my job easier (like writing certain codes down instead of frantically searching my inbox for them every time, etc.). i also bought a printer for my desk, because they pay for toner and paper, and i'm 100% super mega lazy about getting stuff from the printer. it's been great so far.

and

9) i'm still me, a weird neat lady.