Kate's Ink

P365 Day 213: Nice weather we're having (how about you?)

2010-02-08T15:18:00.006-05:00

Paul's meeting is in a part of the country that woke up this morning to snow/ice. (From what I understand, that's most of the country.) I haven't spoken to him in a while, so I don't know how much that affected his day. I do know schools there were canceled, so it must have been a significant amount of snow.

I swear I'm not rubbing it in, but it's still semi-warm on the coast. Warm enough for me to go out with my pretty socks and Memphis Snuggie, then take the Snuggie off after a while. (I was wearing Memphis colors underneath, too. I'm a good fan!)

Like my socks? I had trouble deciding which ones to wear. I own a lot of awesome socks.

The view from my porch is sunny, but the brush is still green and thick enough that you can't really see the river. ... Not that you could see the river in this picture anyway because my camera was pointed up so you could see how sunny it is.

Might as well have been a snow day at Casa Simone. I stayed up all night and slept very late (even by my standards). I've got some editing to do, then I'm going to catch up on reading one of the multitude of magazines already piling up around here.

Edit: I just re-read that and suddenly feel very guilty for having so many magazines. A lot of trees are going to die so I can read The Economist. :(

P365 Day 212: Real Good Lookin' Game

2010-02-07T12:41:00.005-05:00

Paul left for his out-of-town meeting today. I dropped him off without incident. (In fact, I got to the airport in 20 minutes � not speeding. The roads were empty.) Then I came home and tried, with limited success, to catch a little more shuteye.

Paul called during his three-hour layover in Atlanta. Apparently, the hydraulics went out on engine 2 during the first leg of his trip � "I mean, they had back-ups," he assured me � so they were greeted on the tarmac by fire trucks. I'm glad it turned out OK. I'm still going to worry. I'm a worrier.

Also, I'm not one to leave the house much on my own, so when I did the grocery shopping for my four-day alone time, I picked up a six-pack of Abita Purple Haze � my favorite beer � as well as a sixer of New Belgium's winter ale, 2 Below:

Mom called a little while ago to check on me and on Paul's flight, and she asked if I had any plans for the next few days. "No, I'm probably not going anywhere," I said. "Taking care of the homefront," she replied. Phrase it however you want; it still comes down to cracking open a couple of beers and watching the Super Bowl in the company of my cats. (It's not like I don't have a chance to go out; I just don't really want to. If I decide to interact with real-life people, I can go to my apartment complex's watch party, but I doubt I'll feel like it.)

I think halftime with The Who gets its own beer. MTV has already reported The Who's setlist: "We're kinda doing a mash-up of stuff," (Pete Townshend) said. "A bit of 'Baba O'Riley,' a bit of 'Pinball Wizard,' a bit of the close of 'Tommy,' a bit of 'Who Are You,' and a bit of 'Won't Get Fooled Again.' "

So, unless they drop a huge bomb, it looks like they're not playing my favorite Who song � the song over which I bonded with my Rock Band buddies (including � here comes a blog plug! � Cheddar FonDrew). So at some point before halftime is over (now is good � do it now), I demand you all listen to The Who's best recent song.

Even when I'm home alone, that song generates warm-fuzzies.

Happy Super Bowl Sunday, folks. Geaux Saints!

P365 Day 211: In which I talk about people on the Interwebs

2010-02-06T15:33:00.006-05:00

Guess who got her "go outside to the screened-in porch by herself" privileges revoked yesterday? Yep. Joe-Kitty decided to climb the screen and made it to about Paul's height (6'5") before he was able to get her down. Bad, bad kitty. (Those claws? Clean but deadly.)

If you haven't seen Bryce Donovan's latest "The Bryce is Write" column (You see what they did there? Huh? Huh? Bryce? Write? It's a funny play on words!), check it out here. It's about this website called Chat Roulette, where you can video/audio chat with random strangers, roulette-style. His advice? Turn off your audio and video, then go "people-watching."

I tried it yesterday afternoon around 4 p.m. and flipped through a few people before landing on an unabashed nosepicker. I figured nothing could top that, so I quit and left Bryce a comment. Last night, I told Paul about Chat Roulette and tried to get him to try it, but he has no patience for things such as that.

So, at about 2 a.m., completely under the influence of Ambien, I went through the same routine: turned off my video/audio and just flipped through random people. I was surprised by the number of ... uh, exhibitionists (Paul said, "What did you expect at 2 in the morning?") ... but fortunately, there's a "report activity" button. (Aside: I also landed on a dude who had a gun to his head and was holding a sign that read, "Convince me not to do it." I didn't feel like doing any convincing, so I went on to the next person. Hope that turned out OK for him.)

Then I landed on this dude who didn't seem to care if I had video/audio because he had to tell me this story Right Now about another person he'd seen on Chat Roulette. (I won't repeat the story. I can't repeat the story.) Anyway, we struck up a conversation, with his friend and his friend's girlfriend chiming in at various points, and � long story short � he's my Facebook friend now! :D

See, not all people on the Internet are bad. I mean, plenty of people on the Internet are bad, but if you have some common sense, you can figure those people out rather quickly. I was doing a little math and realized I met Paul online 13 years ago this May. Thirteen!

"If you have some common sense" aside, I admit I'd be pretty pissed if I found out my 16-year-old daughter met up at an arcade (ahh, love) with some dude she'd met on the Internet, which is precisely why it took me a couple of years to level with my parents about how I met Paul.

And I can guarantee if we'd gone the eHarmony route, we never would have ended up together because we were � and still are, in some ways � so different. (If you know us both, skim through the list of 29 dimensions [OK, they say 29 then list 32] and count how many ways we're alike. Not many, right? Yeah, that's what I thought.)

But, hey, we're coming up on our 8th anniversary, so it all worked out in the end. Online people rock! Paul and I rock! Go us!

P365 Day 210: Kitty zits

2010-02-05T22:02:00.004-05:00

A couple of Christmases ago, Mom told me about a conversation she'd had with my cousin about my cousin's cats, Cairo (left) and Thebes, one of whom had feline acne. Kitty zits! Neither Mom nor I had heard of it, and I thought it was hilarious (and a bit outlandish).

But, oh no! The Fred-Kitty has come down with feline acne! :-( It's really hard to get her to sit still long enough to get a good picture, so I have two:

One with the flash, where you can only sort of make out her kitty zits:

And one without the flash. It's blurry but you can see her soul patch better:

Fred doesn't look sick or anything. Actually, it kind of looks like she ate a bunch of Oreos and they got stuck to her chin, which I wouldn't put past her if we had Oreos in the house.

I sent the pictures to Johanna, who wrote back to say her cat, BK, also had a bout of feline acne. (BK, like Fred and Joe, has her own Twitter account. Follow her here.) Apparently, it's a pretty common ailment. That made me feel a lot better.

And I really appreciated the About.com article that reminded me that, unlike humans, kitties are not embarrassed about their acne. Good. I'd hate for Fred to be the laughingstock of the neighborhood cats.

We're going to take Fred-Kitty to the vet once Paul's back from his out-of-town meeting. That way we can get those kitty zits under control. ... You know, to avoid any long-term embarrassment on her part.

The Friday Five (Kate edition)

2010-02-05T13:34:00.004-05:00

I came across a site called Ickmusic via Popdose (and Popdose via Smacky). Ickmusic has a feature called The Friday Five. We've done this before; this is just an excuse to do it again. And Ick does it every Friday, so maybe this will become regular. (Don't count on it. I'm already super-devoted to Project 365.)

Put iTunes (or your music player of choice) on shuffle and list the first five songs that come up. Here's mine:

"Road Trippin'," Red Hot Chili Peppers
"Time Bomb," Old 97's
"Sloppy English," NOFX
"Cache Cache," The Who
"Chicago," Sufjan Stevens

I admit I own too much music to know it all (most come recommended by friends), so I've only heard two of those songs above. And only one is in regular rotation. Want to guess which one?

P365 Day 209: Naptime

2010-02-04T16:15:00.004-05:00

Shh, it's sleepy time.

Paul's grabbing a much-needed nap on the couch. He's under a ton of stress right now � planning presentations, writing tests, preparing for an out-of-town meeting next week � and I don't know how he's doing it. OK, I kind of do know how he's doing it: He's staying up late and not sleeping much. He's immunity is probably down the drain. I should make sure he takes some extra vitamins.

I hate when he goes out of town. I don't always do so well on my own.

Your ... what?

2010-02-04T02:06:00.002-05:00

I hate ads that leave me hanging.

(I did not become a fan.)

P365 Day 208: Why we don't buy cat beds

2010-02-03T16:13:00.005-05:00

Small cat, large box:

Large cat, small box:

Yeah, Fred-Kitty might be the big(-headed) cat, but she knows to choose her fights wisely. If Joe wants the big box, Joe gets the big box. I actually had to take the microwave box away from both of them today because Joe-Kitty was eating the Styrofoam inserts. I don't know why. I can't imagine it tastes good ... or tastes like anything, really.

I can't settle on a soundtrack for today. Some Green Day, some Dresden Dolls (hard time deciding which video to link), a little Ben Folds, a little Weezer ... even the new Rob Zombie released yesterday (so far, it's so-so, so ...).

Speaking of Green Day, I made a big request of Paul last night: If, in the unlikely event we fall into a mountain of money, could we drive to New York to see "American Idiot" on Broadway? (Load that link. Listen to "21 Guns" on the front page.) We have done this once before: We drove to NYC to see "Avenue Q," so this wouldn't be unprecedented. We decided it's a go if money and time fall into place. I'm not packing my bags yet, but that would be so awesome.

OK, I'd better go check on cats and boxes and such things.

P365 Day 207: We bought a new microwave before the other one blew up

2010-02-02T21:29:00.005-05:00

When Paul and I moved in May, we realized our new apartment didn't have a microwave. That's an important thing to know before you sign a lease. But, as it so happened, my parents were driving in from Memphis that weekend and brought with them a microwave we'd received as a wedding gift (I think?) and had left behind when we came to Charleston. We left behind quite a few things when we moved to Charleston.

The microwave worked fine ... for that one week we lived in our new place before we went to Memphis for the rest of the summer. That might have been sheer luck. When we came back and plugged in our appliances, the microwave tripped the circuit. That happened occasionally for a while, which was little more than a nuisance. Then, the other day, it got to the point where it would run for five seconds, trip, reset, run for five more seconds and so on.

I realized (ding!) that I was probably dealing with a fire hazard. Please don't call the fire department � or, worse, the leasing office � and tattle on me.

So last night, Paul and I went to Wal-Mart looking for a specific GE model they had on their website. Then we went to another Wal-Mart. Then, empty-handed, we drove across town to Best Buy (that's when Paul got the speeding ticket I mentioned yesterday).

This is what we ended up with:

Now, my first thought was that I'd take a picture of my nice, new, sleek microwave in its cozy spot on my counter. But then I actually looked at the box, and I realized GE is trying to market an 1100-watt microwave by advertising it popping popcorn. The whole top of the box � popcorn.

And that's all well and good, but unless you're a microwave-watching hawk, popping popcorn in an 1100-watt oven is more than likely going to end like this than the glorious, buttery goodness in that picture on the top of the box.

We've cooked a Lean Cuisine and a bowl of ramen, but for what it's worth, we haven't done the popcorn test yet � and everyone knows that the true test of microwave worth. I'll let you know how that goes.

P365 Day 206: Envy our parking spot!

2010-02-01T21:37:00.005-05:00

This is what our friends would call a "Paul and Kate spot." Until it was pointed out to us, we didn't realize we always get really, really good parking spots. Like this.

Sorry for the lack of commentary tonight. I honestly didn't think it was possible to feel anything while taking this much medication, but apparently it's possible to squeeze some frustration out of me when dealing with a blown-out microwave ($91), Paul's speeding ticket tonight (57 in a 45, $89) and some job stuff with which I'm not ready to deal.

Something strange struck me today while I was on Facebook, of all places. I realized that maybe I shouldn't even care if we don't end up in Memphis. Life has moved on without us. You can never go home again, you know?

Heh. And suddenly, instead of squeezing frustration out of me, it's tears. Lots and lots of tears. But, hey, I still got my photo up, you know?

[Edit: OK, I cried it all out and feel better. And, hey, if you're in the market for eyeliner and/or something with which to draw tattoos on yourself (Really. It's marketed for that, too.), I fully endorse Kat Von D Tattoo Liner. It's crazy indelible.]

P365 Day 205: The fuzzstache (or not)

2010-01-31T14:53:00.004-05:00

The Fred-Kitty loves, l-o-v-e-s, to be brushed. And this is what comes off of her every day (sometimes twice a day). I don't know how she does it without experiencing Cat Pattern Baldness. She seriously shouldn't have any fuzz left.

I really wanted Paul to try it on ("A mustache!" "No!!" "OK, then, a beard!" "No!!" "Pleeeeease?" NOOO!!!"). And I tried to put it on Fred's head � it made for a very dapper Donald Trump look � but she wasn't playing along either. So behold: Paul's new Don King-inspired 'do:

After I had my fun, we had to throw the fuzzball away because the Joe-Kitty likes to eat those things, and really � no matter which end she expels it from � it's just asking for gastrointestinal trouble.

CAPTCHA fails (again and again)

2010-01-31T14:13:00.003-05:00

Last night, Paul and I were setting up a Gmail address for a little Twitter endeavor he's doing. That's when I discovered Gmail has the hardest CAPTCHAs I've ever encountered.

I called him over. "What does that look like to you?" I asked. "Well, B ... O ... I dunno. Listen to the handicap thing," he replied. So we tried. And that was even more convoluted than the visual CAPTCHA.

Embarrassingly, it took me four tries to get it right. Here are my documented efforts. See if you can do better.

No. 1:

No. 2:

No. 3:

No. 4 (got this one right):

P.S. Raise your hand if you knew CAPTCHA stood for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart." (That's according to Wiki.) That is one of the most contrived acronyms I've ever heard, perhaps beaten only by USA PATRIOT Act, or "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001."

P365 Day 204: It's a Toasty Bear kind of day

2010-01-30T18:12:00.004-05:00

I woke up this morning feeling like half of my head was on fire. The sinuses on the left half of my face feel as if a cat sat there all night. And who knows. Maybe one did.

But, hey, it's nothing a little Sudafed and Toasty Bear can't fix. Toasty Bear is so cool. I mean, right now he's not cool because I can pop him in the microwave and make him toasty!!! But he can be cool, too, if I opt to put him in the freezer.

He's my sick-day buddy. Always got a few strange looks from coworkers who saw me taking my teddy bear out of the microwave. After a while I quit explaining the phenom and just let them wonder.

Toasty Bear used to smell good � specifically, according to Sootheze, like "lavender, thyme, lemon balm, hyssop, orange peel, rosemary, eucalyptus, peppermint, and rose buds." Now he smells a little like lavender ... but mostly like my cat. And that's fine. My cat doesn't smell that bad.

P365 Day 203: And the USPS onslaught begins

2010-01-29T18:29:00.005-05:00

Our magazines have started coming in the mail. (See original post here.) I haven't checked it in a couple of days, so there's no telling what's waiting for me. (Magazines: good. Bills: bad.)

So, for reasons that should now be abundantly clear, I am in the market for one or two magazine racks. I started at Target.com, where the choices ranged from a $10 rack that hooks onto your toilet (??) to a $179 "Curve" holder that actually doesn't look that special, considering we can pick up a whole magazine table for the same price.

IKEA has a couple that look nice and are a great price, but none of them are available online and the closest IKEA is 196 miles away in Charlotte, N.C. Also, I've never been to an IKEA store, and I'm not sure I want to pop my IKEA cherry on a $10 magazine rack. That should be saved for one of the other pieces of furniture we need (two computer desks, two computer chairs and a TV stand).

Maybe I'll order this one from Wal-Mart so I can begin redecorating my apartment to look like my doctor's office.

P365 Day 202: 1, 2 ... skip a few ... 99, 100

2010-01-28T15:51:00.005-05:00

After only a small amount of waffling, and taking nobody else's opinion into account, I have decided to apply to be a census taker. It pays $14 an hour, with most enumerators working 20 to 40 hours a week (good), mostly on nights and weekends (not so good).

Applicants for census-taker-type-people have to take a test to determine their qualifications. Mine is at 7 tonight. I took the practice test online and missed one of 28 questions. (For the record, the question was: "Referring to the following outline of a chapter from a census procedures manual [...], which section tells how supplies such as pencils, erasers, and paper clips should be stored?") D'oh.

Anyway, I don't think I'll have any problem with the test (clerical skills, reading, number skills, interpreting information and evaluating alternatives, and organizational skills) or the criminal background check (you know me and my shady background!), so I think it all comes down to whether they have already hired enough people to cover my ZIP code.

In other news, let me memorialize J.D. Salinger with this quote, sent to me by another editor:

"... I privately say to you, old friend ... please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of early-blooming parentheses: (((())))." � J.D. Salinger (Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction)

Oh, and to the folks west of me � and that's just about all of you � if you haven't already been struck by the ice/sleet/snow storm, it's headed your way. Bundle up. :)

P365 Day 201: Lame-a-thon

2010-01-27T21:15:00.005-05:00

I didn't leave the house today � though, for the record, I think the Wellbutrin is doing some good because I didn't feel quite so sleepy and antisocial. In fact, I was probably a bit of a Twitter nuisance because all I did today was edit, listen to music (another post on AFP later), take pictures of my cats and troll Twitter.

The rare Joe-Kitty bath. I took a Crazy Cat Lady number of photos of my girls today, but, in my defense, they were being cute, I don't have children to bother and Paul's not much for photos.

Oh � there's another pic I want to share, one that's definitely worth a WTF even though it's not worthy of its own P365 day. Behold the most contrived "-thon" that I've ever seen. It's not clever. It's the opposite of clever. In fact, I still have no intention of buying a Toyota, though I did rewind my DVR, pause it, take a picture of the TV and post it on my blog.

Off to watch the State of the Union, admittedly predisposed to anger after reading about the proposed NASA budget slashes. I try to keep my political views to myself, so I must note that I'd be pissed no matter which party or politician was proposing cuts to any science programs.

My family is made of one journalist and one scientist. Only one of us is working in a profitable field right now, and (surprise!) it's not the journalist. (That's another post for another time.) The last thing I want to hear is that government-funded research programs are being cut again. Sigh. We'll see what shakes out of this SOTU address.

P365 Day 200: On cats and giraffes

2010-01-26T16:33:00.005-05:00

This is not the face of a cat who is enjoying having her picture taken. Not that I can blame her; it was about the 18th take of the night, and even pretty girls have their limits.

The pretty girls also have to have touch-ups, such as the removal of our phone numbers from Fred's collar. Yeah, I know I'm not so good with The Photoshops, but color me clone-happy. (By the way, you can totally get lost in that Photoshop Disasters website. Example.)

By the way, I'm interested in donating a giraffe or three to One Million Giraffes, which is about as simple as the name implies. Basically, this dude made a bet that he could collect a million giraffes online by the end of 2011. From the stats on the site: "So far I've got 536,715 giraffes, so I need 463,285 more and I have 339 days left."

The only rules are that you have to make it yourself and you can't use a computer. You can include as many giraffes in your picture as you want, and you can use any medium (drawing, photos, sculpture). I've had this site tabbed for days now, browsing it occasionally. It's hard to pick favorites because they're all so different, but I really like this one.

Anyway, I'll probably draw (... or create in some way) a couple of giraffes. I'd love it if you guys would too. It's not like I'm asking you to document a year of your life in photos. (Ahem. No one is that crazy.) So make a giraffe, post it and send me linkies.

P.S. Day 200! I have made it to Day 200. Way past the halfway point. This calls for a toast: "To 165 more days! Huzzah!"

Miscellany too short for individual posts

2010-01-25T22:52:00.003-05:00

What I'm listening to:

I got my hands on six � read 'em, six � Ben Folds (with/without Five) bootlegs, including a couple of demo tapes circa 1993-1994 � you can even hear the audio pops on the cassettes! I think the fact that they're not super-processed makes me love them even more.
Also got an audio rip of the Ben Folds Five Complete Sessions at West 54th.
If you don't know (and you should, because this will be on the test Thursday), the only songs I listen to while editing are the Myst ambient soundtracks (Myst, Riven, Exile, Revelation and End of Ages). I hoped to find other works by Myst-series composers. Picked up Jack Wall's latest: the Mass Effect 2 soundtrack. Haven't listened yet.
I found and bought the English-language release of The Triplets' Thicker Than Water (1991). Heard of it? Didn't think so. But 10-year-old Kate loved TTW, and I've looked many times for it in the past. Glad to see it's finally on iTunes.

What I'm reading:

If editing counts, I'm reading chemistry proposals and magazine articles.
The first issues of my 20 magazines � Wired and Stringing � have arrived!
New feeds on Google Reader (all humor): Wedinator, This is Photobomb, Failbooking, Not Always Right, Poorly Dressed People.
Great comic on my laptop: Amazing Super Powers
Great comic on my desktop: Girls With Slingshots
Anything and everything from The Oatmeal (Latest comic � released today � is about using semicolons. I think I'm in love.)

Things I need:

Suggestions for good ambient music to use while editing
A new computer desk
A new desk chair
Two muffin tins
Gas money

P365 Day 199: Ring, ring (ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring)

2010-01-25T18:19:00.003-05:00

I don't wear much jewelry. OK, I'm sure by some standards, I wear a lot of jewelry, but not nearly as much as I once did. The pieces I wear all have personal meaning to me, and I never, ever take them off (well, except for my leather-banded watch, which comes off when I shower).

This is my eight-band puzzle ring (also known as a Turkish wedding ring). It is a wedding band but it's not my "real" wedding band, so I wear it on the ring finger of my right hand. Its symbolism � faithfulness � is important to me; the wearer cannot take it off without having to put it together again.

Actually, this ring has another happy memory tied to it, one from when I was an editor in Memphis. The first day I wore it to work, an admiring coworker told me she'd had a puzzle ring years ago.

"Take it off! I want to put it back together!" she told me.

"Are you sure you remember how? I mean, this is an eight-band ring, not four or six like most of them," I replied. I'd bought it for that reason, in fact; I wanted something different and more intricate than four or six bands.

"Sure I'm sure," she said.

So I took it off � carefully. I handed it to her gingerly, intact. And then she shook the damn thing into eight shiny, jangling rings. She promised to have it back to me in no time flat.

The day passed. I asked about it. She said she was still working on it. The next day passed. Finally, she handed it back to me and I congratulated her on putting it together. "Oh, I didn't put it back together. I couldn't figure it out, so I took it home so (her husband and son) could look at it ... but they couldn't figure it out either. So we looked at online instructions. Finally, I drove it to the jewelry store and had them put it back together for me. They asked if I wanted to weld it together so this wouldn't happen again."

I laughed. She'd spent money on putting it back together.

As you can see, there's now a string around the back. But I wore it loose for years � like I said, it was symbolic to me, and I wanted the authenticity of keeping it on all the time. I once made a masseuse work around it (and honestly didn't feel too guilty even though she balked). But there came a point � maybe it was my MRI scan, during which I had to remove all my jewelry (doctor's orders!) � that I realized, hey, maybe it's not such a bad idea for a back-up plan in case I have to take it off.

But that situation with my coworker taught me a good lesson about showing off my ring: The easiest answer is, "Sure, you can see it ... on my finger."

P365 Day 198: Situation turning violent in 3, 2, 1 ...

2010-01-24T16:29:00.006-05:00

Taunting the Joe-Kitty is all fun and games ...

... until these are embedded in your bloody hand as you scream obscenities and she prances away with the thing with which you were taunting her.

Vini, vidi, vicious.

P365 Day 197: It doesn't count unless they sparkle (and I'm not talking about vampires)

2010-01-23T18:20:00.004-05:00

Five sparkly stars. Five sparkly stars, and Paul puts down the controller and says, "I have completed absolutely everything in New Super Mario Bros. Wii." His tone isn't filled with pride or accomplishment. He sounds ... sad.

And I guess you always do when you finish a really good game. I played Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings once, put it down for a year, then picked it up and played it again. And Paul and I each played The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass twice through, back to back. We didn't even wait for it to cool down and seem "new" again.

The five sparkly stars did not come the first time Paul played NSMBW. No, he'd already beaten it once and gotten five stars � but not five sparkly stars. So he erased his file and started over. (Me? I would've saved that sucker for all eternity.) And the second time through, he did it. And it didn't take him long � not nearly as long as it would take me to finish the game even once.

So ... congratulations, Paul. The hours you spent playing video games during your formative years have paid off ... twice.

Now get back to work.

P365 Day 196: One man's trash is another man's awesome VHS footage

2010-01-22T21:51:00.005-05:00

Paul and I went to Found Footage Festival at the American Theater tonight as part of the Charleston Comedy Festival � the first time FFF has been in Chas. We had a wonderful time. As we were leaving, I said to Paul, "Why did you enjoy this? You hate Everything is Terrible!" He replied, "Yeah, Everything is Terrible is, well, terrible. This was actually really funny."

I had trouble getting any good pics inside because I wasn't using my flash and lack a steady hand. But here's a pic of Nick and Joe on stage:

The only thing I would have liked to have seen is more Princess Kitty!!! (If you only watch one embedded video on my site this year, make this the one.)

Anyway, if you're in Chas, FFF will be playing at the American Theater tomorrow at 8 p.m. (tickets here).

A big thankyouthankyouthankyou to @VAsmacky and @foundfootage for convincing me to go. :)

Creepy anime eyes: a how-to

2010-01-22T16:47:00.003-05:00

Usually, I wouldn't spend seven minutes watching a beauty/makeup video, but this absolutely fascinated me. Apparently, it's fairly easy to re-create "anime eyes" -- you know, the ginormous eyes that go best with purple hair and Sailor Moon costumes.

This look has a 60 percent chance of flying on Halloween. The other 364 days of the year? Nothin' doin'.

Color me creeped out.

P365 Day 195: Leggo my frickin' frackin' forearm!

2010-01-21T18:01:00.004-05:00

The Eggo shortage goes on and on. Maybe more people should go out and buy a kickin' Belgian waffle-maker like Paul and I have. Kellogg's would take a hit, but you can definitely Leggo of Eggos when you've got nommier, bigger, better-than-anything-frozen waffles. Mmm. Waffles.

Also, I love this pic and caption posted with the MSNBC article:

Jackie Steele's a lovely lass, ain't she? Those red nails ... that wrist ... man, she makes me crave WAFFLES!

I went to the doctor today. Finally. Between my schedule and my doctor's schedule, we've been dancing around an appointment since, like, September. He added Wellbutrin to my pharm farm, so it's now Lamictal, Seroquel, Wellbutrin, Ambien and Klonopin. It's not so much that I need all these separately; it's more a case of giving me an upper to counteract a downer, and an anti-anxiety pill to counteract the upper, and so on. We'll see if it plays nicely with everything else.

I have a friend who has been on Wellbutrin for some time now, so I sent him a text message asking the pros/cons. My favorites from his list: super-sweats (obviously a "con"), vivid dreams and random giggles out of nowhere. The random giggles alone make me look forward to taking it.

Tomorrow: Found Footage Festival. @foundfootage's most recent Tweet: "Off to South Carolina tomorrow for a weekend of iced tea, boiled peanuts and porch rocking chairs. Also, the Charleston Comedy Festival." Sounds like they know more about South Carolina than Paul and I did when we moved here. Can't wait to see what's in store.

P365 Day 194: Got any ketchup for that?

2010-01-20T18:05:00.002-05:00

I might have gone a teeny-tiny bit overboard with the blog posts today, but hey, some days there's a lot on my mind. And sometimes I can't fit it into 140 characters.

Anyway, here's the Joe-Kitty enjoying a decidedly non-Greenies cat treat. She's one part curious and three parts naughty:

Not that this is anything new. She's been a human-food enthusiast since she was a kitten: