If you have nothing better to do (like me, working from home), prelims for the 2012 Fandom Steel Cage Match are happening now. The results are surprisingly skewed to me. I know LJ is full of feminists, but wow. I mean, some results obviously make sense (it's not like I'm anti girl power, after all), but others I'm like, really? Really? It's actually more obvious when you look at the characters in 2nd/3rd place who have no business being that close to the lead.

I mean, Britta in second place behind Abed? BRITTA? She's so annoying!

Leslie Knope over Ron Swanson or Ben Wyatt? Mary Crawley blowing away all competitors -- fine, personal preference, I guess.

But Kelly over Nathan (with Alisha nearly over taking him)?! Zoe over Mal?! Daenerys, Arya, and Sansa all way over Jon Snow?! No. Just no.

And I love love love Caroline, but more than Damon? I don't know about that.

Hermione and Scully leading the pack by miles apparently never gets tiresome for these people.

I am pretty tickled that Daryl Dixon is so far leading The Walking Dead, though. And Jesse Pinkman way far ahead of all his competitors. :D

For a reason too long and involved to get into, I have been mentally and emotionally exhausted from the events of the last 2 months or so. That is why I am so VERY excited about tomorrow, which is going to be a Day of Fun with jade_okelani and ropo. First there's going to be lunch... then there will be pedicures and board games... then dinner (likely at one of my fave steak places), then X-Men: First Class (playing at the second run theater near me for $1.50!), and finally dessert. Wheeee! What I'm not looking forward to is the half hour of barking from Talis that we'll all have to endure.

And now, a meme!! Stolen from... all and sundry.

Comment with a character and I'll tell you:

* How I feel about this character
* All the people I ship romantically with this character
* My non-romantic OTP for this character
* My unpopular opinion about this character
* One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon
* Something about them I consider true, though it's just head canon/fanon

You can try me with any character or multiple characters; I'll let you know if I am ignorant of who s/he is/they are. :P

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

Just went to the dentist for a routine cleaning/check up, and one of the spots on a molar she's been watching apparently doesn't look too good, so she's going to remove the filling and possibly replace with a full porcelain crown. The cost of this is roughly $1,500. My insurance is going to take care of $650 of it, which still leaves $850 for me. CRY. Currently my appointment is scheduled for late April because of her availability, but to be honest, if it has to be done, I'd rather it be sooner than later. Sigh.

Also, I swear the dentist my mom took me and my brother to when we were little was a total quack who only wanted our money. We didn't have insurance and paid cash every time, and it just so happened that we BOTH needed like every single molar filled before we even hit our teens. We had/have extremely good dental hygiene/habits. When my wisdom teeth came in, we were no longer seeing him, and nothing wrong has ever been found with them. So looking back, I find this all very suspicious. Plus there's the fact that one day he just disappeared, his office closed, without a word to anyone. And now I have all these stupid fillings, which are really only a stop gap, to show for it. GRRRRR.

BTW, this morning I was woken up in the wee hours by the bread machine. When I get something I like to try it out right away, so I decided to make bread with it, and try out the timer function at the same time, so that I could wake up to the smell of fresh-baked bread. Good in theory right? In practice, not so much. Whenever I cook food overnight, in the slow cooker, or in this case, the bread machine, I'll wake up in the middle of the night with hunger pangs. Does this happen to anyone else??? It's like I'm smelling it while sleeping and my body responds to it because I haven't eaten in hours, even though my brain wants to sleep, my stomach wants me to eat, and hurts like hell with ferocious hunger pangs. *facepalm* The good news though is that the bread machine works, and I was able to use the other model's instruction manual to good effect. :P

And now, the meme mynuet tagged me for!

( Memeing... )

OK all you people who live in Seattle and enjoy food: Restaurant Week is back again! Oct. 17-28 (minus Fri. & Sat.). WHO'S WITH ME?? $25, 3-course meal, awesome restaurants! You know you want to go! I am keeping that entire week+ open so I can go to as many as possible. <g> So let me know if you're interested and we shall plan to go. There are a few restaurants I want to hit for sure -- Dahlia Lounge, Mistral Kitchen, Spring Hill -- but am also open to anything.

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Speaking of food, I've actually been cooking quite a bit, and have just posted a big roundup about it here.

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Dealing with some work insanity the past couple of days. Sigh. And I so tried to avoid having this happen. I wish my work didn't so often consist of making sure other people do their jobs. You're not in control of your own destiny when that's the case, and there's a lot of sitting around worrying about how other things are going so that your bigger picture can fall into place. The good news is that everything went well, despite Murphy's Law coming into play.

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Did someone recommend Patricia Gaffney's To Have and To Hold to me? Was it maybe when I was talking about Laura Kinsale's Seize the Fire and that novel's bastard of an anti-hero? I ask because it was apparently in my library queue so I picked it up yesterday. But what I found odd was that it was an "inter-library loan" (meaning not one of the 16ish libraries in the Sno-Isle library system that basically share a catalogue) -- it's from Harvard-Westlake School in California. O.o How random is that? For that reason it cannot be renewed, so I pretty much have to read it right away (there is a serious back up in my reading queue).

The problem is that there's another one I also have to read right away -- I just got Tongues of Serpents! I think there's a big waiting list for it right now, so I probably won't be able to renew and if I wanted it again would have to wait in the queue all over. It always takes me a page or two to get back into reading a Temeraire novel, because of the language. But it's cool because once I'm back in it, it reads like any other book.

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I finally caved and bought the BSG series on Blu-Ray. There's conflicting reports on exactly what's included (The Plan y/n?), so I'll have to see when it gets here if it's missing anything.

Finally on S6 of XF. I know a lot of people didn't like that season... but I don't know why. It's hands down my favorite season. Almost every episode is totally rewatchable (unlike the second half of S5, after Bad Blood). I guess I like the lighter fare, though I will admit that the lighter fare wouldn't be as good if all the dark stuff hadn't happened to them before that. Still, just last night I saw Triangle, the two Dreamlands, and How the Ghosts Stole Christmas, and I'm only on disc 2! I LOVE YOU SEASON 6, I DON'T CARE WHAT ANYONE ELSE SAYS.

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And the VERY LAST TV Show Meme!! I started this way back in June. Wow. O.o I took my sweet time with it, didn't I?

Day 30 - Saddest character death

Since this is potentially spoilery, ( my answer behind a cut. )

Does anyone want a Dreamwidth code? I have lots to give away. I always post at DW and just crosspost to LJ, makes it pretty easy.

A Clockwork Angel arrived from Amazon yesterday. Am pretty excited about that one. I still haven't read Mockingjay yet, though. Can't decide which one I want to start first.

I guess Mad Men won the best drama Emmy on Sunday (I'm so out of touch I didn't even know the Emmys had come and gone) and people are starting to grumble because they've had a lock on it for the past 3 years. I would probably be grumbling too, except that I LOVE that show and things I love so rarely get that kind of love and attention. Though as Jade points out, I would have been OK with Dexter winning, particularly after the last doozy of a season.

TV Show Meme, Day 28 - First TV show obsession: Quantum Leap. It was the first show I ever got so into that I begged my mom to push my bedtime out one hour so I could watch it. I loved Sam Beckett and Al and the crazy adventures they'd go on. It's funny because I've never considered myself to be a fan of science fiction (growing up, I was like, that's a boy thing), yet if I think about it, even at the very start I was a big science fiction fan. I just didn't know what it was. In my mind, sci-fi had to do with aliens/spaceships (a la Star Trek/Star Wars, neither of which I liked) and weird scientists and scary Twilight Zone music. Yet shows like Quantum Leap (and fave movies like Back to the Future) were science fiction. I just didn't have my definitions right. But now I know better. I'm a sci-fi geek!

I'm trying something new, y'all: sugarless coffee. Not sugar substitutes, which my taste buds abhor, but lack of sugar, period. It's embarrassing how much sugar I need to put into my coffee. I'm like Umbridge with her tea.

I figure it's a matter of adjusting my taste buds. If I drink sugarless coffee more regularly, then I'll get used to how bitter it's supposed to be, and less sugar will be required to make it taste sweet, when I feel like putting sugar into it. Fewer calories, too!

I don't think I can stop adding milk/cream to my coffee, though. That's where I draw the line.

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I started watching Dr. Who! I'm on disc 4 of S1. ( Random spoilery commentary. )

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My library system needs to get with the program and start offering a hold-on-holds function. It's really annoying to put different seasons of a TV show in the queue, then have them come up out of order (alternatively, I could put a later season in my queue after viewing an earlier season, but then that means I might have to wait a realllly long time), or have a dozen things become ready at one time, etc. The King County library system has it, it shouldn't be that hard to implement this functionality!

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Had a lovely time yesterday with the D/G gals (minus poor sick Elle). We tried doing a potluck for the first time, and while it totally worked out, I think next time we do it we'll have to be a little less blase about who is bringing what. LOL.

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OMG, speaking of the D/G gals, I was showing them my little garden and bemoaned how it's the end of the season and haven't gotten any zucchini, haven't even seen any female flowers, period, they've all been males so far and they've all died off w/o having a female to fertilize...

Well, I went out in the garden this morning and saw that two flowers were open, and one of them was a female!!!!! Yippee!!!! So I plucked the male one and used its little pollen wand to fertilize the heck out of the female. I hope it was enough. There's a teeny tiny zucchini there, and I want it to grow!

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I got a new haircut! It was looooong overdue. That's when I tend to get my haircuts, btw. When it's way, way, WAY past time for me to get one. I had what I call "tabula rasa hair" in that it was so long and had long outgrown any style that you could do just about anything to it. Anyway, I guess it's just one of those things that I feel like it's a big waste of money unless there's some obvious change or something. And paying $75 for a proper salon cut is even more wasteful to me.

Enter Tippr. I purchased a voucher a few months ago for a haircut at the Gilt Edge Society, a salon in Belltown (right near Tom Douglas's restaurants, actually). I really liked Cadance, the gal who cut/styled my hair. She was way hipper than me with her multitudes of tattoos and bleached pageboy cut, but she was super cool about my more conservative preferences in terms of my hair, while being very helpful about what might look good on me and a style that required very little maintenance (I don't have the time/patience in the morning to spend on my hair). She did ask me to use some serum on my hair in order to protect it from the heat of the hair dryer, but she didn't push any products on me. I told her I had serum at home from the last time a stylist convinced me to buy product (that I never used), and she just showed me how and when to use it.

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More car stuff...

AAA. I've never needed or wanted AAA, but now that I have the clunker it's probably a good investment, just because of the towing alone. I kept putting off getting it, though, and it's a good thing, because the other day Allstate Roadside Assistance cold called me and wanted me to try their service for $1.99/2 months, which has basically everything AAA has, except for the maps (which I don't need/use) and the discounts (again, don't need/use). So I'm covered for the next 2 months, woot. And after that I can cancel and join AAA if I want.

When I bought my Lexus I was told that I would have a little certificate waiting for me as a gift from the dealership. Family members and I have purchased a number of new cars over the years, and that's never happened. A car dealership, give something back after milking you for all you're worth? Hah! So I had pretty low expectations. At one end I was thinking, maybe a $25 gift card to Starbucks. At the higher end, a $100 gift certificate to a restaurant. They called me the other day to say that it was ready, so I picked it up at the same time I got my new plates. A $150 Visa gift card, so I can use it anywhere. :O How unexpectedly awesome. I have to say, I am pretty impressed with this dealership.

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TV Show Meme, Day 26 - OMG WTF? Season finale.

I'm going to go with the season 1 finale of Alias. I don't want to get into details and spoil it for anyone who hasn't watched, but I will just say that it was awesome (much like Alias S1 itself).

Conan O'Brien: The FDA egg recall has hit a total of 380 million eggs. I can't wait till they find the tired, evil hen that did this.

:))))))))))

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If you've requested books from me and aren't someone I regularly see in person, please provide your address (if you haven't already). Sadly, the day has not yet come when I can beam them to you using only the powers of my mind. ;-) Also, a few of those books have been requested through the PBS system, so they're no longer available. If I have somewhere to send them I can take them out of the system. If you've changed your mind that's fine too. :-)

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Tried a new burger joint per jade_okelani's recommendation: Five Guys Burgers and Fries. They have a ton of great press/awards from the east coast/south, but I think they are slowly making their way westward. Apparently they started out in the DC area; I can't believe I never heard about this place when I lived there. They have 2 locations in the Seattle area, one in Northgate and one "coming soon" in Lynnwood (yay). It was very, very good. I still like In-N-Out burgers more, but their fries are way better.

I got to use Lexus Destination Assist for the first time trying to find this place, lol. Jade had told me it was called "Five Brothers." So this woman was trying to help me find it, and we kept going back and forth on what it could be; I knew the location and that it served burgers. The coolest thing was her finding it for me, then "beaming" the location to the navigation system in my car, which then led me to it. For as long as my free trial lasts, I won't have to call Jade for addresses/directions to places!

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Books I am excited about:

- Mockingjay, the last book in the Hunger Games trilogy. Amazon has told me that they've shipped it. Yay!

- Clockwork Angel, Cassie Clare's new steampunk series, which is going to be out at the end of this month.

- The Passage by Justin Cronin, which corianderstem highly rec'ed. I've been looking for a used copy at HPB, but couldn't find one until the other day when I found a signed first edition -- argh! I can't resist such things! So I ended up paying more than cover price for it. Sigh, hopefully one day it will be worth more.

- Tongues of Serpents, which I hope to have soon. I'm #3 in the queue!

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I watched Inception again this weekend. Still love it. Even after second viewing I still have some unanswered questions. ( If your brain wants to go there... )

I also saw The Switch, which I had great hopes for because I love the leads. Ugh, what a total waste of talent. It was terrible. It sucked the life out of me when I was watching it. ( Spoilery stuff. )

Finally, I also saw Brick, a whodunit set in high school, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I LOVED it. He is so mysteriously hot. And it's an excellent movie, even if the dialogue takes getting used to.

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TV Show Meme, Day 24 - Best quote: "Remember when he ate my goldfish, then you said I never had a goldfish? Then why did I have the bowl Bart? WHY DID I HAVE THE BOWL?" - Milhouse, The Simpsons

LOLOL that still cracks me up. Oh Simpsons, there's no one like you.

I love Paperback Swap!! I've just requested a few Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys super mysteries that did not come with the set I bought off ebay, including the one akscully claims to be the best of all (and others seem to agree, since it's one of those rare paperbacks that has not only maintained its cover price but actually has gone up in value). Woot! Haha, I don't even know if I will like the books but I love finding stuff this way.

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I drove the Pontiac to the park & ride today! And it didn't break down! You might remember that I'd been TRYING to do this very thing the first time I ever used the car and that's when it went caput. So I've finally been able to use it successfully for the purpose for which it was intended.

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Looks like summer is about to draw to a close around here. I'm going to harvest some basil before too much cold weather kills them and make some pesto to freeze. I've heard that the best way to do this is to make it with everything but the cheese, then freeze in ice cube trays. But then I'm like, if that's true, shouldn't it also be made without the olive oil? Because if it's okay to freeze one kind of fat, why not the other?

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I found a Julia Quinn novel at the library yesterday that I hadn't heard of before (maybe because I lost interest in JQ's books awhile back, though I do think fondly of the Bridgerton series): The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever. I read it in one night, which I love about these kinds of novels. It was... okay. The premise was about a girl who falls in love with her best friend's older brother as a little girl, then she grows up and they get to know each other/strike up a romance as adults. On some level I always enjoy novels with this sort of premise (don't know why; I never had a best friend whose older brother I crushed on). Anyway, it was very enjoyable in parts, but overall was just a typical sort of romance with the usual plot twists and a few clunky/forced scenarios. Still, if you're looking for a mind candy read, I'd rec it.

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When D. came over to help me with the Pontiac mess, he was like, OMG you need to clean your gutters! So now I am going to get an estimate for that, as well as for cleaning off the moss on the roof. Plus I need to hire a new gardener (whole separate story on that). And hire an arborist to trim the trees whose branches are getting way too close to the house. One of the things I miss about condo/apartment living is not having to worry about this kind of stuff.

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TV Show Meme, Day 22 - Favorite series finale: Sex and the City

It was perfect, totally perfect. So good, in fact, that the movies are almost unwanted. It's sort of like coming up with the perfect ending and then tacking on more, drawing it out in an unnecessary way. Every single storyline had a satisfying conclusion that was done well. Every series finale should strive to be like S&tC's.

Last night I went sailing! corianderstem invited me along on her friend's excursion. I've lived here for 10 years and I think that was the first time I've actually ever gone sailing (not counting ferry rides). Sad, isn't it. Two not-so-great things happened. 1) A. and I were talking while sitting on the... uh... front? We were going fast so the boat was tilted and we were braced against the... uh... rigging? We were chatting and suddenly we heard a little bump and rattle, saw a flash of hot pink, then heard a splash of water. At the same time we realized what had happened -- her camera (bought last month) had slid out of her pocket and into the Sound! A. took it well, and luckily there weren't any photos on it except for the ones she'd taken that evening, but still, that really sucked. It happened so quickly there was only enough time for our mouths to drop open. Lots of people on other boats were dressed in pirate gear due to Sea Fair. From that point on there was no end to the "Do you have a cannon? No, it dropped into the water" jokes. Get it? Cannon? Canon? LOL. Poor A. So the second not-so-great thing was that I was called upon at some point to pull in some rope for a sail. Then the wind caught the sail, and I held onto the rope too long, and now I have a painful rope burn on my middle finger. It was cold last night on the water so I didn't really feel it then, but on the drive home -- MAN that stung worse than anything. I put some burn gel on it, which soothed it a bit, but now my finger is in a bandage.

Still, despite these mishaps, it was super fun. Thankfully my awful motion sickness didn't seem to be affected by being on a boat.

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I've finally gotten a new car. It's this one. The same dealership I worked with last time was the one that finally made me the deal I wanted -- gave me the discount I wanted on the new car as well as top KBB price for my leased car/trade in. While it may not have been the best deal on the face of the planet, it's good enough that I'm satisfied. My plan is to drive this car for like 20 years. Or more. I despise the car buying process soooooo much. This car isn't as fully loaded as my old one -- I will miss rain-sensing windshield wipers -- but it has all the stuff I really care about, primarily the navigation and backup camera. I'm also happy it's a hybrid and will help with gas consumption (and the fact that it uses regular gas, unlike my premium gas-chugging former car).

Only negative is that I don't have the new car yet. They have to put some thingy on the fuel whatsit as part of the fix from a recent recall, and it now has priority, being sold, but for the moment I am driving a loaner -- my own car that I sold them, lol. So at the face of it, nothing's changed. I just hope I can get the new car soon, because I'd like for my mom to be able to check it out/ride in it before she goes back to SoCal, and because I worry about things like something happening to the car while it's still on the dealership's lot.

Oh, the color scheme I wanted was a white exterior and black interior, which I guess is not a very popular color combination. They had like 100 white/tans but only one with white/black.

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TV Show Meme, Day 20 - Favorite kiss: Logan/Veronica from Veronica Mars

Logan and Veronica's romance started out very similarly to Draco and Ginny's in that they hated each other's guts. That evolved slowly (very slowly), with Logan being a douchebag to her pretty much the whole time. Then suddenly in this one episode, out of nowhere, they kiss -- and it TOTALLY WORKS. Though there was actually very little build up to this romance, when it happened it didn't seem out of place, and in fact, seemed totally RIGHT. It explained so much of their vitriol toward one another (if Logan had secretly been carrying a torch for Veronica in his unacknowledged heart of hearts, but couldn't do anything about it because she was his best friend's girl). The kiss itself was sudden and hot ... and afterward, when they're looking at each other as she's walking away, confused and vulnerable, it's just so good. I'm not sure the show had me completely sold until that moment.

Okay... I had a traumatizing experience yesterday. Despite the fact that mosquitoes love me and I almost always have several bites on various parts of my body, I've never taken especial precautions to prevent them. I just figured it was a fact of life. But now I need to make it a point to cover myself up from head to go when I go out in the garden. I need to buy some sun clothes and wear them. For the first time ever, I SAW a mosquito feasting on me. I've never seen that before. They usually bite me and I don't notice until the swelling starts. It totally freaked me out to see it sitting there, EATING ME. And yes, now there is a hot lump on my arm where it had treated me like a juice box. THAT IS SO GROSS.

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Have you ever had deep fried pickles? They are so yummy. I had them for the first time a couple months ago -- I was super skeptical, but after the first bite I was completely sold. I failed at making them in my Actifry, but I love them enough that maybe I'll try making them the old-fashioned way. Or just make excuses to go to the People's Pub in Ballard for an excellent plate of them.

Also, I made this cocoa-nana bread the other night. Chocolate and banana, mmm.

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TV Show Meme, Day 18 - Favorite title sequence: Dexter

DESPITE the first few frames showing a mosquito feeding on Dexter, the rest of it features a lot of food. Delicious-looking food (even though it's supposed to make you think of death and murder). So I'm a big fan. I don't get sick of watching this title sequence. :))