Ego! Ego! Ego!: Pure Ego! Archives

May 25, 2008

Happy Anniversary to Us!

So, Antwon and I had our first anniversary on 5/12. Woo hoo! We decided to buy ourselves a new TV for an anniversary present. After much research and info-gathering, we decided on a 50" plasma from Costco (big brand name only, not Vizio or anything). It turned out to be quite an ordeal to get it - it almost didn't fit in the truck, for one thing:

But we got it home and managed to get it all set up and everything. WOO HOO! Behold, the old setup and the new:

I gotta say, the XBox graphics are ASTONISHINGLY AWESOME on it. Also, it is probably too big for our apartment, but we don't expect to live here forever so we bought a TV the right size for when we get a house. Woo.

File under: Pure Ego!
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April 25, 2008

Review of The Forbidden Kingdom posted

Go read! You know you want to. :)

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March 10, 2008

An Exercise in Vanity

Self-Googling is fun. :) Places I found my name today:

• David-Strathairn.com
  
• A review of The Libertine, which calls my thesis "fascinating, and surprisingly easy to read"
  
• Holesinmyshoes.com, where my review of the film is quoted.
  
• A beautiful writeup about Antwon's and my wedding by my sensei, who officiated.
  
• The wikipedia entry on the Earl of Rochester

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March 05, 2008

Birbigs is coming!

Mike Birbiglia is coming to SF! Twon and I got tix, and I am psyched.

Cracker, Please!


Prez. Bush = Wiffleball Tony

Wanna come with? There's no assigned seating, just get tix yourself and ping us to say you're coming.

I am so tempted to get this shirt and wear it to the show and get him to sign it, but I think that's a little fangirly, even for me.

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February 27, 2008

Books books books

See my booklog update. :)

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February 12, 2008

When I grow up, I want to be...

Layer asked, "so... what did you want to do [when you grew up]? and if it isn't what you're doing now, why not?"

I have a tote bag which reads, "When all the little girls wanted to be ballet dancers, I wanted to be a vampire."

Continued...

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January 18, 2008

2007 Mix

My mix for 2007 is done! WOO! Now I just have to burn CDs for them as want 'em. As usual, my rules for this were a lot looser than the ones some of my friends use. For a song to merit inclusion in my 2007 mix, it must:

• Have come to my attention one way or another in 2007.
• Have been played over and over by me, or at least gotten stuck in my head a couple times or otherwise made itself really known to me during 2007 (a bunch of this year's songs are in Guitar Hero III and/or Rock Band (the two games have a fair amount of overlap).

It's kind of a weird mix. Weirder than usual for me, even. Track list below...

Continued...

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January 02, 2008

2007 in Review

The thought of trying to sum up 2007 thoroughly is rather intimidating. So, here is a Mayfly (found the concept via Rich):

January - May: Wedding.
Wonderful honeymoon.
Back to regular life: job, Aikido, fibromyalgia, knitting, spirituality, cats ...
Family reunion.
Family drama.
Fake guitar games are awesome.

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Happy New Year!

I don't make New Years Resolutions anymore -- I realized a while back that they invariably turn from a list of Things I Will Do! into a list of Things I Didn't Do And Now Feel Bad About. And I don't need more things to feel bad about. Does anyone?

I do like New Years, though. I'm an order-minded sort of person, and thus I like neat and tidy boundaries and the order of things not yet done. New blank books. Fresh reams of paper. A new year. There's the smell of possibility in the air. The smell of hope.

So no resolutions for me, this year, but good wishes to all.

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November 20, 2007

How odd

The above photo has 1600 views on Flickr. My next most-viewed pic has almost 500 views (it's this crazy shot of Twon). What is it about those stickers that makes people want to view the photo? Is it that they want to enlarge it so they can read them? What's the deal?

Crazy.

Also crazy: my third-most-viewed shot is this one of me doing a makeup test for my Judy Nails costume. It's only five views behind the shot of Twon.

WTF, people. Srsly.

File under: Geekiness, Pure Ego!
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October 25, 2007

ReadyMade magazine

Hey, readers!

I get to give a gift subscription of ReadyMade magazine away when I renew this year.

The first person to reply to this post (here on my blog! Doing it in the LJ feed doesn't count, sorry) gets the subscription.

Don't say I never gave ya anything. :)

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October 14, 2007

ROCK BAND

Check out what we did this weekend!!!!

We hit up the Rock Band tour, wooo! Twon's writeup is here. Rawk. Good times. Am now thoroughly psyched up for the actual release of the game next month.

File under: Geekiness, Pure Ego!
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September 19, 2007

Woo

Have finally booklogged Harry Potter 7.

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September 18, 2007

Heh. Careers!

EDITED TO ADD: Turns out this meme is using a nonprofit's login for the site. I've heard from friends that the login has stopped working, so hopefully the nonprofit has changed their password. Sigh. Wish I'd known sooner.

Hmmm...
1. Go to http://www.careercruising.com/
2. Log in as xxxxxx with password xxxxxx
3. Take the Career Matchmaker quiz and list the top 10 results

My results:

1. Technical Writer
   
2. Political Aide
   
3. Activist
   
4. Writer
   
5. Critic
   
6. Public Policy Analyst
   
7. Communications Specialist
   
8. Translator
   
9. Print Journalist
   
10. Market Research Analyst
    

I am already a Tech Writer, so that works. And I do writing and activism as hobbies. I write movie reviews, which combines being a critic with being a print journalist. Not bad.

Amusingly, after refining by answering questions, I got:

1. Technical Writer
   
2. Market Research Analyst
   
3. Writer
   
4. Website Designer
   
5. Web Developer
   
6. Political Aide
   
7. Artist
   
8. Video Game Developer
   
9. Archivist
   
10. Computer Programmer
    

I think this is a pretty good matchmaker, overall. :)

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Yay! Headache answers!

Well, as of yesterday we have a plausible explanation for my stupid headache. Yay!

Basically, I have a major case of estrogen dominance going on right now, probably because I changed my birth control methods earlier this year (going off the pill can often lead to estrogen . My estrogen levels are high and my progesterone levels are low. This may also explain why I've put on weight and been feeling fairly crummy.

So I'm on a program to raise my progesterone (via supplements) and lower my estrogen (through diet and supplements). Here's hoping I'll see results shortly.

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September 10, 2007

So, Ealasaid...

...what did you do this weekend?" I hear you ask.

That's what I did this weekend. I baked cookies with the awesome mixer my hardware team coworkers bought Antwon and moi for our wedding. It is an absolutely awesome mixer (a KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer, in black) and performed beautifully. And the Wilton Ultra II Cookie Press Twon and I got a few weeks ago did great (once I got used to it). I turned out five batches of spritz cookies for the bake sale we're having at work, and set aside a big plate for my team peeps. Now my back muscles are sore. :)

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September 04, 2007

Woooooo

Aaaaaaah. I spent Labor Day Weekend doing what the holiday was designed for: resting from my labors.

The month of August was a packed one - I spent every single weekend doing something, and two of those weekends were spent out of town. I was on my last legs. In fact, I managed to piss my body off so badly that it gave me an all-over case of hives (probably the result of an antibiotic course I'm on for H. pylori).

So, three days to laze around doing nothing were exactly what I needed. Twon and I watched down the TiVo, watched two Netflix discs (Hot Fuzz and Season 5 Disc 2 of News Radio), and generally were lazy bums. It was fantastic.

Now I'm diving back into the workaday world with a to-do list as long as my arm. Wheee! Also, it's the South Bay Blogger Meetup tonight. Excitement!

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July 23, 2007

Ah, the trials of being a purist

The new Harry Potter book came out this weekend.

I don't have it yet.

Why?

Because I'm a purist, and only read the UK editions. I ordered mine from Canada (which saves me money on shipping). If I lived in Canada, they would have shipped it to arrive on the 21st. But I live here, so they shipped it ON the 21st. It should arrive by Friday, with luck.

Fingers: crossed.

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July 06, 2007

z0mg

One of my photos got picked to be in the SFSchmap! Squee!

I feel like a Real Photographer (tm) now.

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July 05, 2007

Fire!

Fire near work today. The excitement never ends! I took a ton of pix, starting here.

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June 06, 2007

Misc

- Twon summarizes the Honeymoon

- Lesson learned: when dealing with a migraine, wait until after the meds have worn off before trying out your shiny new mandoline.

- Another lesson learned: It is possible to create a pressure bandage of sorts with two bandaids and some sports tape.

(It's not a bad cut, I just sliced my thumb so there's a flap of skin trying to hang off. It's doing a lot better already, although I'm having to learn how to use my other thumb on the spacebar because it hurts to use the cut one, grrr.)

- The Book Of Biff is a moderately amusing webcomic. I like it.

Thank you, that is all for now.

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June 04, 2007

Roadtrip Retrospective

A few stats:

• Days: 16 (not counting the piddly little first day where we only drove up to Placerville).
• Miles driven: 6,161 in first car; 2,551in second car. 8,712 total.
• Lowest elevation point reached: 282 feet below sea level.
• Highest elevation point reached: 10,600 feet above sea level.
• States touched: 22 if you count CA (California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, New York, Kentucky, Tennesee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona).
• Highest temperature noted: 115 F
• Mazda RX-8s seen: 7.
• Vasectomy reversal billboards seen: 7.
• Family members visited/seen: 16, in 4 cities
• Internet peeps visited: 5, in 4 cities.
• Longest day of driving: about 14.5 hours
• Shortest day of driving: about 6 hours.

I'm going to do up a map of our route, but here's a list of the cities/destinations we hit, in the order we hit 'em:

Continued...

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June 02, 2007

Day ... aw forget it, I haven't been updating every day anyway.

Things are going great! We stayed with my grandmother last night in St. George, UT and are now at the Luxor in Las Vegas. Rawk. I'm in the process of uploading more photos, but the best ones from the Grand Canyon are a huge panorama which I'll have to paste together when we get home on Sunday. Whee!

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May 30, 2007

Day Twelve: Las Cruces, NM to Albuquerque, NM

Not much to report except that the high desert is dry, dry, dry, pretty, and dry. Oh, and I uploaded a whole crapload of photos from the last few days. Check it out.

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Day Eleven: Austin, TX to Las Cruces, NM

Man, we had a DAY today! We let ourselves sleep in a bit as we'd stayed up hella late last night hanging out with our host (another ScoreHero dude), then hit a Jiffy Lube before getting rolling. See, the car had been bitching a bout needings its oil changed, and we couldn't get a hold of any of the local Budget offices because of the stupid holiday weekend.

Well, all was fine and good until we were cruising along I-10 in the late afternoon and starting to think we should buy gas. A guy passed us and made weird "OMG YOU ARE BLOWING UP!" gestures. We were kind of confused - there were no weird lights, smells, etc. going on. So, we decided to stop at the next rest area - where we found the guy who'd passed us! He told us that our car had been billowing smoke from the undercarriage. We popped the hood and discovered there was oil EVERYWHERE. A quick check of our oil level revealed that while there was clearly enough oil that the car's lights and sensors hadn't gone off, there wasn't enough oil to actually, you know, show on the dipstick or anything. Oy.

Continued...

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May 27, 2007

Day Nine: Centerville, OH to Laurel, MS 766 mi.

Woo. After crashing for a night with the guy from ScoreHero, we made it successfully down to Mississippi. We're going to have lunch in New Orleans tomorrow, so we drove as far South as we could, and then found an Econolodge. We were just going to get a normal room but they were out of Non-Smoking regular rooms, so we got a King suite for the same price. Yay.

I finally got my act together and pulled all the photos off the camera from the last couple days, yay. Check it out.

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May 26, 2007

Day ... um. Eight? Philly, PA to Centerville, OH

Man. I'm getting slack about updating, largely because there isn't a lot to tell. Yesterday we drove all over the place - Lafayette, NJ to Wilmington, DE; then to North Brunswick; NJ, then to Philly. In Wilmington we saw my Mom's cousin, then in Brunswick we saw Twon's godmother, then we crashed with one of Twon's friends from teh intarwebs. It was pretty sweet.

Then today we drove down to Centerville, where a guy from the forums at ScoreHero.com is giving us crash space. Rawk.

Since I have time while watching the guys play Guitar Hero, I'm gonna update about the Daily Show taping I mentioned.

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May 24, 2007

Day Five: NEW YORK! 124 mi

OMG WE WENT TO A DAILY SHOW TAPING AND AL GORE WAS THE GUEST! IT WAS FREAKIN AWESOME!

Also, saw Times Square, survived driving in the city, and verified that I am NOT an urban dweller at heart. Gah. I could never live in a City. Bah.

Will add more to this when I am rested.

ETA: OK, am now rested and am hanging out whilte Twon and our host rock out on GH2, so I'm gonna update in more detail about how the taping worked.

Continued...

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May 23, 2007

Day Four: Aurora, OH to Lafayette, NJ. 413 mi.

Still not dead. Staying in a trailer in the driveway of my aunt and uncle, who are cool. As I type this, I am in the trailer using their wireless internet to update and upload photos, chatting with Twon and my cousin Becca who has miraculously morphed from an annoying eleven year old into a nifty college student. WTF. I feel old.

BTW: Have added photos to previous entries, just a few samples in each case. See the Flickr Collection for the full set of photos. Not all of them have captions or anything yet, but they're all up and set to "public."

Continued...

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May 22, 2007

Day Three: Winona, MN to Aurora, OH. 682 mi.

Still not dead. Very tired, no real time for a proper update.

ETA: no photos today. Newsflash: Plains states are dulllllll.

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Day Two: Keystone, SD to Winona, MN 669 mi.

I'm writing this on my laptop in the car as the sun is setting and we are speeding past apparently endless fields. Some of the fields are crops, some are grass for cows or sheep. We've been busy today, and are (yet again) racing the sun toward our crashspace.

Stupid time zones, messing with how long it takes to get places.

Today's been busy. We started the day by hitting Mt. Rushmore - we were among the first people there, I think - our level of the parking garage had about three other vehicles in it. Heh. The mountain isn't quite as aewsome as one might be led to believe by photos - for one thing, it's a lot smaller. But it was still neat. I took photos of Twon crushing the heads of various presidents on the mountains (KitH shoutout!), we wandered around the various giftshops, and then we headed off to I-90E.

Next up: Wall Drug. We'd been seeing billboards for it for miles and miles (including a few yesterday!) and Twon had told me stories about it before, so we had to go. Wall Drug is one of those places that's famous for being famous. If you've never been there, it started out as a little drugstore and now has grown to encompass the entire building of storefronts it occupies as well as a building behind it. Good grief. It has loads and loads of kitch for sale, plus food (I had pumpkin ice cream!) and various drugstore-type-stuff.

SD-240 splits off of I-90 in Wall and loops through the Badlands, so we took that (when Twon came through there on his grand circle roadtrip, he wound up doing so at night and thus missing the Badlands, so we had to see them). They're spectacular - the rolling green prairie gives way to bizarre rock formations and gulches for quite a while.

Apparently rivers in the area millions of years ago deposited oodles of volcanic ash there and then it got compacted into sedementary rock, so the erosion looks really bizarre. So cool. I took a ton of photos.

After that, it was time to head down the highway to Winona, where our friends Annie and Nate are feeding us and giving us crashspace in their spiffy new house. Yay.

Of course we hit plenty of construction, dammit. I swear, it is impossible to drive more than a few hundred miles in any one direction on semi-major roadways without hitting construction. Grrr.

O Well.

That's about it. Time to sort through the day's photographs so I can just upload these entries and the photos when we get to Annie and Nate's. Yay.

ETA: By the time we arrived at Annie and Nate's, I was in the throes of what appeared to be food poisoning. I'm better this morning, yay.

ETA: Photos!

Continued...

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Day One: Salina UT to Keystone, SD 843mi

I'm writing this in Notepad because our hotel (Econolodge in Keystone, SD) doesn't have a real internet connection (I can get to livejournal and google, but not ealasaid.com or twitter. WTF). I'll post it tomorrow as soon as I find a place with internet connectivity.

Today has been the day of INSANE WEATHER OMG. Our route was roughly: leave Salina UT on US-50. Head for Denver. Hang a left in Denver, head for Cheyenne. Head for Keystone.

Not bad, right?

Well, the weather hated us. On the passage through the rockies, we hit a thunderstorm which was raining so hard we were hydroplaning down a 6% grade at one point. Water was thrown at us by semis on our side of the road and anything bigger than a Hummer H3 on the other side of the road. At one point, it rained slush. OMG SCARY.

Then we spent a big chunk of the afternoon watching AMAZING lightening displays in the distance. OMG SCARY. Fortunately, we never actually ran into the thunderstorm. Phew.

But between the nasty weather outside Denver and some road construction we ran into, we didn't actually reach Keystone until after 10pm local time. We left at 8am local time in UT, which means we spent 15 or so hours on the road. D'oh. So much for our 12.5 hour schedule. Stupid weather.

I took a ton of photos which I'll have to sort through tomorrow as I am currently exhausted.

ETA: Photos!

Continued...

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May 18, 2007

Heading out!

...and they're off!

We're heading out on our honeymoon as soon as we pick up the rental car. Wooooo! Placerville, CA tonight, then tomorrow off on our first long day of driving. Watch this space for updates!

And if you haven't already, check youhaas.com for wedding pix and video.

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May 15, 2007

Video!

The first set of vids is up from the handfasting! Yay! They were shot by my pal Shannon. The pro video is still being edited, and won't be ready for a couple weeks, most likely. These should tide y'all over until then. :)

Check it out!

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May 14, 2007

Ch-ch-ch-changes?

People keep asking me if I feel different now that I'm married.

Aside from the feel of an additional ring on my left ring finger, I don't, really. Twon and I have "felt" married for ... gosh, at least a year now. We moved in together in May 2006 and Twon often says that once we merged our DVD collection, we were hitched in all but the legal sense.

There's a wisp of something - formality? closure? - since the wedding, but not the big "omg, everything is different!" sensation some folks talk about. I'm just relieved that the wedding went so well and intensely happy and grateful for all the wonderful people who helped make it such a fantastic day.

Photos are trickling in over at the Youhaas Global Formal Merger Flickr Pool and once I have the official photos from the spiffy pro photographers back I'll post the cream of the crop (they were threatening to take 32Gb of pix... no idea how many they actually shot, but I am sure it was a ton).

Continued...

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May 13, 2007

Whee!

We're back from our night at the B&B, after a wonderful, awesome wedding day. Great huge heaping piles of THANK YOU to everyone who made our day so awesome!

• Mom and Dad, who wrangled RVs up to the site so we'd have somewhere to change and headed up the decorations team
• My aunt Laurie and uncle Rolf, who provided amazing awesome food
• Lupe, who helped massively with schlepping and serving alcohol
• My sister-in-law Julia, who baked absolutely GORGEOUS cakes for us
• Our awesome photographers, Sarah and Brian of Dancing Photographers (no site at the moment, but I hope to rectify that when I get back from the honeymoon as a way of thanking them)
• Genaro Meza, our videographer, and our buddy Oren Arieli who recommended him, shot bonus footage, and will be editing it all together
• My awesome attendants who made sure I ate, put up with my neuroses, and were amazingly helpful and supportive in spite of having very hectic lives of their own
• My mother-in-law and father-in-law, who hosted and organized the rehearsal dinner. Tasty goodness!
• All our guests, who made the reception a totally awesome party. ROCK ON!

No doubt I've forgotten folks in that list (all our friends and family pitched in one way or another, we were so lucky!) so I'd like to send out a general "THANK YOU SO MUCH! YOU GUYS ROCK!" to everyone. Twon and I are so very very happy and grateful to have such generous, kind, and thoughtful people surrounding us. You all rock.

We leave on the honeymoon on Friday. Rawk.

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May 12, 2007

ZOMG!

Today's the Day!

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May 07, 2007

Happy Fun Time Wedding Post

Man! I am so busy and distracted that I only seem to post here when I have something that sufficiently piques my interest... which makes for very uneven reading.

Let me see. What is there to update about?

I'm gettin' hitched on Saturday! EEEK! Details here.

It seems like there are a milion and one things still to do ... and at the same time it feels like there's nothing left to do but coast to the finish line. It's odd.

A bunch of my friends are coming into town for it, which rocks.

We lucked into both professional photographers AND a videographer at prices we could afford, which is utterly amazing. I have some of the awesomest friends EVAR.

There are a bunch of photos here of stuff like my dress and the location.

We're going on a HUGE roadtrip for our honeymoon (shoutout to my peeps on the East Coast! Not sure yet when we'll be out there to hang with y'all but Twon will be contacting you shortly! He's in charge of planning the trip) from 5/18-6/3. It will rule. I will be blogging and uploading pix as much as I can -- but I'll be depending on my laptop and folks' wireless connections, so my updating may be spotty. I'll do my best.

More later if I think of something brilliant to say beyond, "OMG WE'RE GETTING MARRIED EEEEEEEEEEE!"

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April 13, 2007

Yo! Where you at, dawg?

So I've been busy lately. Wedding planning, even for a non-matrimonial-complex wedding like ours, is a massive undertaking. There are a million little things to consider. What kind of cups should we have at the reception? Should we get tablecloths to cover the probably skuzzy picnic tables in the park? What color/type of cord should we use for the handfasting part of the ceremony?

I'm finding myself paring things out of my schedule that aren't wedding-related, and while it's understandable it is also really really annoying. I like blogging. I like hanging out with my friends. Grrr. But this weekend alone, for example, I have to get laced into my corset and get the alterations measurements done on my dress, which is a huge undertaking; go shopping with the fiance for his clothes, which will be fun but is still time-consuming; handle the tablecloth rental; look into renting tents; and get a final quote from the florist. Oh, and I have an appointment to tutor my one remaining student. I'm starting to understand why my friend Jen started getting tension headaches whenever she did wedding stuff. I admire her - she had a huge, very matrimonial-complex wedding and managed to do it without going insane.

Maybe wedding stress is just one of those things that is big no matter what the wedding is like.

Anyway. Questions about the wedding? All the info is here.

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April 05, 2007

Squee!

I am such a dork. But look! I won a prize!

Check out the other winnars.

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April 03, 2007

Angels and Camouflage

It's no real secret that I am adamantly against the war in Iraq. It pulled resources from the actually reasonable war in Afghanistan and has turned into an utter mess.

However, I am NOT against the troops. They are brave, hardworking folks doing a job that I myself would run screaming from even though I know it's a necessary one.

So.

About a month ago, I signed up at Angels'n'Camouflage and adopted me a deployed soldier. I've been sending her stuff every week or so, either cards or little care packages. I haven't heard back from her, but hope that she's okay and that my things are reaching her okay.

One thing that fascinates me is the response I get from people I tell about this. Almost invariably, they are impressed. I get praised, told I'm a saint, you name it. The thing is, I don't see it as a big deal. It's a little bit of a hassle to send care packages - you have to fill out a customs form, so I have to take them to the post office instead of mailing them at work - but cards? That's a cinch, and it's cheap to boot. This is a lot less work than going to a rally or protest or writing my congressfolks. And it makes a bigger difference, even if it's just to one person.

For me, that's what counts. This war is a huge issue, but every soldier out there is just one person. They're people, doing a horrible job a long, long way from home and friends and family. Sending a few snacks and some magazines is the least I can do.

File under: Pure Ego!
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March 14, 2007

Hippo birdie two me!

Well, I'm 29. My last year of being a twenty-something. Let's see how I'm doing on my 25 Things To Do In The Next 25 Years:

Continued...

File under: Pure Ego!
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March 09, 2007

Rough day

Today I did three things:

1. Euthanized my beloved pony, Shane.
2. Scanned a ton of family photos, including several of Shane and other pets I've loved and had to let go.
3. Reorganized my books.

There's nothing like semi-mindless, organized labor to soothe me when I'm upset.

I'm going to miss Shane, he was a wonderful pony.

Continued...

File under: Pure Ego!
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March 05, 2007

Liver? I hardly knew 'er!

My nutritionist has decided that my liver might benefit from detoxing.

Now, my immediate reaction was "What? No way." But the procedure consists largely of eating a lot of weird veggies, so I figured it couldn't hurt. Plus, all the staff there did it, and liked it.

Details for the curious:

Continued...

File under: Pure Ego!
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February 19, 2007

LibraryThing

I have surrendered and signed up on LibraryThing. My profile is here. Woo. I'm going to play around with it a little and possibly use it to catalog my books. I sort of dig it so far, though I'm leery of relying on a website to catalog everything. I mean, what if it goes down? I don't see a way to export my catalog. On the other hand, it does have a lot of really awesome functionality that isn't available in the catalog programs I've seen.

File under: Pure Ego!
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February 15, 2007

Misc.

Item the First: I've sort of given up on the Morale-O-Meter - not enough data input available for me. I'm now using a thrilling spreadsheet in Open Office Calc, which so far is going great. Yay. If'n y'all are interested, I could post the template for you folks to check out. It tracks everything from sleep to allergen consumption. Rock.

Item the Second: Just a reminder that I'm posting loads of links over at My del.icio.us. Check it out if you like the kinds of links I often blog about here.

Item the Third: Cinequest is coming, and that means that the Cineblog is active! Check it out for news and reviews of movies and whatnot coming up at Cinequest. I love cinequest, even though it frequently causes me to collapse of exhaustion right before my birthday each year.

Item the Fourth: I've been reading a lot lately, FINALLY, so check my booklog, A Perpetual Orgy, for minireviews.

File under: Pure Ego!
Posted at 04:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

February 12, 2007

Taking a Break

I've decided to take a break from reading websites that up my stress level. There are a lot more of these on my daily reading rounds than I thought, and I think it's taking a toll on me. I have a lot on my plate (work, Cinequest, Aikido, health problems, wedding planning...) and somehow riling myself up every day over how people I don't know are being terrible human beings seems like a poor use of my personal energy.

I acknowledge that sexism exists. I acknowledge that homophobia exists. I acknowledge that injustice exists.

I also acknowledge that there is only so much I can do about these things.

For a while, I feel that the best thing I can do about these things is to go about my tasks with focus and dedicate my personal energy to accomplishing my tasks to the very best of my ability. So I am removing items from my blogroll and recording them here, so that I do not lose the links. Some day soon I hope I will be ready to take up the mantle of righteous anger again, but for now I need to rest and refocus.

Continued...

File under: Pure Ego!
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January 29, 2007

DAMN YOU FAIRFIELD CHICK-FIL-A!

So, Antwon loves going to chain restaurants that aren't found right around where we live. This has led him to eat everywhere from Steak-and-Shake to Sonic Burger.

Well, every time we drive through Fairfield, we mutter that we should hit the Chick-Fil-A that's in the mall there. Every time we've tried, it hasn't worked. Either we're in a rush, we're not hungry, or it's so late at night the mall is closed.

Over the weekend we were in Sacramento, and on the way home the stars seemed aligned and we decided to take a stab at it again, only to be foiled yet again! It turns out that Chick-fil-A is always closed on Sundays. All of them. Dig it:

I guess we're just fated never to hit that stupid restaurant. *shakes fist*

File under: Pure Ego!
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January 25, 2007

E = Grownup

I set up a Roth IRA today through INGDirect. I have a savings account there already, and now every month they'll take a little out of there and put it in my IRA. I am psyched.

BTW: if I refer you to ING, you get $25 and I get $10. Anybody want a referral? Their savings accounts are really easy to set up and have a variable interest rate that knuckleballs around 4.5%. Pretty schweet.

File under: Pure Ego!
Posted at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

End-of-year mix

My buddy Rich has gotten me into the habit of making mix CDs at the end of the year. He explains how he does it here, and he gets as many friends as he can to join in. He used to do two CDs - one of music that came out in the year in question and one of music that he found in that year, but so many of us are too lazy to do that (or don't have enough music to do that) that he seems to have given up on that and now just says to pick songs that "mean" the year in question to you.

I've collected about 30 songs that were new to me in 2006, and am now fiddling with their order on the mix CD (I'm going to burn 2 audio CDs for those who insist on that format; everyone else gets a CD with MP3s and a playlist on it).

Continued...

File under: Pure Ego!
Posted at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

January 24, 2007

ARGH!

I AM AGGRAVATED!

Continued...

File under: Fibromyalgia, Pure Ego!, Rantings
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January 15, 2007

Any astrology geeks in my readership?

Apparently, I have sun in Pisces, moon in Gemini, Ascendant in Virgo, Mercury in the Seventh House, Sun in the seventh house, sun opposition ascendant, venus in the seventh house, moon in the ninth house, and saturn in the twelfth. Gnarly. (Courtesy of astro.com)

Wanna do my chart? Email me for my birth details. :)

I am not a total believer in astrology, but I do find that in general it is accurate for me.

File under: Pure Ego!
Posted at 06:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

January 10, 2007

Yeesh. Also, links.

My left nav bar is getting a little scary, nu?

I just added links to my pages on YouTube and del.icio.us.

What is del.icio.us, you may ask? It's a link-sharing site. It's sort of like... having the ability to share and tag your bookmarks. Yeah. Go check it out. Hell, you can subscribe to my links if you want, and get a little note whenever I add a link to my collection. I'm trying to be better about adding commentary and whatnot instead of just tags, and to link things with del.icio.us instead of blogging them here. I think doing link-roundup posts and having a del.icio.us page is a little redundant.

My YouTube profile contains two scintillating videos about... my cats.

I am such a typical blogger. Goddammit.

File under: Pure Ego!
Posted at 03:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

January 04, 2007

A little more New Year's stuff

I don't make resolutions anymore.

This is for two reasons:

1. I usually don't manage to keep resolutions, so they are pointless.
2. Not keeping the resolutions makes me feel shitty.

I figure that's reasonable. Hell, the fiancé and I started our new workout regimen the week before New Years, and have been keeping it pretty darn well, if I do say so myself. So. No resolutions from me.

On the New Years humor front, check out this entry from Naamah. She is awesome and hilarious, if somewhat... er ... vulgar. :D

File under: Pure Ego!
Posted at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

January 03, 2007

The flames, boss! The flames!

Scene: My cubicle, yesterday. My phone rings.

Me: Hello?

Antwon: Are you near a window?

Me: Yeah, why?

Antwon: Are you looking out it?

Me: Yeah, well, I can be.

Antwon: See that big plume of smoke?

Me: OMG.

Continued...

File under: Pure Ego!
Posted at 01:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

January 02, 2007

Hello, 2007! Now, where's my silver suit and jetcar?

Happy New Year, readers! I hope you all had very happy holidays.

It's hard to imagine living in 2007. It sounds like the kind of year a cheesy sci-fi film might be set in, doesn't it? Not the kind of year you write on your checks. So surreal.

2006 was the year of the wedding for us here at Youhaas Global. We got engaged, attended four weddings, and started the process of planning our own. Yikes. So, 2006 was incredibly busy but also really fun. Actually, that's a pretty good summary of the year as a whole. I'm hoping to put some discardian principles into effect and have a quieter 2007.

There's a meme floating around the blogosphere of taking the first sentence of the first entry of each month for a year, so I might as well give it a shot:

Continued...

File under: Pure Ego!
Posted at 02:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

December 14, 2006

ARGH

Whining:

So, I finished my MP3 sorting project

But somehow I am having a lot of trouble stanadardizing my tags, and a lot of songs don't have track numbers or albums or ANYTHING.

After spending entirely too long trying to fix things by hand, I have decided to use the ever-awesome Music Brainz Tagger instead. Basically, it compares your MP3 to its database of songs other people have tagged and takes a guess at what your MP3 is. I have found it's usually pretty damn good.

This is going to delay my ability to get the newly-sorted MP3s onto my player, but I can't do that at the moment anyway because my desktop's power supply is dead. Wheee. I've replaced just about every part of that poor old computer over the years. New motherboard, new hard drives, new CD drives (so I could write CDs and DVDs), etc. Whee! If I were less brave, I would no doubt have caved by now and just bought a new system. But yanno, the parts are a lot cheaper. I can get a new power supply for a LOT less than a new system. So there.

File under: Pure Ego!
Posted at 01:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

December 12, 2006

Well, holy shit!

I finished my music categorizing project!

I was starting to think that this day might never come. But here I am! RAWK. And it took less than a year! Hell, it only took just under eight months. Not bad, eh? Especially considering that I only work on it in my spare time (ha ha ha).

Some stats:

Total Songs	4,247
Gb of Songs	17.0
Number of Genre Categories	54
Genre With Most Songs	Rock, 329
Genre With Least Songs	Glam Rock, 2
Category I Least Expected to See	Country
Category I Thought Would Be Bigger	Rock'n'Roll
Most Useful Category	Weirdness

So there. Anybody wanting to browse my genre categories should ask next time I am somewhere with my car - I'll be putting my freshly-sorted MP3s onto my in-car player very soon. :)

File under: Pure Ego!
Posted at 04:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

December 11, 2006

Yeesh!

One of the downsides to doing NaNoWriMo every year is that it means the entire month of November is practically offlimits for anything social. The only social events the fiancé and I make it to are NaNo-related. This invariably means that the first week or so of December is packed to the gills with social engagements.

This year is no exception.

Beginning on the first and running through this weekend, we have not had two days in a row without at least one social engagement. In fact, I think we had something like seven days in a row with engagements. Yikes! Pretty heavy stuff for a guy who's practically a complete shut-in and a gal who is only judged an extrovert on occasion because of her incredible acting skills.

I realized, furthermore, while working on this year's Annual Holiday Letter, that we have had a crapload of social stuff going on all year. Check it:

• Three weddings, two out of state and one out of town.
• Two extended houseguest stays.
• Two hi