my baby's in the white fluffy clouds

oh also, mary's mob, 7 PM thursday

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 01:05:37 GMT

A bunch of people are like "Thursday? What are you doing?" I cannot see you all at the same time. EXCEPT THAT I CAN.

Therefore, Mary Chung's, Thursday, 7 PM.

let me know if you plan to make it? but also just show up if you want <3

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all the weekends in 2011

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 17:02:49 GMT

Here is my weekend schedule for the rest of the year:

OCT 7-9: saturday organizing pokemon tournament, sunday playing in one
OCT 14-16: paper due, maybe a pokemon tournament if I have time
OCT 21-23: visit Ruth! <3
OCT 28-30: Rik in town! <3
NOV 4-6: Rik still in town! <3 <3 <3
NOV 11-13: either pokemon regionals in LA or maybe Anna visit? need to collapse this waveform --- or bonus secret plan! EDIT: Doing bonus secret plan
NOV 18-20: currently empty, waffling about flying to Boston EDIT: doing homework
NOV 25-27: in Wisconsin for thanksgiving
DEC 2-4: work on final papers EDIT: and pkmncollectors meetup!
DEC 9-11: probably not catgirl goth rave, work on last final paper if not done EDIT: Anna visiting!
DEC 16-18: probably catgirl goth rave, need to pin this down EDIT: Catgirl Goth Rave for sure
DEC 23-25: Christmas with Krinn's family
DEC 30-JAN 1: no idea yet, tempted to come back home because I will have been in SF for so long EDIT: definitely coming back home, have to judge the Tucson Pokemon City Championships!

There will probably be some Pokemon city championships in there too, but of course those aren't scheduled yet because THAT WOULD BE HELPFUL. It's almost like they know that I will probably adjust my schedule to go and grumble about it no matter what they do. ;) ...I may, though, have too much of a life to be the very best like no one ever was.

EDIT: Bonus secret plan: NOV 11-13 also has a Pokemon Regional in Rhode Island. I could get everything except the seeing Anna step done if I did that. Hmmmmmm.

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Moving logistics largely determined!

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 15:28:23 GMT

OK! So, not that you all necessarily care, but I have the move ~~mostly~~ planned out now. It will go something like this:

Ongoing: PAAAAAAACK
Ongoing: Make list of things to bring in van
Before Jul 20: Get one or two air mattresses
Jul 15: Rik arrives
Jul 18: Trailer arrives
Jul 18-20: Fill trailer with most things I own
Jul 20: Trailer leaves
In between: Prep food for travel for me, since I can't eat truck stop food at all
Jul... 21? 22? 23?: Start drive to Tucson, caravanning with Rik and me in my car and zanazibar and N. in their car. (There's a possibility we'll have another driver; we don't need to fly in like four people anymore, though, thank god.)
Next day: Arrive at house, unpack cats, crash
Jul 25: Trailer arrives
Jul 25-27: Unpack trailer
Jul 28: Rik flies to Seattle, I fly to San Francisco
Jul 29: Sit at Wicked Grounds or something and work all day
Jul 30: Wander SF with Krinn, maybe some social time
Jul 31: Drive from SF to Tucson with Krinn and her things
Aug 1: unpack Krinn's things

Yes, I am moving across the country and then immediately flying a thousand miles to help someone else move. Given the choice between awesome and reasonable, I will generally pick awesome.

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Adventure!

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 01:20:13 GMT

Rik and I went on an adventure today. The ostensible purpose for this adventure was to visit Smithville, IN, a town of maybe a thousand people around ten miles south of where I live in Bloomington. Why, you might ask, would I want to go to Smithville? Well, my favorite song by For Squirrels, one of my favorite bands, is called "Under Smithville" (link to song on YouTube with album cover as "video"), and I have no idea which Smithville it's about. [0] Since I started seeing signs for Smithville around where I lived I've been like "Oh my god I need to go under Smithville" but had never gotten around to it. Thus: To Smithville!

I looked it up online, and it's part of the Clear Creek Township, which has an amazing old but not old enough that it doesn't use javascript website with details about a commune in the township, the train that used to run there, and so on. I looked up a route to get to Smithville in general, confirmed there was a picture I could take a sign with, and then Rik and I purposefully got in the car without any directions and decided to see what we found. We first managed to get totally lost and find the end of a road to nowhere, and that was pretty fun, and then aftr some meandering through Bloomington's outskirts we made our way to Smithville and found a couple of churches labelled "Smithville" but no sign. We wandered around some more, and found the Baker's Junction Railroad Museum, [1] which seemed to be closed.

Then we found a school on the outskirts of Smithville, or possibly in it --- although the sign claimed it was Bloomington even though it was south of (thus, under) Smithville. It had a playground. So I laid down under it. (This is a reference to the lyrics from the song in question.) It turned out the playground also had a nature trail attached to it --- it was something like a mile or a mile and a half? Lots of really pretty vistas, butterflies that fluttered into the air with every step we took, fresh dew still on the grass... It was really nice, and not so long that the plant phobia really kicked in. Hooray! We also found the Smithville sign, and got pictures in front of it while people drove by and were like "Who in the hell does that?" Well, Rik and I do that, because we're awesome. Also I was staring into the sun so all of the pictures are terrible, but what can you do. [2]

Then we declared victory and went to the Owlery, a vegetarian restaurant in Bloomington, and had their coconut macadamia tofu, which is divine and nightshade free. There aren't a lot of things I can eat there, but the things I can eat are very tasty, and they're friendly and a reasonable price and almost everything on the menu is vegan or can be made vegan. Yaaaay!

In conclusion: An awesome adventure. And proof that I do actually do fun things sometimes!

[0] The band was from Florida, but most Google hits for "Smithville, FL" are either about some other state or examples that pick "Smithville, FL" as a fictional place. I'd like to imagine the latter is what they were thinking about in the song, but I really have no idea.

[1] Warning: Makes sounds if you don't disable JavaScript, and is incredibly baffling in a vaguely timecubey kind of way. I am simultaneously glad and sad that we did not get to see the museum; on the one hand oh my god this dude talks about shooting Communists and on the other hand he has bits of his website in favor of gender equity and marijuana legalization. All I can really tell is that he is intense and all of his opinions are turned up to 11. Or maybe 12.

[2] Also, this outfit is bossgoji 's fault. I am still figuring out if I like it or not! It's pretty awesome, but I can't decide if I'm comfortable looking quite this... feminine. Is that crazy?

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Because I am insane

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 16:37:16 GMT

I arrive in SFO at 11 PM Friday, Apr 1 and leave SFO at 12:20 PM Monday, April 4. I have no idea what I'm doing yet; assuming I get IRB approval at least some of my time will be spent doing ethnography. But I will be there.

Will I hit 30 elite qualifying segments for United by the end of June? Quite possibly! Maybe I will do something silly and bicoastal in December to hit Premier Executive.

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Week!

Sat, 27 Nov 2010 14:24:54 GMT

We had a ten-person Thanksgiving dinner at my house! It was not entirely vegan, as one of the housemates made meaty stuffing and chicken pot pie, but the other, like, twelve courses were vegan. (There might have been a pie that was only vegetarian actually. But generally speaking.) I made pancakes for everyone to eat while we were cooking and then made four vegan pizzas with homemade fake meat. I had originally been planning a bunch of stuffed squash but the fire ruined all of my squash and then hao mentioned vegan pizza and I was like WANT. Thank goodness I have a bread machine! After dinner we all played Rock Band and I even graded some more student papers and in general it was pretty awesome. The kitchen is... almost clean?
Incidentally, my fake meat recipe is really simple: Take dried TVP/TSP (textured vegetable/soy protein, you can probably get it in the bulk foods aisle of your hippie grocery) and soak it in a mixture of soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, and water for an hour or two. (You don't need to soak it that long probably but I like to get it nice and moist because I am going to cook so much moisture out of it.) Fry it in olive oil with a ton of basil and oregano for only a few minutes --- you want a few of the smaller pieces to get crisped but mostly you are searing the oily spices onto the outside of the TSP --- and then put that over pizza, or just pick at it while you are waiting for the oven to be free so that you can make the pizzas. Usually I use Field Roast sausages but they have a tiny amount of potato in them and lately that has been enough to set me off. :( But this is an awesome replacement, and cheaper.
It's not just me who is very particular and has My Plate and My Fork and My Glass For Drinking Water With and hates when they are not available. Apparently this is something my mom does too, except her coping mechanisms for this are so completely different from mine that neither of us noticed that the other one had this quirk. Unless she noticed that I had it and was just being coy, I'm not sure. :) This comes up a lot more than it used to for me in part because I am STRESSZILLA but also in part because previously I had eight of "my fork" and so on, but now I have a unique fork, plate, bowl-for-cereal, and water glass. :( It's on my long term tasklist to track down more of the fork and maybe buy more of the water glass; the bowl is a lost cause because it's a handmade gift someone made for me ten years ago, and the plate has a chip so even though I know where I could buy more there is no point, I could never duplicate the chip. I am very lucky that my housemates and local friends are very chill about this.
It's bad enough lately that I travel with my fork. It's a good thing I'm checking luggage to California this upcoming trip; I'm not sure what I'll do for Further Confusion. Hopefully "be less stressed so that I do not need to bring a fork from home." If it gets to the point where I want to bring it to restaurants (currently I do not have this desire) I may start seeing a shrink about it. Otherwise I am satisfied with my coping mechanisms.
Got to spend part of yesterday with my uncle and aunt and their five Siamese cats. *swoon* I shouldn't get like ten cats, right? ...Right? Especially since Selene actually came to bed with me last night and stayed there the whole time, even managing to adjust as I rolled around. <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
The kitchen is usable again! The cabinets are repaired! This week they are repainting (because some of the smoke will not come out) and finishing up cleaning and maybe wallpapering the backsplash depending on how long it takes the new wallpaper to get in stock and then I will get a new range hood and then it will be DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE. I am very glad of this. Cooking is nice. Also I still need to fill out insurance paperwork. ;.; At least this didn't happen when I had no wiggle room on final papers, but it still hurts, a lot. Ow.
I have a small stack of Reward Games showing up in the next couple of weeks: "Finish your final papers and you too can play Pokemon Mystery Dungeon/Final Fantasy The Four Heroes Of Light/Pokemon White/Dragon Warrior IX!" If it weren't for JRPGs I would ~~get so much more done~~probably I dunno watch television or something else that wasn't real work, it's not like I can actually be productive every hour I am not sleeping. Oh wait I know what I would do if I weren't playing JRPGs! Roguelike games. Right then. These are cuter.
For my mother's benefit (primarily, anyway) I was thinking about wishlist items and everything I came up with was a kitchen appliance or a power tool. Who am I and what have I done with the Rachel who always orders food and refuses to operate a screwdriver? And how do I make sure she doesn't escape because this is awesome?
Oh and just to be explicit, it is OK to call me again.

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