So for Christmas this year, we're having presents and family stuff in the morning instead of Christmas Eve night, because I have to work. I'm going to do my best to work at home, and the CEO usually kicks everyone out early anyway, but whatever. I don't really want my Mom and Sis descending on our house when I have to work because that's irritating.

Anyway, instead of our now-Traditional not-quite-British evening Menu, I've got to sort something out for breakfast. Eek.

Here's what I'm thinking

Scrambled eggs with cream cheese, smoked salmon and dill (or with just cheese for the little ones)
Scones with Marmalade, clotted cream, and strawberry jam.
Roasted potatoes with Rosemary
A fruit thing?
Bacon?

Pomegranate Mimosas
Tea - Eros Black
Coffee

Then, there is presents.

The kids are getting an iMac as their big gift, stuffed to the brim with fancy free and shareware for kids. Rhys is getting either a Fire Truck or a Bowling set (the other one is for his birthday) and Elliot is getting (I think) some wooden Dinosaur Skeletons and knights for his Playmobile set.

They are also, thanks to the industrious google-fu of their loving Godfather Justin, getting a copy of My Neighbor Totoro, which is their favorite Studio Ghibli movie and which is woefully and unreasonably out of print. And the plan was that they would each get a small stuffed Totoro in their stocking. Which, apparently, is a more than trivial problem. Amazon has Totoros for like $25 each plus shipping, which is a bit more than I want to spend on stuffed animals for my kiddos. I can get them cheaper on e-bay but they've got to match, which is hard. So, I was thinking that I might make them some Totoros... but, while they're about the easiest thing in the world to sew I've never made a stuffed toy before and would like a pattern. Lo and behold, every damn pattern is for amurigumi -- crocheted animals. I do in fact possess the skill to make amurigumi Totoros for my boys. But um, I kinda wanted them to be stuffed and now I'm petulent because Disney is making what ought to be a simple one-click 'my Id is connected to my credit card directly through Amazon.com' kind of shopping trip in to a royal pain in my ass.

Stupid Disney. Stupid Totoros. Why couldn't they be in to Kiki's Delivery Service?

Truly, I want to know where it's written that nature documentaries need to be depressing. And not "oh that's sad" depressing, but "bonus points if you drive your viewers to slit their wrists".

Four years ago, I rented March of the Penguins. It had a mother penguin cuddling her baby on the cover; I thought it would be sweet. Instead, I came home to the Tsarina holding a newborn Elliot to her chest, bawling her eyes out. See, whichever asshole filmed it decided it would better to have constant peril. Hell, a better name would have been 101 Ways Baby Penguins Die.

Seriously. You get to see baby penguins picked off by predators, starving baby penguins waiting for their mamas to come back from fishing, not knowing their mamas died to sea lions. . .I could go on.

So, now, one of Elliot's birthday presents was the BBC's Walking With Dinosaurs. And guess what? No, not constant peril--although there's a bit of that. No, we get worse. An example: the series' end focuses on a mama Tyrannosaurus Rex and her two kids. A bad run-in with an ankylosuarus leaves the mama T. Rex wounded, then sick, then dead, laying out in the wilderness. Her two kids slowly starve, hanging out with her corpse, waiting for her to feed them.

Pretty fucking depressing, no? Well, then they decided to drop the rock that kills the dinosaurs. A bright flash, and then the last time we see the T. Rex babies, they and their mama's body get swept up and pulverized by the blast wave.

And this is something we're expected to show our kids?! We are not amused.

So last night after hearing avalanche noises, I take a walk arround midnight to make sure the house is okay. I find a limb of a tree in the terrace had broken off and was now obstructing the driveway. It was brobably twice as long as the driveway is wide.



Heres a picture from the morning after. As you can see in a random burst of energy I cut, and dragged off a good 8-10' of it somewhere between 1 and 2 AM. I was tempted to be that moron with a chainsaw, but lacking willingness to be a moron with a Chainsaw @ 2 in the morning I used a handsaw :). Which worked out, seeing as is I found out the next morning the chainsaw is non-functional. But the city is going to take care of it! Eventually.

( The Morning After )

I think my adrenials were in a bit of overdrive last night, as on the way home I bounced off that guard thing on the beltline. At which point I said Fuck This I need new tires now, and made my way to Farm and Fleet. Even though I couldn't really afford the tires but my car is now a car in the snow and not a hovercraft. As much as I would love a hovercraft, my car is not registered as one. So by the time I got home (8:00), I scarffed some leftovers and watched movie with wife and child and built a bookcase. Then after doing the pet care rounds I went out, took some pics, picked up a saw and sawed for a couple hours before saying fuck this (again).

( Bonus pretty night time pic )

You can barely see the outlike of the entire tree here. I'm rather surprised that I had so much trouble with lighting, yes it was night but with the snow reflecting a metric orca butt of ambient light it was nearly daytime light levels. Oh well.

Edit: by the way, if I had parked 2ft closer to the drivway my car would have been darn near totalled. I don't know what's gotten into it lately but it's been on a sever luck street. I couldn't find a scratch from the episode on beltline :o

I said I would go in today, despite missing work due to a cold yesterday. But... My car is completely plowed in. It didn't occur to me to get a shovel for the car, which I now realize was totally dumb-ass of me. The buses are not running today. I will have to walk to work, but no one has shoveled their walks yet (which reminds me, how am I going to get to the house to shovel?). I'm still feeling like crap (but a lot better than yesterday).

In addition to my car being plowed in, the road from my place to the main road is blocked off because of fallen power lines. I have no idea when that will be fixed so they can plow that road. I DO know another way of getting out to the main road though, assuming there are no down lines or down trees over there.

So what is the plan? Not sure. I have about an hour to decide if I'm going to walk, dig my car out with a spoon (or more likely, my hands), or stay home again. I DO have the paid time, but if I use it now I can't use it later. We shall see.

I missed the thunder and lightning though, which is too bad. But I slept reasonably well, which is good!

Edit: Screw it. I'm staying in. I'll dig my car out by hand in a few hours when the sun is actually up, then go to the house and shovel this afternoon.

Today is the sort of day where I drink scotch out of the kid's plastic cups and bawl in my car over court decisions on land fractionation. Just in case you were wondering.

And, okay, I did a TON of work on land fractionation when I was working for the Great Lakes Indian Law Center and have seen the issues in action in the local Mdewakanton Souix community and all the work they're doing to combat fractionation and reclaim their tribal lands and all the white-bread dumbfucks in Shakopee who behaving like entitled jackasses over the issue.

So um, it is an issue near and dear to my heart and all. But yeah. It was a blizzard. Major hazardous road conditions already which I did not need to compound with crying my eyes out because the Obama Administration did a big thing right. Hi. Car accidents? Also not helpful to tribal interests.

So yeah. Valerian + Laphroig + Hot tea will hopefully = sleep and a better day tomorrow. Particularly if it manages to snow the predicted metric asston between now and my morning commute. Because I have a plan that involves managing our current disaster from under my down comforters, taking my kids swimming over lunch, and making Boeuf Bourgingnon and distinctly does not involve high-stress commutes or seeing my cube for the nest 24 hours. I'm putting the universe on notice.

that there is some chance that I might send out, like, cards, or presets or some other unlikely thing.

I'm just gonna copy big chunks of sophy's post I swiped this from,k?

Okay, so I kinda hate all those polls asking you to fill them out if you want a holiday card from each and every individual person on your list every year. They just feel weird to me. Like I'm begging or something. Or like you don't really want to send me something but will feel compelled to if I fill out the poll. Or like you'll think I hate you if I don't fill it out. Or, I dunno. It just feels weird the way they're so often worded. So I don't always fill them out.

But suffice it to say, if you have my address already, of course I'd love to get a card or whatever from you in the mail at any time of year, including around now. And if you don't have my address and want it, you can feel free to PM me or email me if you have my email addy and ask me for my address and I'll give it to you. Or I suppose you could even re-point me to your poll and I'll grudgingly fill it out this time.

....
I can't promise you'll get anything by the New Year. Or by your next birthday. Or ever. But I'll have really really good intentions. And those count, right??


end copied bits


originally posted at http://maevele.dreamwidth.org/216159.html comment here or there comments

Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse Chai

2 tablespoons cinnamon chips (crush whole cinnamon sticks inside a sealed bag with a rolling pin or mallet)
2 tablespoons dried ginger pieces or 4 teaspoons chopped fresh ginger
1 tablespoon whole cloves
1/8 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon ground cardamom
1/2 gallon water plus 3/4 gallon water
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup unflavored black tea leaves (Ceylon or Assam; decaffeinated is fine)

1/3 gallon warmed (not boiled) whole milk

Directions: Start the recipe one day in advance. In a pot, bring the cinnamon chips, ginger, cloves, cayenne and cardamom to a boil in 1/2 gallon water. Remove from heat, cover and let sit overnight.

Pour an additional 3/4 gallon of water into the pot. Bring to a boil. Stir in the sugar and tea leaves, and immediately remove pot from heat. Let steep for 8 minutes, then strain. Store the strained liquid as is for two to three weeks in the refrigerator, adding warmed milk to individual servings, freeze, or, if you prefer, add 1/3 gallon warmed milk to the liquid all at once. With the milk added, the chai will keep one week refrigerated.
Makes 12 large-teacup servings.

**FINAL EDIT Thu Dec 10 02:15:47 UTC 2009**

So there is the final update... Over the past day we have processed around 11 million jobs out of the 12 million that were in queue at that time. Please bear in mind that over this past day, more jobs for notifications are also created. So while the queue has been dropping, we are still not fully caught up at this point, due to backlog and new jobs. We have roughly 3 million jobs still pending that involve the notification system in some manner. We had hoped we could have fully cleared the queue in a day, but unfortunately we can't clear it too quickly, since we need the rest of the site to operate normally. From our current perspective on the amount of jobs that are left in queue, and how many it has processed thus far, we believe it will take around another 8 - 12 hours to process everything.

And finally some answers to some questions:

( Read More and Get Some Answers... )

Ya'll, please cheer me up.

I just went to wash my hands after lunch and noticed that there's a big, hugemormous CHIP in the big diamond in my engagement ring. Like, it's enormous and visable from fucking space.

It's a DIAMOND. It's not supposed to chip! *weeps* I'm totally beyond devestated at this, and I'm not even sure why. I mean, I don't think that in some way my ring represents my marriage or anything. It's just that I really love my engagement ring inordinately, and it's so lovely and perfect and beyond awesome and far more gorgeous and wonderful than I deserve and I know how hard Nathan worked to buy it especially considering that at the time he bought it, it cost more than either of our cars and was the single most expensive thing either of us owned.

And okay, we do have an extended warranty policy on it, although I'm scared that the store is going to try to invalidate it based on the fact that I haven't been getting my ring cleaned every 6 months for the past ten years. I am, of course, going to raise HOLY HELL at them if they try it -- I'm having a hard time restraining myself from leaving work immediately in order to raise holy hell with them right fucking now, actually -- but I'm just all discombobulated and I have a ton of work to do and could really use a hug.

It hasn't. It has evolved all of my relationships with others such that it has created new needs for me, rather than help me with needs I have or had. I got this LJ exactly because I could no longer stay in touch with certain people unless I was online. I now need my e-mail as well, when I never needed it before. I have many other similar needs, that I would probably rather do without.

I do appreciate that the internet has evolved to suit various wants. I can now look up old songs, games, and other media that I might have had trouble locating before, but I don't really need these things, and I would probably be better off if there wasn't such easy access to so many potential time sinks.

Dear Brain:

Hi.

Please stop sending the incessant list of plot bunnies for J2 fic now, k? I have SO MANY things to write and am still having time making time to write anything at all. So seriously... the world does not actually need a J2 story based on RCPM's "Americano!", no matter how much your husband says that it does and wants to wax intellectual about "Banditos" and how "Americano!" is the more mature and harder core sequel and how you could use the contrast between the two in flashbacks to build dramatic tension.

He is probably just doing this to avoid listening to "Listen Without Prejudice" for the fifth time in two days.

And even if it did need those things, you've got to learn to finish what you've started first.

me.

this was the third time in a month or so that i gave snl a try, and sweet jesus, it isn't just not funny, it is fucked up offensive. Really, you're doing jokes about tiger woods where the laugh is in the fucking domestic violence? fuck you snl


then classism,racism. etc etc etc, but especially, 'HAHA, she kicked h his ass!"

originally posted at http://maevele.dreamwidth.org/214495.html comment here or there comments