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May. 17th, 2008 @ 08:30 pm *mild pout*
Current Location: California
Current Mood: irritated
Tags: ,
Hafta leave to go to Boston tomorrow.

Visiting my folks for about a week.

BY MYSELF.  *pout*  *sniff* (The huz can't spare the vacation time.)

Weirdly, I won't have much time at mealtimes for visiting; Dad sleeps a bunch, and is only reliably awake at mealtimes.  Since much of the point of this visit is to see him, I am home/with family for mealtimes.  I could be convinced to get together for early/midafternoon tea or whatnot, though - Thursday and Friday are most open at this point.  I will have Internet, and I will have cell phone.

Thanks in advance to [info]r_ness for airport pickup!
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hugs, tazz, sleepy tazz, mii
May. 15th, 2008 @ 06:29 pm Warm!
Jeepers, it's hot!  In the town where I work, Yahoo Weather recorded it going up to 100° today.  That was mostly okay because I was in an air-conditioned building from around 10 this morning till about 5:45. 

I am now home, and it's 85° or warmer in here - we have no AC.  At that, it's still a little bit cooler than outside in the shade.  I am sweating merely from sitting here.
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hugs, tazz, sleepy tazz, mii
May. 11th, 2008 @ 09:55 pm It is the greatest joy of any
Current Location: home
Current Mood: mildly embarrassed
Tags: ,
When many many Papagenas, Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-ge-nas, Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-ge-nas,
Upon their parents blessings bring!
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hugs, tazz, sleepy tazz, mii
May. 10th, 2008 @ 10:24 pm Done with Saturday!
Tags:
I'm done!  The recital went very well; pictures later (probably tomorrow).  Service also went well; managed to make sufficient mistakes in rehearsal to force me to pay closer attention to the music during service, and everything went well there too.  Yay soloists (including [info]catagon3), and yay Carson Cooman for (1) writing kick-ass music, and (2) being a good enough friend of our director to come and play organ on his own compositions that we sang.

*blink*  That wasn't very grammatical, was it.

Anyway.  Done with singing for today; hopefully voice will be back for tomorrow's early service, where I get to sing even more!
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hugs, tazz, sleepy tazz, mii
May. 9th, 2008 @ 11:22 am Shattering DNA
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hugs, tazz, sleepy tazz, mii
May. 7th, 2008 @ 08:25 am Like I didn't know already?
Tags:
Dear Body,

Believe it or not, I'm quite aware that I'm fairly stressed by multiple sources.  I figured it out even before you started sending me messages via indigestion, stress dreams, and lack of sleep.  I GOT IT, okay?  So you can quit it now, really.

Sincerely, me
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hugs, tazz, sleepy tazz, mii
May. 4th, 2008 @ 03:11 pm New game in the house!
Current Location: home
We has Okami!  The huz started it earlier today.  It is really really really pretty.  As advertised in some reviews, the power slash is temperamental; we need to figure out how to use the Z-button to ensure a straight line when drawing.

Eeeeeee, pretty pretty pretty!!!!!

----------------

In other news, next Saturday will be even nuttier than I originally thought.  Current plan:

Set alarm for 8:15 to get to 9:15 skating class.  (This is standard.)
Come home, shower, and eat something.  Depart around 11:30 to be at my voice teacher's house at noon, for 12:30 (supposed) start to recital.
Sing; be closing duet act.  Hang around for indeterminate but probably short period of time to hang out, compliment other singers, and eat something.
Depart in time to drop huz off at house and drive to church for 3:30 rehearsal for 5PM cool Evensong service.  Sing some more.  Sing a lot more.
Hang about for indeterminate but somewhat more relaxed period of time, mingling and muching.  At some point, go home and RELAX!
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hugs, tazz, sleepy tazz, mii
Apr. 29th, 2008 @ 10:26 pm Feathers and felt, part 2
Current Location: home
Tags:
A few of my workmates are also skilled crafts'n'sewing people, so I put the feathers+felt question to them.  One of them came up with a totally brilliant idea: staples!  Easy to do 'round the edge, of course.  For feathers farther in, you use the stapler out flat, and have a very hard surface (such as a recently cleaned tile kitchen counter) underneath.

It's not done, but it's more than half covered with feathers, which is not bad for probably 35-45 minutes of work.  The stapling on a flat surface worked pretty well; most of the time, it stapled properly, and 4-5 times it failed, but that was no biggie.

There will be pictures later, I promise.  :)
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hugs, tazz, sleepy tazz, mii
Apr. 29th, 2008 @ 04:56 pm The 106-book meme
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hugs, tazz, sleepy tazz, mii
Apr. 28th, 2008 @ 09:46 pm Quick question..
Current Location: home
Current Mood: curious
Tags:
Anyone out there ever tried to attach feathers to felt?  I have been handed a tube of white glue with which to affix brightly colored feathers to a big piece of bright green felt, but am quite skeptical.  I'm currently thinking that (tedious though it will be) hand-sewing them on will probably be a more stable solution.
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hugs, tazz, sleepy tazz, mii
Apr. 25th, 2008 @ 08:22 pm Hey, I might be able to catch up here...
Tags:
Reposted from kayray

I haven't actually tried anything on the site, but it seems that watchsitcoms has full episodes (and seasons?  somebody check me on this) of several TV shows - including Lost!  Whee, I can has polar bear now.  :)  And movies and stuff too.  Looking forward to checking it out.

(Yes, it's likely easier and nicer watching DVDs, but hey.  Free is free, especially if you don't feel like going to the library.)
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hugs, tazz, sleepy tazz, mii
Apr. 24th, 2008 @ 05:07 pm Thinkiness ≠ creativity
Current Location: work
Tags: , ,
Last night (after having run out of thinkiness), I was looking for the laser pointer, with which I'd been torturing the cats earlier.  (They like it.  Really, they do.  They wanted more, hence my looking for it.) 

After a minor search, I didn't see it in any of its usual places, at which point I declared that the object in question "was displaying a certain lack of findability."

There's gotta be a use for that in some HR-generated office-speak document somewhere, right?

---------

In other news: Having woken up with a scratchy/sore throat that has not gone away over the course of the day, I probably have the cold that's been going around.  I'm not sorry to be getting it over with now, as I can be a single absent soprano out of many for the performance of Carmina Burana that Symphonic Chorus is doing this weekend.  However, it would be spectacularly bad if I were to miss either the recital (of all my voice teacher's students, including me) or the big church Evensong thing that we're doing, both of which happen on Saturday May 10.  Definitely better to get it over with now!

Meantime, here are some alterative lyrics to 'O Fortuna', for the many of you who are familiar with the original Latin.  It's more a son et lumiere of  mis-hearing the original lyrics, rather than making up totally new ones.
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hugs, tazz, sleepy tazz, mii
Apr. 23rd, 2008 @ 10:31 pm *thud* (for, like, the bazillionth time in the last two weeks)
Current Location: home, soon to be bed
Current Mood: exhausted
Tags:
I invented a new word yesterday evening as I was driving the huz and myself to dinner with friends: thinkiness.

Thinkiness is pretty much identical to what I would roughly term 'brainpower' - the ability to think, reason, keep samples straight and ordered, efficiently multitask, and generally pay attention and make decisions.

Thinkiness is something that comes in a set quantity on a daily basis.  It's what one calls brainpower... when one no longer has the brainpower to remember the proper word for the thing, i.e. when you've run out of it.

I have run out of thinkiness at least twice in the last two days, and am definitely out of it at the moment.  Happy new word, everyone.
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hugs, tazz, sleepy tazz, mii
Apr. 21st, 2008 @ 06:57 pm Master and Commander
Current Mood: amused
Tags:
We watched it this weekend, admittedly some years after its theatrical release.  We enjoyed it.  I think it can be reasonably well summarized thusly:

Russell Crowe bears a striking resemblance to William Shatner.

'Nuff said.
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hugs, tazz, sleepy tazz, mii
Apr. 18th, 2008 @ 10:29 am Where's Amethyst?
Current Mood: busy
Tags:
Not dead.  Just crazy-busy at work this week, so no time to post.

Gotta get back to work!
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hugs, tazz, sleepy tazz, mii
Apr. 12th, 2008 @ 08:48 pm 10 things about Amethyst
Current Location: home
Current Mood: thoughtful
Tags:
Having been tagged by [info]nezumiko and having seen this spread around my f-list like wildfire today, I'll give it a shot.  I'll see what I can do about finding 10 things that most folks don't know about me.

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Apr. 10th, 2008 @ 04:22 pm Birthday wishes!
Happy birthday, [info]digitalemur!
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Apr. 8th, 2008 @ 09:53 pm Endless Ocean: There's a polar bear on my boat!
Current Location: home
Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: "Prayer" from Endless Ocean
Tags: ,
When I was a teenager, I really thought for a while that I wanted to be a marine biologist. I spent hours and hours at the New England Aquarium as a kid, staring into the various tanks watching the inhabitants. From the ponderous, blind-looking giant groupers to the starfish and sea urchins that you could reach into the tidal pool tanks and hold, they were all wonderfully mysterious and totally awesome. I wanted to hang out with them and get to know them better.

...Well, most of them. The moray eel always made me a little nervous - it always seemed to be looking straight at me when it gaped that wide, dangerous-looking grin. And watching one too many National Geographic shows about sharks convinced me that it really would be just as well to pursue my fishy interests on land from behind a nice thick sheet of glass.

Enter Endless Ocean, a scuba-diving sim which has quite successfully fulfilled these requirements. Simply exploring beautiful environments and petting pretty fish is really fun. )

Oh, by the way: Don't ask me what a polar bear is doing in a tropical sea. Our best guess is that the Manoa Lai Sea surrounds the island settled by the Swiss Family Robinson.
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hugs, tazz, sleepy tazz, mii
Apr. 4th, 2008 @ 09:41 pm Myst V idiocy
Current Location: home
Current Mood: aggravated
So I'm (as usual) a little behind in terms of current game releases.  We've been playing Myst V: End of Ages on and off for a few months.  I gave it to the huz Christmas 2006, and, well, it took us a little while to pick it up (largely because we were so disgusted with the puzzle design/user interface in the Wild Jungle section of Myst IV). 

Our overall impression so far is that Myst V generally combines the best aspects of Myst III (good puzzles, but no story to speak of) and Myst IV (terrible puzzles for half the game, but a good story).  The story is definitely interesting, and the puzzles have - usually - been pretty well designed.  Sometimes, though.... Two occasions stand out so far as Particularly Stupid.


Sigh.  Every so often, we're really glad that the UHS website is there!
-----------
EDIT: But even UHS doesn't help with random crashes-so-badly-that-you-have-to-restart-the-machine.  Sigh!
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hugs, tazz, sleepy tazz, mii
Apr. 1st, 2008 @ 02:16 pm Oh, how I wish they were joking.
Current Location: work
Current Mood: tired
Tags: , ,
Someone decided that it would be a good idea to make a Zelda movie. 

IGN has the first trailer of the live-action flick here.  It... doesn't look promising. 

For starters, I really don't believe it was wise to carry the trope of Link as Silent Hero to the film medium.  Second, I have a feeling it'll look a little like a speed run of a Zelda game (or there'll only be, like, 3 dungeons).  Finally, while it's fun to watch someone else play (and to yell suggestions when they get stuck - Zelda film crossed with Rocky Horror, anyone??), it's generally much more satisfying to play Zelda yourself.


EDIT: Wooops... fooled me!
-----

As a lighter, better bit of humor, I offer you the short story Wikihistory.  It's about time travel and what all the new members of the International Association of Time Travelers do on their first 'trip'.  Enjoy!
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