It Started with a Journal

If anyone is on Dreamwidth, my name there is sarea. I actually always use DW to post and just crosspost to LJ because LJ is still where most people congregate. But I'm going to start including a DW footer with my posts, as perhaps eventually I'll just migrate there. Frankly I like a lot of things about DW more than LJ, not the least of which is that their entry length limit is a lot higher than LJ's. I don't really give a hoot about any of the recent changes LJ's made, but a lot of other people seem to, so whatever, I'm flexible. I probably should have just gotten sarea_okelani there too, to avoid confusion, but I've always wanted just plain sarea. LJ's "sarea" has made a total of two posts since they created the journal in 2001, and hasn't even made a single entry since July 8 of that year. -.-

This is one of the most heartbreaking things I have heard about recently. I can't help but follow all the reports about it, because it makes me so, so sad and angry. RIP, Danny Chen. You seemed like one of the best sort of people the world should have.

Jade and I want to see this movie "Haywire" that's coming out in another week or so. It's like Alias meets Salt meets Mr. & Mrs. Smith (well, the trailer's opening scene) meets City Hunter! Many A-list male celebrities... though the female lead not as much.

I've watched 2 more episodes of American Horror Story. Unfortunately, as corianderstem warned, it's already gotten away from being freaky and is on to being kind of hokey. I watched the "Halloween" two-parter, and it felt more like Buffy meets the X-Files than anything truly scary (perhaps appropriate since one of the writers was James Wong). Very different from the first 3 episodes, which freaked me the hell out.

The bad news is, apparently there's 12 cases of drug-resistant TB in India and this is how mankind will perish. The good news is, while I'm still alive and able to play Pandemic, I now know what to name one of the diseases.

I had the BEST dream last night. I dreamed that I was Ga Eul. And you know what that means, right? I got to be with Yi Jeong. It was AWESOME. You envy my brain.

Apparently Alexis Stewart, Martha Stewart's only child, is releasing some kind of memoir/autobiography. According to this article: While talking about their neighbors, one of whom was a woman who was married to an wealthy unattractive man, Alexis says Martha gave her this little piece of advice: "[My] mother actually told me when I was a small child, 'Now Alexis, if this ever happens, you make sure you have sex with somebody else to have their baby. Don't have his baby.' She was very practical about it. It was a survival skill -- you have someone rich and ugly who takes care of you, and you have someone who's hot and makes attractive babies."

Is that supposed to be bad advice? >.> I'm terrible, I know.

Slowly making my way through the fresh figs. What I did with them last night: split them in two, smeared each half with a dab of chèvre, wrapped bacon around them, then broiled for about 7 minutes. Fattening? Yes. Delicious? YES!

I don't know what to watch next. There isn't anything that's really calling to me, and I don't really feel like catching up on new episodes of the various series I watch, because I'll probably wait for most/many of them to finish airing before I do, or at least air more episodes first. Now that I haven't seen them in months I don't feel any urgency about it. I also don't feel like reading. akscully thinks that I should finish playing Mass Effect. I probably should, except I can't really remember where I left off or what I was supposed to be doing.

I really need to go clothes shopping.

So on MSNBC today I read about a woman who ate her ex's goldfish after a spat. Crazy headlines remind me of my favorite one ever: Oregon woman obsessed with rabbits again arrested.

*Again* arrested. "Ranger said she found no rabbits when she finally got inside but did find a half-empty 10-pound bag of carrots." :)) Seriously, you can't make this stuff up.

So INSANELY busy at work. The other day consisted of wall-to-wall meetings with 2 half-hour breaks. The one project that came up suddenly went OK, it was delivered yesterday, but one thing went wrong (it always does ... and the aftermath was everything I remembered about this project and why I hated it), and I was so stressed out from that and all the meetings (and some personal stuff) that at the end of the day in my office I just started crying. Luckily it was dark and no one saw me, but I just bawled. And it's not over yet. The other project I'm working on is for Monday. Also, I'm in the midst of switching office phones, but something has gone awry with that so I can't receive incoming calls (but can dial out). Can't anything go right?

I also bought some wall decorations from Blik, and something went awry there too, but luckily not for me so much. They sent me a package that was intended for another customer (when I opened it, I was like, WTF is this? Oh great, they sent me the wrong thing) -- the packing slip has her name/address on it, but the outside packaging had my name/address. Luckily, my actual order came in other packages, so I got my stuff OK.

Here is the cast so far for the HBO pilot of "A Game of Thrones." I'm okay with pretty much all of them except ... is Lena Headey going to dye her hair blonde? I also agree w/ the other fans on the Jamie casting; the guy they chose is a little too ruggedly handsome, Jamie is supposed to be a pretty boy. I don't have any problem with the Jennifer Ehle casting, but I had to crack up at this: "Some see her as a good choice, others say she isn't "pretty enough" or isn't Gillian Anderson." :)) Also, Ray Stevenson as Sandor Clegane would have been SO GOOD ... but I shall endure. Also, the actress they got for Daenerys is nowhere near as pretty as I was imagining in my head. I definitely pictured someone whose features weren't so sharply defined; someone softer.

I'm not too far into A Storm of Swords but I do have a couple of comments. ( Spoilers. )

I'm going to Santa Cruz next weekend and apparently we don't even have a venue yet or know what we're going to do, because of the unpredictable weather. Sigh. This is going to turn out to be the best or lamest time ever.

As predicted, it's going to cost about $1,000 to get the piano shipped up here. I guess I'm going to do it. But get this, they now also want to give me some of the other nice furniture they have, like their china cabinet and what not. And obviously if we're going to have multiple heavy items, it makes more sense to ship it all at once, so now I'm just waiting on them to finalize a) what exactly they're sending; b) who they're going to use to ship; and c) when they're going to do it. It's all so crazy.

I've decided to buy a lame. I probably should have gotten one earlier, but I had thought, why buy it when a sharp knife works? Well, this far into my baking 'career,' I've realized that slashing dough, while seemingly easy, is probably the hardest part of the entire process. Either my tools aren't sharp enough or my technique just isn't good enough yet -- either way, it's clear I have to hedge my bets in order to get pretty bread. There's no guarantee that the lame will be a miracle fix, but its express purpose is slashing dough, so it certainly can't hurt (at least worth the $7 investment). I wouldn't need it if I were only baking pan loaves, but it's way more fun to make free-form loaves, and with those good slashes are a must. It's slashing the dough pre-baking that makes bread look like bread, instead of a large, oversized peanut.

Daily News Roundup:

Californians just have to be sooooooo health conscious. You don't like second-hand smoke, your restaurants have cleanliness grades, you spawn all these diet fads, you want to be flame retardant ... god! So picky! Well, now look what you've done. I hope you're happy.

This is the first time I've ever heard of anyone even mentioning the possibility of an MMO dethroning WoW. The culprit? WAR, of course.

This site is hi-larious. Everyone's so gloom and doom lately. Let's not lose our sense of humor. My favorite topics: The Onion, Unpaid Internships, San Francisco, Threatening to Move to Canada, Toyota Prius, Barack Obama, and Apple Products. Things are only funny when they have a semblance of truth to it, and LiveJournal is populated with these truths. And if you can't look at yourself (including me, since I'm, well, a "banana"), laugh, and recognize some of that truth, you are taking yourself way too seriously.

Last but not least: Thank God it's Friday.