preraphaelitepunk.com

Something about the width of the evil barbecue poster pic seems to have wreaked havoc with my template: I’ve finally got a decent text width, but with the undesired side effect of putting all my links at the bottom of the page. I swear that wasn’t happening on Thursday evening. I’m not sure what’s going on, because reloading the original template doesn’t seem to have fixed the weirdness (though it did mean I had to relink my About page), and neither has resizing the picture. Curses. Maybe I should just switch to a completely different template. (I’ve tried to replace the default picture with one of my own, a sharpened-beyond-all-sense cropped version of one of my pictures from Holyrood, but I can’t seem to get the thing to refresh. Not sure what’s going on, and I’m getting frustrated, so that means it’s time to let it rest for a while.)

Went to see Tim Burton’s “Corpse Bride” yesterday evening. It was good, but to me it suffered from Overhypus Mortificarus: expectations had been built so much that, no matter how good the plot or animation or voicing is, you feel sort of let down by the reality. Also, the maggot character kind of got on my nerves, and there was way too much punning for my taste. It’s worth seeing, but personally I think it’s more of a Netflixable thing than an opening-night thing.

The Dread Staff Activities Committee of Doom is having another one of its hoedowns tomorrow:

These posters have been all around the building for ages, and committee members keep sending out e-mails reminding everyone to sign up for the dismal thing, and crowing about how we’re to be allowed to wear jeans to work on Friday. They’ve mentioned the jeans factor in every e-mail they’ve sent out recently, and there’ve been quite a few. Some had clip art. ::groan::

Somehow, I can only view the whole thing with faint scorn. Occasionally I manage disdain, but only after long and self-sacrificing efforts to be optimistic.

Leaving aside the whole dietary issue (you can bring your own food if you want to, but obviously it would still be cooked on the same grill as the meat, without being cleaned between meat and nonmeat, so that’s not going to happen), I don’t own a pair of jeans any more. Haven’t for years. I could wear the Black Pleather Pants of Snarkiness, but if the Weather Channel is even remotely right, there’s just no bloody way:

According to the 10-day forecast, they’re speculating that October 1 will be the first day with a high less than 80°F. I despise this weather. It’s autumn — officially now, given that today’s the equinox — and I demand that the climate start acting like it. I want crisp, bracing, sharp mornings when your breath fogs in the air, and crunchy leaves falling in knee-deep piles, and early sunsets so that you feel that you’re living a cosmopolitan life of gadding about because you get home after dark, despite the fact that it’s 5:30 and you’ve come straight home from work. I want to go hiking in the mountains (probably I’d have to wear my stompy metal-heeled buckle boots, which are the closest thing I’ve got to hiking boots) with the dog and look at the leaves changing color.

(Is it just me, or do I blog a little too much about clothes? Hmm. Possibly a side effect of not buying any new clothes besides socks — such as the incredibly cute black-and-lime-green stripey socks with glitter-edged skull and crossbones I’m wearing today — pretty much since January, I think. I’m probably in withdrawal.)

Homemade macaroni and uncheese (i.e., basically a vegan bechamel flavored with nutritional yeast, which is so much better than it sounds) tonight, which makes a pleasant change from the open-a-package-and-heat-it-up meals I’ve had the rest of this week. I really must do some baking this weekend. I’ve got some seitan, and should make kebobs or something. I’ve learned that Sevananda is actually far preferable to Whole Foods when it comes to getting vegetables: the selection is somewhat more modest, but everything they have is organic, and significantly cheaper — and they don’t kill the flavors by overchilling things. Every single avocado I’ve bought this entire year from Whole Foods has had chilling injury (bitter gray streaks and uneven ripening, with some bits molding away while other bits are nearly crunchy), and all their heirloom tomatoes have been flavorless and nonsmelly (and sometimes still straight-from-the-fridge cold when you pick them up); I was thinking it was just a bad year until I bought veg at Sevananda, paid considerably less money, and discovered I was now the proud owner of a perfectly ripe, perfectly green, absolutely gorgeous avocado with no streaks or mold or grotty bits at all. I nearly cried, it was so beautiful. Plus, did I mention cheaper?

Firefox Plugin: Pluck, as a browser plugin, just doesn’t do it for me — to say nothing of the fact that it seems to have Issues with RSS 2.0 feeds, and ignores them completely. I’m uninstalling the plugin, and will investigate their Web-based version instead. I should run Pluck (Web) and Bloglines simultaneously for a while, and see which one picks up posts more quickly, and has fewer duplicates. (For it to be a fair test, though, I’ll have to check to make sure they’re both using exactly the same RSS feeds; some of the more popular blogs, such as Lifehacker, have a preposterous number of feeds.) That’s yet another project for this weekend, along with my usual ambitions of cleaning, organizing, painting, cooking, entertaining the dog, and spending at least some time not faffing around on the computer or napping.

TV update: As expected, “Kitchen Confidential” seemed lackluster to me. Not truly gawdawful, but just sort of . . . meh. Pilot episodes traditionally suck, but I kept thinking that, if I had to watch a sitcom about a kitchen, I’d much rather watch Lenny Henry in “Chef.” Tonight, “Lost.” Let’s hope it lives up to expectations, which I’ve tried to keep as low and open as possible. Too much anticipation or speculation, and I invariably wind up disappointed or irritated.

Okay, so I watch too much TV. I admit this freely. The point is driven home particularly strongly this week, because I have the bad timing to be in the middle of a reading binge* in the week that several of my favorite shows premiere, and I’m faced with either having to put the damned book down and watch them live, or record them and then never get around to watching them.

To be on the safe side, I think I should probably set the computer to record tonight’s offering, at least: “Arrested Development.” (It’s one of those rare examples of an excellent, bizarre show that’s written and performed well, gathers only a modest but pretty damned dedicated following and some critical acclaim/awards, and then miraculously does not get cancelled immediately for not getting a larger audience share. Usually the life expectancy for that species is closer to that of a mayfly, but they’re starting their third season already. Who knew?)

Also scheduled this week is the “Lost” premiere (Wednesday–weird but popular, so it should be safe until the audience drops off or the writers get careless), and probably some other things that looked interesting at the time but I’ve forgotten about. “House”’s premiere was last week and was, as expected, great; I believe I may have mentioned this before to basically everyone I know, but it cannot be said enough: Hugh Laurie rules. (Though I admit there are still, even now, a few brain cells in the back of my head that keep thinking, “Golly, Hugh Laurie’s doing drama. That’s seriously weird.”)

There are also a couple of shows that feature former “Buffy” alumni, so I probably will give those at least a look. “Bones” (with David Boreanaz) premiered last Tuesday before “House”; it has potential, but, again, I suffered from a little role hangover, as it were: I kept expecting him to whip around to face the camera with his game face on. Nicholas Brendon is apparently going to be in “Kitchen Confidential,” which does not strike me as a particularly brilliant choice, career-wise, but may be worth checking. I have been wrong before. Shocking, I know, but true.

In other news, I have discovered that peanut butter cookies smell amazingly like sandalwood incense. Maybe I shouldn’t bake while burning incense. Still, the cookies are good, if slightly crumbly. I tell myself that the crumbliness adds to the dog’s anticipation, never knowing when or if chunks will fall to snatching range, and thus increases his enjoyment.

***

*I’m rereading the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, in anticipation of the upcoming penultimate installment. I’m currently on page 447 of book three; only 200-something pages left, then the next seven books, and I’m ready for book eleven. Woo!

For once, I actually went out and did something on a weekday evening, rather than going straight home (or doing errands on my way home): I went to the dog park. With Nigel in tow, of course, so technically I went straight home and then left immediately . . . but it doesn’t do to examine things too closely. The point is that, for once, I did something other than buying human or dog food and then sitting on my futon for the rest of the evening. Yay, me.

The last time we went to Piedmont Park, it was the middle of the day, and quite hot; Nigel got tired reasonably quickly. This time, however, it was actually pretty comfortable in the shade, and most of the off-leash area is actually out of direct sun by 6:00. Nigel held up pretty well, despite being too intimidated by the huge dogs hogging the water pump (a couple of them seem to enjoy actually lying in the big communal water bowl, which does not seem hygienic, but oh well) to take a drink while we’re there. There were three basset hounds, one of whom was spectacularly overweight but seemed happy about it; as the three dogs who most resembled him, they seemed to be his favorites. (Seriously. He’s always been more excited to meet beagles and bassets; the only thing more exciting than them are the young of any species, which he absolutely adores.) I actually saw him playing chase with one — Nigel can’t manage the gallop* that some of the younger dogs prefer, but he’s wilier than they are.

I didn’t really meet any humans, aside from one whose dog was even shyer than Nigel is, but I did meet lots of dogs. Several of the water-loving canines decided it would be great fun to come over and drip copiously on my feet (sockless and wearing maryjanes — it’s a very weird experience when you think for just a moment that a strange dog is actually peeing on your foot), and then lick the dirty water off, which was, um, interesting. I’m also proud of Nigel for hardly hiding under my skirt at all: there was some nervous whining, but he settled in pretty quickly, actually, and except for the water bowl situation didn’t seem alarmed by the huge dogs at all.

If I can, I’d like to go to the dog park regularly, maybe once a week or more as the weather becomes more bearable. I live in a nice area, convenient to so many of the things that made me want to live in town, and I hardly use any of them except the grocery stores and a few bookstores. I need to go to the park more. And the botanical gardens. And to Oakland Cemetery, if I can figure out where exactly that is. I think I drove past it the last time Nigel’s colitis was acting up, when we were in a desperate search for an emergency vet, but I was a little distracted at the time and am not entirely positive how to get back.

*** ***

*Unless he’s snuck out through the door while I’ve got a visitor and is doing laps through the hallways and staircases of the building. Then, he’s so hyped up on the thrill of Being Evil, he’s practically cackling with glee. You can just see the happy energy sizzling and crackling through him as he dodges and pivots and twirls to avoid recapture.

I’ve been going through something of a lazy patch, in which I neither do anything in particular nor have anything of even the remotest interest to say (even by my normal not-exactly-exacting standards). My main accomplishment for this weekend has been finally ripping some songs onto my other SD card, the one not currently occupied by nearly every song Loreena McKennitt ever put out; the new playlist is more of a thematic assemblage of songs I like listening to on overcast days, made in anticipation of autumn finally getting here. It’s mostly Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil, and Black Tape for a Blue Girl. Eventually, I’d like to get an actual dedicated music player, but in the meantime, WinAMP on my PDA seems to be working pretty well (and doesn’t have the dreaded lag time between songs that the older versions of Windows Media Player Mobile had).

Also scheduled today is doing Something with the great acorn squash:

I bought it last week in another fit of autumnal anticipation, despite the fact that I am sadly inexperienced in the art of squashage. Soft-skinned summer squashes (e.g., zucchini, crookneck) are well within my comfort zone, but hard-skinned squashes tend to stump me. Maybe it’s because, in my first college apartment, I decided to bake a small pumpkin in another fit of autumnal excitement (as well as the thrill of finally having your own kitchen after two years in the dorms) and, not having a timer, wound up forgetting about it and charring the whole thing horribly. It was gruesome.

I’ve got a bunch of squash soup recipes, but it’s really not chilly enough for soup to sound good; also, most recipes make just oceans of soup, and I’m horrible about not thawing out the frozen leftovers and just letting them quietly freezer-burn to death. There was an excellent white bean stuffing for acorn squash my parents made years ago, but I am not sure which recipe it was; I managed to find one that looks promising, but of course I forgot to soak the cannellini last night. I suppose I should go do the super-fast-soak thing now.

On a slightly related foody note, I have just posted my very first picture to a Flickr group: I Ate This, kindly brought to my attention by Amy. I am of course now all atwitter at my audacity and fearful of mockery or being ignored–it’s so much more comfortable to lurk on the fringes and not participate in the social aspects of Flickr–but despite my convinction that everyone in the group will laugh and point and sneer, it will probably turn out okay. The world won’t end or anything. (It wasn’t even of anything I’d made myself, but of a sandwich from Broadway Cafe, so there’s less personal risk.) It’s just weirdly scary for some reason.

Meh. Off to do the super-fast soak on the cannellini. If the squash business turns out okay, I’ll post a pic, just because I can.

Having gotten heartily sick of Bloglines acting up — failing to notify me of new posts for as much as 48 hours, or notifying me of the exact same damned post repeatedly until I’m ready to scream or throw the monitor out the window — I am now experimenting with the Firefox extension Pluck. It’s an RSS reader that integrates with your bookmarks sidebar, and though I’ve only been playing with it for maybe ten minutes, it seems to hold promise.

Good Things:
* Because the feeds are held in sidebar folders the same way bookmarks are, you can browse through all your subscriptions, even those without new posts. Plus, their folder-creation function is so much more obvious than Bloglines’: it was quite a while before I figured out that you could even sort things into folders on BL. (Embarrassing, but true.)

* The interface is pretty simple, yet not clunky. It feels more like an integral part of the browser that’s just been toggled on, rather than something I downloaded and installed.

* It was rather easy to figure out how to add my own feed rather than their prefab ones — despite the not-exactly-helpful introductory instructions.

* There’s an unobjectionable little icon that resides in the lower right corner of Firefox, telling you when you have unread feeds. When RSS feeds are available for the page you’re viewing, there’s another icon right next to it, allowing you very-few-clicks-necessary subscription.

Bad Things:
* You have to sign up for an account. It’s free, but you have to give them your e-mail address, and it’s not clear what they’ll do with the address once they have it (no disclaimers that your e-mail will not be passed on, for instance). They’d better not abuse it, or I’ll be livid.

* Their introduction once you’ve signed up is puny, and seems to promote their official, pre-set-up feeds over telling you how to subscribe to pages that aren’t listed.

* Because it’s a browser extension, it stays on whatever computer you’ve installed it. It’s a local yokel only. Bloglines has the very favorable point of being accessible from whatever computer you’re using, wherever that may be, as long as you remember your account name and password.

That’s about all I have to offer on Pluck at this point. I’ll set about adding more feeds and testing its lag time, and comparing that to Bloglines’ lag time (as of this writing [circa 5:30 in the evening], I don’t think my previous post from circa 10:00 this morning had popped up on BL, so any improvement by Pluck will be welcome).

DragonCon Update. Neither Sarah nor I went to DragonCon today; too many crowds. I was toying with the idea of going by myself — the hosting hotels are only about 10 minutes from my flat, and I do have a four-day pass — but while I was thinking about it I fell asleep. Probably a sign that I needed a day of recovery, if I conk out into a dead-to-the-world nap after having slept close to 12 hours the night before. Must’ve been more tired than I’d realized.

Update: It seems that there is a Web-based version of Pluck, which allows you to access your bookmarks and feeds on any computer, a la Bloglines. In the twenty or so minutes since I first posted this, Pluck has not noticed the new entry — even when I click on the “Update Feed” button. However, 20 minutes of lag is nothing compared to Bloglines, which is still ignorant not only of this post or the one from this morning, but also of the ridiculous number of DragonCon pics I uploaded this morning to Flickr about five and a half hours ago. Frustration every way you turn, unfortunately.

I was too tired to post last night — I crashed at about 9:00 and slept pretty much until 8:30 this morning. Day 2 was tremendous fun, but even more crowded than Friday had been. The parade was interesting; unfortunately, the lag time between when I press the button on my camera and when it actually goes off (usually a moderate count of three) meant that many of the photos I took probably turned out a little wonky. If I can, I’ll upload my pictures immediately after this post as evidence. (The lag time is one of the main reasons I mostly take still life shots: at least you can count on tofu not to move at the wrong time.)

The Robert Jordan panel was quite enjoyable; book 11 is coming out soonish (about bloody well time), and it would seem that there’s only one more after that in the works. Odd, because somehow I’d assumed that there would be 13 books in the series, presumably to match the 13 Forsaken. Still, given the fact that book 10 only covered the space of a few weeks and nothing much happened except soap-opera angst until the very end, it may be good to go ahead and wrap it up with two more action-packed books than three more slow-paced ones. I don’t think I gleaned many new insights about the plot so far — most of the audience questions could’ve been answered by a more careful reading, or connecting a few likely-looking dots — but he went a little bit into how the whole idea came to him and developed, which was quite interesting. Plus, seeing him in person somehow made him more likeable: the impression I’d gotten from his author bios in the back of his books was not of a man I’d particularly like to hang out with, but he was articulate and funny in person.

The other main session Sarah and I went to was the Firefly/Serenity panel, for which, having learned our lesson on Friday, we got into line approximately 2 hours beforehand. Even at that point, the line was probably a little over half as long as it had been on Friday. It turns out that we most likely could’ve made it into the Friday session, but we would’ve been sitting toward the back of quite a huge ballroom; yesterday, we were sitting maybe 10 rows back or so, and I could actually see the panelists’ faces. Well, I could see Ron Glass and Adam Baldwin pretty well; because the idiots at the hotel decided a good way to arrange masses of crowd seating was to line each chair immediately behind the one in front rather than staggered, and because of the varying heights of crowd members, I had to rely on the big screens to see Jewel Staite and Morena Baccarin. (This problem has cropped up in virtually all the panels I’ve been to, at least when I was able to get an actual chair and didn’t have to stand in the back.) Chair arrangement problems aside, it was a great session: the cast was sharp and friendly and very funny, and seemed quite approachable and comfortable. Of course, I’ve had “The Hero of Canton” stuck in my head ever since, but I suppose that’s unavoidable.

There was a Harry Potter discussion of omens and prophecies I’d like to have seen, but it was at 7:00 and there was just no way I was going to put up with the crowds for that long. I’d have had a fit or breakdown of some sort. The crowds tend to be well behaved, for crowds, but there are just so many people around that you start worrying about occupancy limits and what would happen it there were a fire. And then there’s the fact that, in most rooms, the HVAC is not up to coping with the occupant loads, so it’s not quite sweltering but is definitely uncomfortable.

In between the parade and the panels, we managed to meet up with Amy, visiting from the exotic flatlands of Ohio, and a couple of her friends, and ran into Cindy (from work) and her husband. Much fun and gawking was had by all, I think.

Then, of course, we got back to my flat, where Sarah had left her dog Jazz to visit with Nigel while we were at DragonCon — and the doorknob wouldn’t turn. It was simultaneously horribly embarrassing and nightmarish. After about 10 minutes of fiddling with it, trying to take off the doorknob’s screws with the Teletubbies spoon I happened to be carrying, trying ineffectually to knock the door in, getting more and more annoyed because the dogs were confused and were barking (and setting off all the other dogs in the building), and asking a befuddled and somewhat wary new neighbor if she had a phone book for us to look up a locksmith, I managed to get the damned thing open by sort of lifting the door with the knob and heaving. Not sure what was going on, or why it jammed, but if it happens again I hope the same thing will work. At least we were able to get in, Sarah was able to collect Jazz and go home, and I was able to take Nigel out for an airing and then collapse.

The tentative plan for today is to go over sometime this afternoon and just sort of hang out, watching people and maybe hanging out with Amy, if she’s available. That’s assuming everyone has the energy to do that. I’d like to go back to the dealers’ room and buy something, an inexpensive necklace or something, but if it winds up that everyone would rather just be alone and depressurize, that’s perfectly fine with me, too.

Obligatory Stormtroopers

Originally uploaded by moria.

Much fun was had, many badly fitting and unflatteringly skimpy outfits mocked (really, look in the mirror, people), and a preposterously long line for the Firefly/Serenity session nearly sent me into hysterics. And I didn’t get fed up with the crowds and have to tread on anyone’s toes by “accident.” Quite successful, I think. I wound up going with “SnarkyVegan” as my badge name, though I had to spell it several times for the nice clerk: she kept trying to spell it “SnarqyBegan.” Not sure what was up with that.

The session with the Oliver and James Phelps (the Weasley twins in the “Harry Potter” movies) was enjoyable; they were quite cute, especially when they turned bright red, which they did on several occasions. Even more notable, though, were the three groupies sitting next to me, who alternated between shyly shouting declarations of undying love for the twins (or, on at least one occasion, “Marry me!”) and talking at almost full volume among themselves. Bizarre. The one immediately next to me complimented me on my stripey socks; I’m still trying to figure out if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

The line for the Firefly/Serenity session appeared to be infinite, stretching down the hallway and out the back, down to the street, around the corner, around the next corner, and then almost to the third corner. Once again, I was asked by an innocent passerby what all the crowds were doing there; it’s so annoying to be so comparatively normal-looking that strangers pick you out of a crowd of weirdos as the one most likely to be safe to talk to. Must do something about that in future.

After giving up on today’s F/S session, Sarah and I went to part of the Mercedes McNab session, then the vendors’ room. Not too bad for half a day, including standing in line for registration. (Btw, the t-shirts this year are freakishly ugly, and not in a good way.)

Tomorrow is the parade, and, I hope, more and better photo ops.

I know everyone’s being beseiged* with requests for hurricane assistance donations. At work, the grocery store, pretty much every Web site you go to, you’re being asked to donate. I know it’s frustrating, especially when you’ve already donated to a gazillion charities and nonprofits as a matter of course, and/or already made emergency donations through another venue.

Thus, even though I’m sure they could use the money right now, I’m not posting this to ask people to dig into their pockets yet again. Well, not right now. Just maybe keep Noah’s Wish in mind for the next time you’re planning your yearly donations. Their whole purpose is to rescue and shelter animals who’ve been left behind in disaster areas, and, as you can probably imagine, they’re working in Louisiana right now.

Granted, I’m a big, preposterous softie when it comes to Nigel. He drives me nuts on a regular basis, but that’s a large part of his canine job; the thought of him being lost and scared and in danger, not knowing what the hell was going on because his beloved schedule was shot to bits and nothing was happening the way it is supposed to, is intolerable. If we got separated during an emergency, I’d be frantic and useless until he was found — and people like NW are working to make sure that other people who have lost their pets at least have a shot at being reunited with them.

I’m donating half the money I’d budgeted for the vendors’ room at DragonCon. I can live without getting yet another t-shirt I can’t wear to work. If I don’t find anything worth buying, I’ll split the remnants of the money between NW and the Red Cross.

*I was going to say “deluged,” but thought that might be in bad taste. Not bad enough to keep me from putting it in a footnote, but still bad.