roxy christina barcelona

woooooo busy weekend ! on friday, kristen came down from new york so she and christina could go to maryland sheep and wool. it was great to finally meet her after occupying the same space on the internet as her for like ten years ! it was everything i thought it would be and more. we met up with christina's coworker kathleen, got beer, and went to vientiane, where i once again had tofu lad na because i'm super unadventurous ! i also had an ephemere with dinner and it was a surprisingly good combination.


appley beer

after dinner we got snacks- i had um, v8 and a tastyklair pie?



while everyone else opted for ice cream (and chocolate covered nuts for kathleen !). then we went back to our house and watched the most pbs show ever, "sandwiches that you will like". it was pretty weird- the sandwiches mostly looked disgusting and the footage all seemed to be from the mid-90s. the grossest was the "st. paul sandwich":


"The sandwich consists of a deep fried egg foo young patty (made with egg, bean sprouts, and minced white onions) served with dill pickle slices, white onion, mayonnaise, lettuce, and tomato between two slices of white bread."

ahhhhh ! st. paul is probably rolling over in his damn grave over that thing. i seriously can't stop thinking about it and doing like, a soft gag.

on saturday, the ladies woke up early to go to maryland, and i got up around 9 and tried to do some stuff. i uh, tried to watch some DVR'd stuff (i have like 500 episodes of "what not to wear" and "the king of queens" DVR'd because... i have bad taste in television !) and tried to read the evolution of calpurnia tate but i found it to be pretty annoying and obnoxious so i ended up shelving it for awhile (not literally, it's still cluttering up the livingroom !). i also leveled my priest a little bit !

when the girls got back from maryland (exhausted but with tales of how sheep vaginas look like people vaginas) we met up with mouse and nate and diana (!!!! so many people) and went to bobby flay's hamburger restaurant. well, *i* didn't go- mouse and i went to capo giro because he already ate and i wasn't hungry, and i had gelato for dinner.


why have most of my pictures been food so far?

we all met up at capo giro and i had a really good iced coffee. after a few hours i started to get hungry, so i uh, bought a quiche?


MORE FOOD

and then we came back to my house and met up with anna, who was coming back from like, a weekend long bachelorette party. after christina and kristen went to bed, and nate, anna, and mouse went home, nnamdi stopped by and we hung out for awhile ! that is like the most people i've ever seen in one day.

on sunday, kristen, christina, and i went to green line and had iced mochas and breakfast burritos with hot sauce. kristen left to go hang out with some other philadelphia friends, and diana went to her first haircut appointment. THEN ! mouse and i went over to jeanne's to hang out with jeanne and mike and wait for diana to come give us haircuts. we got burritos and watched the david tennant hamlet



david tennant was super over the top as per usual, but the dude playing laertes made david tennant look subdued. it was uncomfortable to watch this dude, he basically acted like when someone is trying to loudly let a person hiding in a closet know that someone is about to open the closet door.

oh, the most important part ! jeanne was kittensitting a kitten she found in the alley when he was a super super newborn. he's like three weeks old now maybe and she and her friend hannah are sharing his care. he's like, the best? i got to be assistant kittensitter while she got her hair cut !



little wolfman ! he purrs already and plays and is super cute and funny but he weighs like 8 oz and he has trouble pooping by himself (he gets lots of belly massages and wet washcloths and vet visits so i think he's okay). i love him !

jeanne, mouse, and i all got haircuts. jeanne and i just got updated versions of our current haircuts, but we watched the special features of band of brothers to pick out a world war II haircut for mouse. he ended up getting the nixon:



it looks pretty good ! i think my hair looks good too because for the first time ever, people at work are actually noticing and complimenting my hair. it's weird though because i can barely tell the difference. i had to get 2 inches of gross split ends cut off but my hair is still like two feet long.

after we left, we went to whole foods and i missed another friend opportunity. i was wearing this shirt:



and the girl at the hot bar counter was like, "oh, that shirt is awesome, it reminds me that i wanted to call my girlfriends to play d&d". whatttttt that's exactly what i want to do ! i've even made like, craigslist ads looking for girls to play with ! and for some reason i didn't say anything and was just like, "cool story bro" and left. mouse was like, "maybe we'll see her again next time you're here" and i said i'd never seen him before but he pointed out that it was unlikely that a person was making a one-time guest appearance working at a store or something.

when i got home, it was a billion zillion degrees in my apartment. christina was dutifully cataloging all of her beautiful yarn. i watched part of treme with her, which i really like


check out this cool treme photoshop someone made

i'm really bummed that the pacific is a total stinking pile of shit and garbage and puke and garbage and farts, but treme fills the void a little. oddly though, i really like it but i don't know why i like it. i don't feel any pressure to watch it on time every week but i'm enjoying it a lot.

thennnnn i leveled my new priest with paul's warrior for awhile. we got to level 10 and probably could've gotten to 20 pretty quickly, but i was really tired. leveling with paul is fun because he's very methodical and focused and i can zone out and smite stuff.

i'm going to go do work now. these are my busiest two weeks of the year and so far everyone is being annoying. my updates may be spotty and complainy until after may 16 !

there's your answer, fishbulb

man, today is boooooring. i managed to get enough work done from home yesterday that i'm not totally swamped today (i have a lot to do, but it's a manageable load. huh huh load), and none of my aim friends are online and no one is doing anything cool on facebook.

knitting group was kind of foiled again yesterday because the other green line had a show, so christina and i went to the regular green line and had iced coffees and knitted. kathleen ended up not being able to make it too, so "knitting group" may just be the code word for me and christina knitting somewhere besides our couch. hopefully we'll actually be able to get together with the real knitting group though, cause i gotta say that pizza is feeling left out by our current arrangement.


cats don't drink coffee

also the girls at the table next to us were talking about bobby brown and whitney houston and one of them kept saying, "BOBBI KRISTINA !!!!!!!!!!!!" and i was losing my shit ! i did have a weird moment where i started crying because of my teeth? like, talking to christina about the state of my teeth and how growing up poor without healthcare means that i am looking forward to $28,000-$50,000 of dental work as an adult, and my teeth always hurt. it was weird, i wasn't really sad and didn't mean to cry but it happened ! i am also having my period but i hate using that as an excuse for expressing my feelings.



we went to cvs after that because i had ten extra bucks burning a hole in my pocket, and i got mousse:



and, despite having a crying jag about my fucked up teeth, i got some hard caramels ! that one i can definitely cathy away with a period explanation though.



because i don't think anyone who isn't having their period buys themselves a box of chocolate instead of like, regular candy.

our raid last night was poorly attended, so we just did the blood princes. i think paul and i are going to do refer-a-friend with each other, which is um... both of us buying new copies of the game and paying for 2 months of subscription so we can get a mount?



two people can ride in it ! i can take christina everywhere with me !

i think, for lack of better things to talk about, i'm going to post all of my rare mounts. haha. there are still a few i desperately want that i don't even want to talk about, but here's the ones i have:


swift brewfest ram. 1.6% drop rate. you could try for it several times a day, but only during a 2 week period.


rivendare's deathcharger (the baron's mount). 1% drop rate, but you can try to get it 5 times an hour. i got this without trying on my 2nd time soloing stratholme. it looks just like all the other undead mounts.


swift razzashi raptor. 0.9% drop rate, you can try for it every 3 days. i got this my second or third time in zul'gurub.


swift zulian tiger. 0.7% drop rate, you can try for it every 3 days. i just got this after like..40 attempts !


white polar bear. 1% drop rate from a quest you can do every day. it took me about 2 months of doing the quest every day


raven lord. 1.4% drop rate off of a boss in sethekk halls you can kill every day, but a druid has to summon him. i got this on my third try ! this is my favorite mount.


red qiraji battle tank. 1.1-1.8% drop rate. it is the rarest of the qiraji resonating crystals in ahn'qiraj and can only be mounted inside ahn'qiraj, unfortunately


green proto-drake. 2% drop rate off of an oracle egg. this is kind of weird- you get to revered with a tribe called the oracles, buy a "mysterious egg" from them, wait 7 days for it to hatch, and the mount may be inside. it's usually egg yolk or some pets, but 2% of the time it's a mount. i got it on my third egg !

i'm sure that was incredibly boring and stupid for most people on earth (even people who play wow) but i am psyched about it. there's a few more regular (pvp, mounts for sale, etc.) mounts i need to get and some rare mounts i need to try for !

this weekend is going to be pretty busy- kristen is coming to visit christina (and maybe me a little??) and they're going to the maryland sheep and wool festival tomorrow. i feel like such a turd for not committing to go because i bet it's going to be the best time in the world. on saturday, diana is coming down, and nate and mouse are coming over, and we're going to have a super crowded house. but it will be crowded with like almost everyone i like (jeanne where are youuuuuuuuuuu? and anna will be out of town too). on sunday i'll probably make mouse hang out with me and maybe mike?

p.s. this weekend i think i'm going to read the evolution of calpurnia tate if i have time.

i don't give a damn about my reputation

okay the most exciting thing that happened yesterday was that i cut down the yarn trip wires all over my bedroom. i am working on this cowl for jeanne, which i'm double stranding, and the two balls of yarn fell off of my bed and got progressively more tangled as the weeks went on. like, pizza tried to run away with one of the balls and left it across the room, and it got tangled around my chair. the other one got tangled around my computer cords and my phone cord (yes, i have a landline, and yes, my phone has a cord !). i've sort of been gingerly stepping over it and getting tangled in it, but last night i cut it down !


last year i won a "garfie" for laziness !

i really thought that this whole thing would end with me tripping over the yarn and breaking my laptop, but i actually took care of it before that happened ! i'm super proud of myself, like i always am when i do the bare minimum to function on earth.

really, i got nothing. last night was a raid night. we've had a problem lately with raid attendance, since it's nice out, and our recruiting was kind of a disaster because a few guild chumps invited other chumps who love rape jokes and ardently defend their right to use them, etc., but my friend ibrahim invited a big group of cool people who are also good players (the rape dudes were not good players). so we formed the raid on time and made good progress with no wipes because of the 15% buff in icc !



being a girl who plays a video game is weird, especially playing an mmorpg. because of the nature of the game, i have to constantly interact with a mostly male population who are not the type of people i hang out with in real life, which can be both awesome and terrible. i play with a lot of friends and friends of friends who are all mostly old punk dudes, but since 25-man raids take 25 people, there's still a mishmash of random people in every raid.

my experience has been pretty weird. i've been on the receiving end of both extremes of sexism- getting special treatment and attention and opportunities for being female, and at the receiving end of extreme ire and unfair double standards and pretty vicious misogynist language (slut, bitch, cunt, insults to my appearance, worth based on who wants to fuck me, implications that i'm a bad player cause i'm a girl, rape jokes, etc.) for being female. the guys that know i know act normal and never disappoint me as far as being allies, making me do my own shit, etc. goes and they make the game worth playing for me. the other dudes are a mixed bag. i meant to write some kind of analysis of this but the best i can come up with is, "a lot of dudes are sexist and oblivious to their sexism."

also i just tried to find an image to put here but every single search related to women and video games was

1) naked or half naked women
2) naked or half naked female video game characters
3) motivational posters about how women suck at video games

here is the one with the smallest amount of nudity:



i have to work a little late tonight (and probably like, every night forever until after my event) but after that i think i'm going to get coffee with mouse. this weekend should also be exciting because kristen is coming to visit christina and diana is coming to visit us and i'll probably do something with mouse and/or mike ! everyone ! how can i get jeanne in on this !

p.s. yesterday i didn't even get to see christina because i took a laziness nap and when i woke up she was taking an allergy nap (though i think that was actually bedtime so that was allergy sleep), but she did make something that made the whole house smell fucking good !

in the wise words of kristen willoughby

(in reference to a woman being attacked by a man during a show while being called a bitch and a dyke, and the general male response that they didn't understand how that was misogynistic and/or how rare and violent misogyny must be)

"experiencing misogyny isn't always about getting physically abused. it's also about microinequities--"death by a thousand papercuts." it's like every day is december 31 and every person thinks it's funny and acceptable and original to make the "see you next year!!" joke except the joke also features something about how you are inadequate, ugly, public property, invisible, disposable, or otherwise unacceptable for being female. experiencing that on some level every day is just as wrong and hurtful and degrading as getting physically assaulted at a show, but in that case it happens all at once. it is terrible any way you slice it.

i just don't think people (esp. dudes) even stop to consider that one rape joke, one shitty comment about a woman's looks, any one little thing that may seem so small and insigificant to them is actually the 50000th message a woman has gotten like that on THAT DAY and it is like a slow, painful death. that's what misogyny is."