seryn

I haven't posted in ages. I've been having non-specific woe. Nothing exactly has happened, but my tolerance for the on-going woe has decreased.

I've been reading a lot. (I should probably review the newest Laurell K Hamilton... but that's another post.) I've watched a lot of Netflix... for whatever reason, our ambient bandwidth went up, so now Simon and I can both be streaming simultaneously. Simon, however, refuses to stream to his new computer, so I can't spin. He's a sofa hog. He came up with something that helps him... one of those sitting up in bed reading pillow things (sort of butterfly-ish shaped?) keeps him from listing to the side when he falls asleep in front of the news.

I inherited Simon's lawnchair recliner. I've been taking it outside for reading. I have to say that those zero gravity recliner chairs are amazing. Unless someone comes to talk to you because then the awkwardness of trying to sit up is embarrassing and you have to do it because otherwise you're talking between your feet. I did pull my shirt up and sun my Santa's beard-white tummy.

Last night I slept with the lights off for the first time in forever. Yay. But when I woke up, I'd been clenching my jaw and my teeth ache. Boo.

I got coffee this morning because we were out of milk at home. There was almost no line. As I was leaving with my latte, there were 20 people in the queue. I really like those gift cards where you can add $25 every once in a while and just swipe your card otherwise. But I wish it had your name embedded in it so I wouldn't keep getting "Sarah" drinks. Also the cardboard sleeve doesn't fit in the car's cupholder and I spilled my coffee setting it down. However, it only spilled on the mat. I used some of my napkin collection to blot it and got the "when did I open this?" water out of the trunk, and re-wetted and reblotted. I wasn't going to drink water that had been open for ages, but it's fine for spill cleanup.

My new doctor has electronic communications, so I found out I passed my mammogram the same day. Last year I was called by the doctor to come in to discuss my results and didn't handle the stress well. Of course I found out afterward that they've pretty much changed the rules on how often you need mammograms. *shrug* I guess I have 2 baselines now.

I kind of want to see Rock of Ages at the theater. But I live in an "urban" community and they don't provide earplugs for people who aren't natively "urban". (I'm originally suburban.) I can bring my own, but it's just easier to wait for the movie to come out on DVD.... and then because we're not getting DVDs from Netflix and they won't even allow us access to the disc queue if we're not getting discs, I have to wait for it to show up on the streaming available, which is probably going to be years. By then I'll have forgotten what it was that I wanted to see and won't recognize the title in the RSS feed of new streaming movies. I do understand why Netflix changed their pricing, but I don't think denying people access to the disc queue is a great idea if they want to sell both services. I'd rent from the Amazon streaming service but they don't offer subtitles--- actually that's a problem with the theater too because with the earplugs I really need them for dialogue confirmation. (Without the earplugs, I need anti-migraine medicine and a sensory dep chamber.

I signed up for the UPS account that supposedly allows you to re-route your packages and change delivery dates.... The free version doesn't allow squat. Even creepier, one of the confirmation questions asked me which house number I shared with a man I never want to see again---- from 20 years ago. I was really upset.

You know that maxim about how washing your car will make it rain because it always rains just after you wash it... I've discovered that putting white sheets on the bed brings on your period. However, not owning white sheets... mine are navy blue, black, and maroon... does NOT prevent getting your period. I still can't believe doctors don't think that's important enough to dedicate research time to stopping. There are ridiculously invasive fertility treatments though. We have expensive drugs to fight men's hair loss---- but permanent hair removal is still dodgy. It's like medical science is going the wrong way. Maybe I should make all the research scientists sleep on clean white sheets.... but living in a hotel doesn't seem to make men menstruate and probably the female research scientists have had uterine-ectomies, so it probably wouldn't work. Washing your car in New Mexico doesn't make it rain there either.

I did finally look up how the stupid touchpad thingy works on my laptop. There's a sensor so it doesn't click out of the window from brushing it while typing. I set that so it stopped screwing me up. There's also a mechanism for gesture scrolling. And you can set different regions to have different click effects. I'm a lot less disgusted by its existence now. But I still prefer an external real trackball. I like the solar powered wireless keyboard a LOT, by the way. However in the winter, I need to leave it in the window to charge periodically because the ambient daylight that makes it to my desk in the winter is insufficient.

I had a good experience shopping at Target recently. I'd bought a throw pillow and hated it because it smelled like an oil refinery. Returned it with the receipt, got zero hassle, was done in under a minute. It seems like we should be able to make $20 throw pillows in the United States instead of importing them from China.

Amazon totally needs to start marking where things are made. I'm not buying kitchen stuff from them until they disclose that. It makes a huge difference if your knives are made in Japan or China or Germany. The same brand will often have two production areas and some things are made in one place some in the other. Of course since everything Target sells is made in China, I can't buy from there either. Can't buy kitchen stuff from Sur La Table because they cater to people with houses.... they only sell 12-inch skillets with the long pan-handle handles, not the loop handles like a stock pot would have. But I do not have a 6 burner Viking stove and that handle would not fit on my stovetop if I had another burner in use. SLT also sells a lot of Chinese-made stuff but they sell it at ludicrous markup like they're pretending it's not cheap plastic shit.

If you buy giraffe socks in green, they look like turtle shell socks. I love Sock Dreams.

I'm doing 2 social things on the same day. I think there's probably some sort of prize for that, right?

I also refrained from making judgmental comments about someone else's entertainment preferences. Out of context, it's kind of funny, "Aren't you too old to like shallow stupid stuff?" mostly that's funny because I'm still watching Glee, myself. Honestly, I'd be less embarrassed for watching porn.

I watched the House from last week this morning (when it came up for free Hulu). There were gobs of commercials for Touch. Including ostensibly unbiased sources which said if we weren't watching it, we should. But Touch is overtly religious. It says God is in the connections between people and the world can only still exist if there are 36 righteous people in it. I get that there are a huge number of people who are religious. And I get that this number is ever increasing as laws tighten down and begin to actively discriminate against the non-believers. (There's a huge social bonus to toeing the line of people's expectations. That doesn't make it right, but there is a reward.) But I don't think any unbiased reviewer should tout an overtly religious show as being excellent viewing that everyone should watch. That was offensive.

Personally I'm astonished by the number of bible-related games that constantly show up as frequently purchased on my Kindle. I keep thinking, "Are there people who want that? Really?" But apparently so. Snarkily, it surprises me less when they're wordsearches than for trivia and crossword puzzles.

I owe some people replies, but it's pleasant out and I'm going to spend some time enjoying that first.

Something good today. I figured out why my Windows nav was all screwed up. I could NEVER find anything ever. If I put a file down or closed a window, it was GONE. C:\Users\S was set to "hidden". It was hidden even from me. I had 7 copies of the same shortcut when I was trying to find the downloads directory and kept saving it to the favorites. Let me explain, when I unchecked "hidden" files APPEARED on the desktop.

I fixed it.

Stuff like that is hard to decipher and I fixed it without ever having seen this operating system before this instance, without knowing someone else who had fixed it and who explained, without knowing that it could get better.

Not saying I've invented a better water filtration system or solved the three-body problem (Simon asked me if I thought mathematics was fundamental to our understanding of the universe or our our interpretation of the universe and I said "it's obviously an attempt to understand the universe but falls far short of the reality." he was surprised I had such a strong opinion and asked why. I said, "The three body problem. Mathematics and physics at the current moment are incapable of addressing this solubly, yet our solar system has dozens of planets and moons.") or created something artistic. But it does come from a place of pride in my accomplishments because it's nontrivial.

I took a slew of pictures today. When I loaded them onto my laptop and could not find them, that was the incentive to do something about the nav issues.

I am going to install the printer drivers on my laptop. I'll still need to boot the old computer that the printer is plugged into, but I won't have to make it struggle to load things just to print them. Groupons are really irritating if you don't have a real smartphone with the app and have to go through tremendous machinations to get things to print.

I still need a better solution, but I need to print a map for tomorrow and this is the best temporary fix... I'm hoping it doesn't take multiple hours.

Need to also try out the new alarm clock. The old one got a bit demented. It got better after I thwacked it rather severely, but no one wants to wake up to "wounded rhinoceros in a wood chipper" nor does anyone want their sleeping brain to snooze after hearing that noise because the 7 minutes of following dream were where I figured out what the noise resembled. I'm not sure I've heard a rhino. I don't know what a wood chipper sounds like, but in my snooze dream I could hear the splat+crunch of flesh and bone being ground up and smell blood and predators looking for food puree.

I need to find a normal furniture store. I want a rocker-recliner by someone other than Lazyboy. I sat in a few yesterday and they all require lots of abdominal muscle to get the chair to recline and if I shift around at all, the chair sits up and I have to start all over. I don't know if they make recliners for infirm people, but whenever I see those commercials for adjustable beds, I keep thinking, "F.... Just get a recliner."

I did something nifty today. I was at Walgreens and they had these eyeshadow pen things that are kind of like lipstick in texture except not greasy. So I got a two-ended one with a silver blue and a darker blue. Now that I've come home, I've decorated my head.

Since the sides are shaved down to almost nothing and bleached, I can easily have visible decorations. I drew a simple casual spiral thing on each side with the silver blue and used the darker to emphasize it a bit. It looks strange but awesome.

I brought flowers for a neighbor when I was getting some for myself. I called Simon's brother's wife to see what color towels he might like since she'd said he would appreciate that and honestly my new towels are terrific.

So new stuff that doesn't suck.

I like standing in the shower where one side is cool and the other side of my body is warm because the water and the air are divergent temperatures. I like the feeling of my head with very little hair. My new towels are squishy soft and plush. I put them in the dryer for 10 minutes today because they needed a bit of help after yesterday's extra showers.

Simon woke me up, I'd gone back to bed after determining that he didn't need/want a ride to work after we had pita & hummus for breakfast and I sat through yet another edition of "news no one gives a fuck about", because I'd forgotten to fill out my mail-in ballot. Simon dropped them off.

I'm enjoying A Touch Of Frost, which is another British mystery show available from Netflix streaming. I'm still irked with Netflix but not enough to spite my own face.

My new wireless trackball remains ideally suited. My solar charging wireless keyboard is still extremely cool, but I'm finding it requires deliberate charging. I'm actually typing on the laptop itself while the keyboard languishes in the window. If I lived alone, I'd have the big halogen lamps on and there wouldn't be a problem except with my power bill.

My new box of tissues is blue. Not just the box, the tissues themselves are blue. I haven't seen that in years. I used to only buy blue ones. I remember when paper towels came in colors too.

My bills are all paid.

So how's this for a list of things that don't suck?

I cut my hair. Again. I like it. I cut it with scissors until it's a long fuzz on the top and sides and is long enough to lie smoothly in the back, but cut short to just at the hairline on the nape side. It's short enough to stand without gel on the top, doesn't require conditioner, can be washed with bodywash without reeking all day because there's a pound of hair that absorbed the scent, and makes me look like I don't have time to waste on frivolous things.

My skin looks like hell. It's not my fault. Stress and medications.

I think I mentioned I bought a wireless trackball? I did. Logitech M570. It's not rechargeable. Which I don't like, but they're promising a year plus per single AA battery and I honestly love not having a cord on that side. I also like it being a trackball because with two computers, two keyboards, two mice... I was out of room for mousing in.

I want to make a PSA that not all therapists with the same degree are the same and it behooves you to try more than one. I had never been and I've now been in contact with 4 within 2 weeks, so I know how overwhelming it is to even find the first one and it seems insurmountable to call more and start all over again, but the help needs to help or it won't help.

Simon has started refusing to make choices for stupid things. It's really irritating. He keeps coins all over our apartment so he can flip one whenever I ask him something. "Do you want tacos or ravioli?" Simon said if he got to pick, he would prefer ravioli. I explained that I would prefer ravioli because I didn't feel like cooking and the tacos would be a lot more work. And STILL, even though we agree, he has to flip the coin to double check. He offered me "If it's heads 4 times in a row, we'll have tacos." I didn't see why we should have to risk that when neither of us wanted tacos and neither of us felt like cooking. We'd already decided independently that we both preferred the same choice. Why introduce an unnecessary variable that will just cause misery and debugging errors?

Hmm. I think I don't like chai-tea iced tea. Or at least not when I make it at home. Maybe I need a new brand of teabags.

I was amused by the Scooby Doo drabble that was on the top of my reading list today. Velma/Fred. Which causes me all sorts of WTF, even though on the newest incarnation of the show it's dead obvious that Velma tried to settle for Shaggy and just can't make herself do it, she seems absolutely disgusted by Fred's monofocus on traps instead of the mystery aspect. Plus this incarnation's Velma admires Daphne and doesn't think she's anywhere nearly as vapid as everyone thought she was from the original series. (I didn't watch any of the series between the original and this latest one.)

We're watching Alphas, but so far we're not hooked. We're probably 2 weeks behind everyone else, we've only seen two so far. I can't tell if I'm going to like it or if it's going to turn out like Lost and Heroes, where it shows a lot of promise but the writers have no bloody clue where they're going and they keep promising that it will make sense at the end but after 5 years and zero progress along the overarching plot rainbow, the show just ends without the resolution we all were craving. If it's going to be like that, then I don't want to waste my time. The second episode had the "actress" who played Murphy on The Dresden Files. She doesn't have a lot of range from what I've seen. I was surprised her character on Alphas wasn't named Murphy... it's the same character.

We're into the David Tennant era of Doctor Who now. I didn't expect that I could possibly like David Tennant because he was such an ass whenever I saw him... I saw the Doctor Who cast on The Weakest Link and he was so annoying. His character was blindingly annoying in "The End Of Time". But I have been really enjoying his interpretation as progress from the Eccleston version. Eccleston's Doctor was bitchy and mean and biased against anyone who wasn't a Time Lord. Tennant's Doctor is less so. Clearly has a bias still, but willing to accept that there might be individuals within other species who are worthy of knowing. Certainly the early Tennant Doctor still carries that sense of responsibility and pain, unlike right before he regenerates into the Matt Smith Doctor. It's been really enjoyable watching this show. I had no idea why anyone watched it because I hadn't seen but a few episodes from long before Star Wars came out, and it just wasn't interesting. I generally loath time travel as a trope in science fiction. And I don't like forced humor in my drama. (Dramas should have humor contained within but it should be humor because we all share common references, not because they're trying to be funny at times when it is inappropriate.) So I really assumed I was going to hate it. Having gotten glimpses during the Eccleston era when it was new, I patted myself on the back for good judgment. Having seen David Tennant all over the place when he was the current Doctor, I patted myself on the back for good judgment. But glimpses of the Matt Smith Doctor captured my attention and I really appreciate seeing the "prequels" that were actually filmed previously.

In terms of computer stuff, having 2 external mice, 2 monitors, 3 keyboards and 2 computers all running at once on my desk has my body confused. I keep reaching for the wrong mouse. But my learning curve is improving. I was able to fix the task bar behavior in W7. I still haven't figured out how to change key behavior, but I'm going to work on that next. I should also import some of my music and make sure the headphone jack is tolerable since 5 years with a defective one really sucked. All in all, I feel like the new machine is great. Enough things have been brought up to speed, even without grabbing old data, that I'm doing quite well. A lot of my stuff was on-line stuff, so as long as I had the usernames and passwords, I was all set. So far the only thing I haven't been able to get set up right was Hulu.

I really don't like the foreshortened screen proportion. I thought I would like it for video watching, and I do, but when I'm typing, I'm really bloody annoyed that almost nothing fits. I've got these big dreams of dual screening with two normal monitors... though that will probably require one of the more expensive docking stations.

Things are going mostly okay, but I think I might go lie down and read. I should go read while running at the gym instead, but having skipped for two weeks already, I'm finding continued skiving to be quite easy to justify.

I really cannot wait for DW to get off their "technical debt repayment" asses and actually put up the new posting page. I hate that the subject line is at the top, I hate it even more now that scrolling is really fubar (the external mouse wheel doesn't get along with the standard drivers on the laptop). And I hate having to tab through 8 things and 3 buttons before getting to the post button. I would also like for this page to not waste half the screen. With all the wasted horizontal space I normally get from webpages doubled by the wide-screen monitor, I find myself even more irritated than usual by legacy sites that assume 640x480 screens are necessary to accommodate.

I bought the hardcover of the latest Dresden book, but haven't started it yet. I've got I Am Number Four from the library in hopes that there's more to the book than there was to the movie, but I haven't started that either. And I bought the paperback of the new Wilks book, I would have just borrowed it from the library like I did the Jeanienne Frost book--- even though I really like Frost, I don't like the Cat & Bones books anywhere nearly as well as the ones where she brings in the side characters. I lost a lot of respect for Cat early on and I still hate her as a character. But the main reason I don't buy the Frost books anymore is because she is another author who thanks God for her success.

I know that saying about one door closing means a window will be opening... but I don't expect it to be played out in my flist... I was unfriended by someone and friended by someone new on the same day. I didn't know either of them. Admittedly I do feel a lot better that I got both announcements together.

We watched the most recent episode of White Collar and it's still meh. But I really liked the line about palladium bullets being used to kill modern werewolves. That was funny.

I still haven't ported stuff over to my new computer but there is room on the desk for it now, so I can dual-team. It gets really confusing when I have 6 browser windows open. I need to actually convert. Remind me also that I need to find out if I can do wireless printing with my printer.

I used the donut pans tonight. With muffin mix from the store. I'm quite pleased with the effect so far. The bottom side does look like a donut, but the top turns out a bit flat & domed like from a regular muffin pan. I may have over-filled them during the baking because when they're upside down there's a well for filling, not a hole.

The other me is actually knitting something. *sigh* And not just Simon's socks. I want my thing done by Friday because I need it then for my evening plans... but I have things I need to do tomorrow because Friday got astonishingly full today.

I spent: 3.5 +.5 +.5 +.5 = 5 entire hours on the phone today. Some of it is Simon's SIL called. We normally talk seasonally and I left her a message in April because it had been a few months since we talked last. We had to cover everything all at once. Normally I spend maybe half an hour a week on the phone covering everything.

I did go outside today. And I took my vitamins. Tomorrow I should probably go to the store and do laundry and give up on my Netflix disc. Normally I wouldn't shop for food and do laundry on the same day, but I have to be up at 4am on Friday morning and will be out until midnight. I will be home in between there, but hopefully will be able to nap. I have been going to sleep about 1am lately and getting up at 7, so I'm already sleep debted. Good thing I've been taking care of myself otherwise.

Can I also add that I've stopped recording most shows on Food Network? Yeah. Iron Chef America... who cares who the chefs are, (unless it's Morimoto who I can't watch)? I want to know what the ingredient is. No point in recording something where they're cooking with fish. It seems like at least half of their episodes are some super sub-specific kind of fish. Those just get deleted. If you delete half the episodes unwatched and fast forward to the judging for the others, might as well not bother. We started watching Diners Drive Ins and Dives after the fourth time we skimmed across it live and Guy who is named after a miniature Oldsmobile was raving about somewhere near us. But if you look and the show descriptions it doesn't say where. And no one who lives in California is going to go to po-dunk Florida to eat at a diner. If I'm going all the way to Florida, I'm going to Disney World.

I searched for more free ebooks today. One of those 99 centers I had been considering was available free, so I grabbed it right away. But I'm still preferentially reading fic on my Kindle.

I have a stupid question. Why are there trash chutes that are too small for a 16" pizza box?

I don't use the trash chute in the building much. A lot of our outgoing waste is recyclable. I don't notice the tiny aperture when it's bathroom trash. But there was a missive that came around decreeing that pizza boxes were not recyclable. So, since they're specifically trash, it brings us back to the problem of the small trash chute. I wonder if super-modern buildings have chutes for recyclables.

I did envy something about Poirot's flat... they have a little door in the kitchen that goes to an interior stairway and one sets one's bin outside the little door for the magic rubbish fairies to take away.

ps. I still lust after the drapes in the various Sherlock Holmes series. Which isn't really relevant but as long as we're talking about British media set in archaic times, I might as well add in my off-topic thing... at least I didn't ramble on about the dresses and balls in Austen books.... but honestly I don't think American men now would allow their rooms to have Sherlock Holmes's drapes. The drapes are floral but on a black field and instead of lace, they have those pompoms. It's not at all insipid. Who decided that men can't like floral patterns? It's probably the same people who decreed that my genetics mean I like pink and should only dress in wimpy colors. Those drapes are gorgeous. pps. They'd look fantastic next to my fantasy dining table....