The Dangerous Existence of Madame Lee

Good:
+ Had my performance evaluation at work. I get a raise (w00p, in the immortal words of galhea) and there are some indications that I am possibly being Groomed For Promotion at some date in the distant future. In all candor, I hope to fuck that I won't be around for that, preferably by virtue of having gotten a different job or gone back to school or both.
+ Am a powerhouse of activity today. Plants are watered, car is clean, I only need to pick up a little of the floor in my room (and under the bed and nightstand), I'm almost done with the book I'm reading, and I'm getting ready to prepare resumés. This after a full day at work. I still have a lot to do, though.
+ Toshiro Mifune in Shôgun: Yep, still hotter than Hell in the summertime.

Bad:
+ Still not done with laundry.
+ Am sick. Initially I thought it was just a reaction to dust I had angered by kicking it up while I was cleaning, but usually when this happens I sneeze a few times and then get over it. I am completely stopped up (in the sinuses, you guys) and can't go lie down because I'm not finished with the shit I have to do. DayQuil and liquid are my friends.
+ Also, because I am lazy and never got around to writing it, Hittite Week is not this week and will appear whenever I finally get to writing some actual content. Please look forward to it, though.

So I'm back now. Actually, I was back yesterday when AT&T came out to fix the Internets while I was at work, but didn't feel like LJing then due to the throes of irrational paranoia et al and would likely have bitten someone's head off. (Irrational paranoia isn't ended, but has been greatly reduced; I am unlikely to bite anyone's head off unless they piss me off. Then all bets are off.)

Things that have happened (exciting and not):
+ I am attempting to fix my life. Again.
+ At some point between the last time I weighed myself (sometime in the spring) and last Sunday, I apparently dropped ten pounds. Experts speculate that I may have done nothing whatsoever to deserve this, but hey, I'm not complaining.
+ I have started to clean my room on the grounds that since I'm likely stuck in this shitpit for a while, my room might as well look like someplace where a teenaged girl with ADHD a grown-ass woman lives. I haven't been at it very long but it is already a vast improvement.
+ In the process thereof, I found that Callice apparently let herself into my bedroom on a regular basis and peed on a huge amount of things. I knew that she occasionally got in there, and that because I often didn't know she was there, I occasionally shut her in there and she occasionally peed on things as a result. Apparently, she was in there and peeing on things a lot more often than I thought. I now have huge piles of laundry that may or may not be completely ruined. My cat keeps on giving. (On the off chance you're just tuning in to the long-running, if not terribly popular, Wang Xi-feng Show, as I know a couple of you are: Callice was my last cat. She died in September.)
+ I found my Russian dictionary (the good one, not the Langenshit one) and was pleased, as I had been wondering what the Russian word for "seahorse" was. It's morskoi konyok, which unfortunately does not lend itself well to adorable nicknames for the adorable duokinneas, who will have to remain a plain old regular Angloglot seahorse.
+ I failed to find my elementary Russian textbooks, which I assume are somewhere in the bowels of my room. I know I did not sell them, because foreign language books are unsaleable at IU. AWESOME JOB l33.
+ Our tomatoes are turning red and yellow. (Yeah, we grow yellow tomatoes.)
+ I fucked up my federal income taxes, apparently. I received a refund check last week, and (true to form) a couple of days later a letter followed which informed me that I was too entitled to a refund because I miscalculated my tax burden. No complaints.
+ forgottensanity! I received your package the day before yesterday! You will be pleased to know that I have not yet opened the present. (O HAI WUT IZ TIHS THING CALLD RESTRAINT.)
+ On the off chance you wanted to talk to me on AIM, which means this next is mostly for galhea, work schedules and pavement-pounding unfortunately mean I am not going to be on too often in the next few days. I'll try but no promises, k?
+ So glad to be back.

Happy birthday, galhea!

3ndl355 r44v. ♥♥♥! Here's hoping the next year brings you more of the good crack, and also more of the cute. 8D

1.) The only thing I hate about lamb is the huge amount of fat I have to cut off it in order to enjoy delicious lamb. This means that I am left with huge strips of gleaming fat. I suppose I could always offer it up to the gods, who got fat and bones in antiquity, but telling Zeus OHAI HERE'S THIS THING I MOSTLY ATE AND I DON'T WANT THIS BIT PLZ ENJOY just strikes me as asking for it.

2.) galhea, I could use j00r speshful plotting halp, when j00 have time. I have managed most of it All By Myself (tm), but I am still trying to figure out the angle I want to work in and sometimes it helps to get an unbiased second opinion. Also, j00 know RP. XD Also also, we should RP! 8D
2a.) Dear l33: This is an RPG, not a fucking doctoral dissertation. Is there some reason why you can't put down the basics and add more on an as-needed basis later? Seriously, your need for perfection keeps things from moving. Please stop acting like the source material is too, too overwhelming--you don't even read Japanese. No love, and get your fucking ass in gear, l33.

3.) My life has suddenly become exponentially more interesting as of late.

4.) Also, if you're at all interested in history meta, you should probably check Conversations About the End of Time (Stephen Jay Gould, Umberto Eco, et al). It's a lot of fun, ffs, and even though it's not topical anymore (it came out about 10 years ago), it's still a pretty interesting read.

5.) I am not looking forward to my Exciting Lol-Mart Adventure this evening. 5 and a half hours, and then I can leave and I'm off tomorrow. GAEM ON U GAIZ.
5a.) I am, however, looking forward to watching Samurai I: Miyamoto Musashi tomorrow. Because these days I apparently do not think about anything unrelated to samurai.

I realize I've been Inexcusably Out of Touch for the past couple of weeks, and I'm sorry, but my life is conspiring to destroy me with fire for the most part. uigenna, I promise to hop on and play with teh j00 sometime this week (let me check my schedule). Highlights:
+ I survived Black Friday '09. It wasn't as horrible as last year. I still fully intend for it to be my LAST Black Friday.
+ Thanksgiving was delicious. We got a smaller turkey than we're used to, so there's not much in the way of leftovers after a pot of delicious turkey noodle soup and my famous turkey chili pie (with cornbread topping). :9
+ I now have "More, More, More" by Andrea True on MP3, and it makes me unreasonably happy considering that it's so horribly '70s and would not be out of place on a pr0n soundtrack. (No real surprise, since Andrea True was a porn star.)
+ Speaking of pr0n, I have a whole bunch of romance-and-pr0n meta I might formulate into some coherent bloggery once I figure out what I'm trying to say with it.
+ In the same general league, I had a dream last night that I let myself into H's apartment, only to suggest, once he was home, that we get to the fucking. I woke up before any actual fucking took place, and because it was a fairly real-seeming dream, I was mildly surprised to discover that I was in my own bed. Jesus, I need to get some action or I'm going to go nuts. Perhaps I already have.
+ I have an idea for something I want to write, but I have to let it percolate because it's based on a fairy tale and significant plot elements would have to be finessed in order for it to make sense in my retelling. This makes me crazy.
+ My abs really hurt from starting the 200 Situps program. You use your abs for everything, as I discovered when I did such things as cough only to feel some intense aching in those particular muscles. Owfux.

MICE update: Initially, we heard a snap and checked the traps, which contained no mice. Subsequently, the lolmom checked and found a single front paw (either the mouse left something behind or gnawed off his foot). She feels tremendously guilty. I do not. Either way, we're reasonably sure the mice are probably not going to stick around--animals aren't stupid.

Speaking of animals not being stupid, Callice knows damn well that there is no cat shit on the living room floor. Or rather, she knows damn well that there should be no cat shit on the living room floor.

GARDEN update: We have lavender. If I learn to make soap or whatever, I know what some of you are going to get for every occasion for the rest of your lives. Mom and I got the regular-sized tomatoes and the eggplant potted a couple of days ago, and we've got the beans, zucchini, and cucumbers started. I went out and potted the peppers yesterday. The herbs and flowers and the spinach still need a new home, but we'll figure that out somehow. (Or I will, since Mom's away for the weekend.)

Went out to dinner with Mom and Connie. Got my hair figured out, finally. I think I can cross "do something about the hair" off my New Year's resolution list. Turns out the bangs just needed some evening-up. Hurrah!

Randomly, I really liked my outfit yesterday.

imperfectkatoru, I'm weeding out all the communities I'm not into anymore, and as it happens male_colors never really took off. Would you be heartbroken if I bahleeted it, or do you want it up for old times' sake?

briarlaboheme, I've defriended your former LJ abode, just because my tiny brain gets confused too easily. Just FYI.

Also, a happy belated birthday to uigenna. Dude, this is the problem with having a flist of any size; I keep forgetting. I'm not sure if people take it personally or not--depends on the person, I suspect--but I'm bothered by it.

First, a happy belated to uigenna (I'd write j00 a birfday haiku or something, but I was never good at that and the peanut gallery is on strike). Also, since it is now the 3rd, happy birthday to ebony_queen as well. :D

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we had word that my Great-Aunt Magdalene (maternal grandfather's older sister) died at 103 in North Carolina a day or two ago. We're not sure yet what the funeral arrangements are going to be; she had expressed a desire to be buried in Fort Wayne, but her children and grand children are all in NC. It seems strange to think that, of the 13 children my great-grandparents managed, only one is still alive.

augustuscaesar got me hooked on Goodreads, and richly deserves A SPANKING for this. I am now obsessively categorizing everything I have ever read in my life. Feel free to friend me there, if any of you happen to have one. Seriously, it is addictive; my tiny OCD brain has happily produced various concatenations of shelves. It will not come as a surprise to learn that there are shelves entirely devoted to samurai and classics.

Speaking of samurai, Stuff You Wanted lives up to its name by, indeed, carrying probably every chanbara flick I have ever wanted and possibly also some I didn't know existed, with English subtitles and Region 1 format. I keep caressing it longingly with my burning, myopic eyes, only to sternly remind myself, "CANNOT HAS. NOT URS."

Only tangentially related to samurai, I really need to finish my letter to H.

I kind of like that they're being slow with the words right now, 'cause it gives me more time to catch up. :D Anyway, this sucks (though I did write about the image I wanted to convey, so it succeeds as communication if not as art) and will probably only make sense to uigenna (and possibly not even to Raien).

( OH SNAP )