Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.

[ << Previous 25 ]

Saturday, November 28th, 2009
kyuuketsukirui	10:47p	Daily Happiness Erin's sister got an earlier flight, so she was back over here by like 4.30, instead of between 8 and 9 like she'd planned. :D We then went to Target (she rented a car for the rest of the time she's here, whee!), since she wanted to get some presents to take to her goddaughter tomorrow, and I found Tim Tams (at a cheaper price than the grocery store!) and a cute green and blue striped shirt. Then we had a delicious dinner of grilled tri-tip and cheesy potatoes with leeks and bacon, with pumpkin pie for dessert. Om nom nom! (Comment on this)
poisontaster	10:35p	My mother passed early yesterday morning. If I am absent from LJ for a little while, this is why. Current Mood: sad
Friday, November 27th, 2009
kyuuketsukirui	10:56p	Daily Happiness 1. I got my new sweatshirt in the mail today! It's the same one Carla got a week or so ago, but in olive green instead of navy blue. I love it so! My old sweatshirt was...not exactly something I would choose myself (had a big picture of wolves on it and said Alaska; I think it was given to us by Carla's aunt when they went on a trip there), plus it was worn thin in many places and the cuffs were pretty much shredded. Also it was a pullover, which is fine for in the house, but as a jacket to wear out, I'd rather have a zip-up sweatshirt. 2. We bought a new sofa! Earlier in the week we got a flier from Easy Life, which had an advertisement for a $599 sofa with free loveseat or recliner and we both liked the idea. The sofa reclines on both ends, plus the centre folds down to be a little table with built-in cup holders! At first we'd been thinking about getting the recliner to go with it, since that's what would fit better in our living room, but the recliner turned out to be a rocker recliner, which I do not like, plus the hand pull on the side felt really cheap. So we're now not sure exactly where the loveseat will go, but we'll find a place for it somewhere, either in the living room or maybe here in the computer room. I am all O_o over the fact that we have bought furniture. It's so grown up! We did buy a bed years ago when we got married, but that is the only furniture we've bought, new or used. Everything else was already in the house or hand-me-down from relatives. (Oh, and we got a coffee table from Carla's folks for Christmas a couple years ago.) Well, we did buy the three computer desks we have, and the CD shelves, but those don't feel like real furniture in quite the same way, you know? They're not a sofa! Anyway, they were out of stock at that location, so it has to be ordered and will be delivered around the 8th. 3. They had Tim Tams at the grocery store! FINALLY! I have been hearing now for a year or more that Pepperidge Farm sells Tim Tams here, but I never saw them anywhere. I was kind of disappointed in the price, though. On sale for $3.50, regular price $3.99. I'm not sure how much they are at Cost Plus, but it's not that much more expensive. I was hoping these would be a little cheaper. I did buy a pack, but even the sale price is out of my price range except for very special occasions (like finding them for the first time ever). (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 26th, 2009
kyuuketsukirui	9:44p	Daily Happiness 1. Had a nice dinner today. I wasn't thrilled with my family, but at least we didn't have to stay too long. :p 2. I have managed to survive on only about an hour and a half of sleep. I thought I might crash when we came back from my mom's, but unfortunately I still had Naruto and Bleach to translate since I didn't get those before we left. And then it was like five-thirty or six and I was thinking, really, if I just push on for a few more hours, I can be on a fairly "normal" schedule, which is what I'm wanting to keep to while Erin is here, because while I usually love my sleep during the day/up all night thing I have going, it's not so great for company (and Erin is not back here until Saturday, but I'd rather not disrupt my schedule more than I have to). 3. I don't have to do anything tomorrow. I mean, there's stuff on my to-do list, but there's nothing urgent, and we don't have to go anywhere, and I can just catch up on my sleep and relax. There's something else that I have been meaning to put on the list for days and I only remember it when I'm away from the computer. D: And each time, I'm like, oh, I should totally put that on my happiness post! But now I have no idea what it is. (Comment on this)
kyuuketsukirui	9:16a	Daily Happiness 1. Well, I got most of my Jump translations done last night. For some reason neither Bleach nor Naruto are out yet. Hopefully they'll show up in the next couple hours so I can get them done before going over to my mom's for dinner... But at least I got One Piece (two chapters this week), Bakuman, and Psyren out of the way! 2. I went to Panera for the first time yesterday. OMG they have delicious pastries. I thought they were just a sandwich shop, but Erin wanted to go there for breakfast, so we walked down (nice walk, like three, three and a half miles round trip) and I got a gingerbread bagel and a orange scone. The scone had this icing on it that tasted exactly like those Pillsbury orange rolls. And the bagel was sooooo good (and cheap, too; their bagels are only $1.25). I'd definitely go down there again. 3. Erin's off with her sisters for a couple days, but she's coming back here on Saturday instead of Sunday like she thought, so that's an extra day to hang out, yay. Plus she's going to be renting a car, so I won't have to get my mom to take her to the airport when she leaves. 4. I'm cat/house-sitting for my former neighbors for a few days, so that means extra money, yay. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
kyuuketsukirui	10:26p	Daily Happiness 1. My friend Erin is here from out of town. I haven't seen her in almost three years, so it's pretty exciting to see her again. We've been friends since we were like six and eight or something ridiculous like that. She's going to spend tomorrow afternoon through Saturday with her sisters, but then be back at our house and stay until next Wednesday. We did two hours of karaoke this afternoon and hopefully will do more next week. 2. I got the last of the books I ordered for my mom for Christmas, so that is my Christmas shopping done! (That is really my only Christmas shopping, actually, considering Carla got her computer as an early Christmas present.) (Comment on this)
devilc	2:09p	T-Day: Grading Hell Theatre I posted a rather lengthy reply to Cereta's call for Thanksgiving and your favorite characters, so I thought I'd share it here, since I'm counting it for mini-nano. ( DCU, Marvel, and FNL, oh my ) (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, November 23rd, 2009
kyuuketsukirui	10:24p	Daily Happiness I feel like I haven't got much done today because I didn't get much done on the computer, BUT! I did do a ton of housecleaning, because Erin is coming to stay tomorrow, and plus this weekend I want to put the tree up and would want to vacuum and stuff before that, so two reasons to clean means I actually got off my ass and tidied, dusted, and vacuumed. Plus we finally made a decision on how we want the living room organised, so it's no longer in a half-assed state since we moved the furniture around. I thought of taking pictures tonight (both of it and the rearranged bedroom, which has also had some finishing touches put on it finally, like plugging the clock properly in so it's not got the cord stretching out across the floor), but I think I'll just wait until after I've got the Christmas tree up. Anyway, so yay, house clean(ish). And now I am super tired, so I'm going to try and get some sleep and that way I'll be on a more "normal" schedule while I have company (and for Thanksgiving, too, since dinner will be right in the middle of when I'd normally be sleeping). Also I loved today's Dinosaur Comics. (Comment on this)
poisontaster	4:05p	Going, Going, Gone Going to Chicago again. Things with my mom are worse and I can't not be there. I'll post when I can, but I don't know when that will be.
kyuuketsukirui	12:06p	Amazon deals This is for people in the US only, unfortunately, but a code for Amazon has $3 off digital purchases, plus some new albums like Adam Lambert's For Your Entertainment and Rihanna's Rated R are on sale for $3.99 each, so you could essentially get a whole album for 99 cents. There's also some good stuff in the 50 for $5 each section, including The Crane Wife and a Flight of the Conchords album. I already downloaded a copy of For Your Entertainment, but I figured for that cheap, I should buy the official version as well. I also apparently had $12 in mp3 credits already (they give you $5 whenever you buy anything to do with music (such as the headphones we ordered a few months back) and then I forget to use them), so I bought Rihanna's, too. I still have $8 left, so I should see if there's anything else I want. (Comment on this)
kyuuketsukirui	3:14a	Daily Happiness 1. Helped my mom and Tom move some furniture yesterday, which earned us $50 off the rent. Woohoo! 2. My hair is blue! It was really a huge pain in the ass, made even worse by the fact that we no longer have a bathtub faucet (well, the faucet is there, it's just broken so you can no longer switch from shower to bath; it's on shower permanently), so I couldn't rinse my head under the faucet, but instead had to do it in the shower, getting blue all over everything, including myself. But I like how it turned out, so yay. (Comment on this)
kyuuketsukirui	12:56a	Book 67: The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros Title: The House on Mango Street Author: Sandra Cisneros Number of Pages: 110 pages Book Number/Goal: 67/75 for 2009 My Rating: 4.5/5 This is a series of vignettes about Esperanza, a pre-teen girl growing up in a latino neighborhood in Chicago. It's very, very short, even shorter than the 110 pages it appears to be, because each story starts halfway down on the page, and often end with just one paragraph or a few lines on the next page, so there's a ton of empty space. The stories are all just little ordinary things, like reading somebody's memories rather than A Novel. I enjoyed it a lot. Mooch from BookMooch. (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 22nd, 2009
poisontaster	11:31p	Eek. For those of you who write, you know that point in a story where you just want to scream at it: "Why won't you just do what I tell you??" Yeah. There were going to be 75 chapters. Yeah, not so much. Getting rid of Mary-Louise, finding out about Bodhi, Jensen's mom…I was totes going to be able to cover those in a single chapter each. Ha. Yeah, not so much. I can't even begin to dissect how many scenes there are that I thought were going to go one way and, somewhere in transition, took a left at Albuquerque when they should've taken a right. Don't get me wrong. To date, La Muse hasn't led me wrong in these unexpected detours. I think the stories that have resulted have always ended up being stronger and better than my original conceptions. As well, it's a pretty common writerly phenomenon. That just doesn't make it any less annoying when it happens. And it doesn't make me feel any less like a maidservant trying to get her mistress into a dress that's entirely too small for her, fingers wrapped in the laces, foot planted firmly in her back and heaving for all I'm worth. I know where I want to go. I know that. But the scenarios that have evolved have done so in a way that makes it impossible to resolve them as quickly as I first thought I'd be able to. Which means I then end up adding things, trying to course correct and bring them back around to where I think they should be (which doesn't always work) and that means I generally hit up at a point where the two ends don't meet and I'm at a loss how to bring them back together. I just wrote myself off a cliff. I'm at a loss how to bring the ends back together. And I'll figure it out. I always do. The boys at the brain farm are always working. But having built up so much momentum in the last couple scenes, it does feel a bit like slamming face-first into a screen door and falling on my ass (I speak from sad, pathetic experience, here). And there's always that initial panicky reaction of, Oh crap. Where do I go from here? Me and the boys on the farm have some musing to do. Current Mood: amused (Comment on this)
poisontaster	9:01p	Fic: A Kept Boy 75/? Fandom: CWRPS Pairing: Jeff/Jensen, Jared/Jensen Rating: Adult Warnings: Slavefic AU. Sexual, mental and physical abuse of adults and minors. Dark themes, adult concepts and language. Disclaimer: This is in no way a true story. Word Count: 2,900 AN: Master list of previous chapters found here. Cast of characters can be found here. Banner by the lovely and generous bloodquartz. Podfic version read by the amazing superstitiousme (found here, courtesy of the very kind general_jinjur). And don't forget the other really awesome stories to be found at whatwekeep. ( It's beautiful here. ) Current Mood: calm (Comment on this)
swtalmnd	12:21p	Sunday Meanderings In the form of a list! Deadline to sign up for a holiday card from me is December 7 -- that's when the art supply place claims it will deliver my blank cards, heh. I launched my fine art site and totally forgot to tell y'all -- Antemortem Arts is open, and I've even put stuff in my Etsy shop. I have exactly 3 pieces of fan art left to do, and then those commitments are fulfilled. Since they're all due for Xmas (2 HP Holiday Card Exchange cards, and my own HP Xmas card), I'll be all done by the end of the year. Weird! I found betas for accioslash's LLM fic, and it will be posting in santas_lap along with the Sirius/Neville I still have to finish, oops. I've been making some quiet writing progress on various things, including a certain person's incredibly belated prize fic (one more scene and it's done!), a chapter of the no-longer-New Thing that I probably ought to post to swtalmnd_nano, and little dribs and drabs to my other three WiPs that aren't for any fest or person or anything. Coconut Cocoa Tea ftw. Current Mood: sleepy Current Music: Time Won't Let Me, The Smithereens (Comment on this)
kyuuketsukirui	4:34a	Daily Happiness I got hardly anything done yesterday. I was really tired and went to bed early, then ended up napping a couple times during the day, too, and then have been tired for the last several hours which means I just sort of sat here not really getting much done (but I didn't want to go to bed until I had finished a few things). :( Also for some reason there's some sort of fuckup between Verizon and T-Mobile, so when people with Verizon call our phones (T-Mobile), they get a message saying all circuits are busy or something. D: Anyway! On to the happiness... 1. The excerpt for this really bad gay romance is hilarious. I am almost tempted* to pay the $6.99 for the full book because I know it would provide much enjoyment in ways the author never intended. 2. This whole hair-dyeing thing is going very slowly because I am lazy, but I did use the toner on my hair yesterday, and here is a picture of me post-toner. My hair's still pretty yellow, but it definitely took out the worst of the orange. I meant to do the blue today, but that didn't happen, so hopefully tomorrow. 3. There is a World of Warcraft version of Peggle! It's only ten levels, but I will take anything I can get! Also it's free, yay. (And it's not an add-on for Peggle or Peggle Nights, but a stand-alone edition, so you can play it even if you don't have the others.) 4. Carla's going back to Indiana to visit her folks (and friends) in January and her parents are actually paying for the ticket! This is pretty rare for them, and not due to any lack of money. *Not really, but maybe if it were half that price. (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 21st, 2009
ficangel	6:20p	AI Fic: Don't Know When I'll Be Back Again (5/5) Continued from Part Four ( David stretched, or started to. ) Current Mood: accomplished (11 Comments |Comment on this)
ficangel	6:16p	AI Fic: Don't Know When I'll Be Back Again (4/5) Continued from Part Three ( They were actually letting him sleep that night. ) Current Mood: accomplished (Comment on this)
ficangel	6:11p	AI Fic: Don't Know When I'll Be Back Again (3/5) Continued from Part Two ( David woke up thirsty. ) Current Mood: accomplished (Comment on this)
ficangel	6:07p	AI Fic: Don't Know When I'll Be Back Again (2/5) Continued from Part One ( David woke up to someone calling his name. ) Current Mood: accomplished (Comment on this)
ficangel	5:55p	AI Fic: Don't Know When I'll Be Back Again (1/5) TITLE: Don’t Know When I’ll Be Back Again AUTHOR: Mari RATING: Hard R PAIRING: Cookleta CONTAINS: Violence, language, sexuality, and character death. Contact me if you need or want to know more. SUMMARY: “The plane fell out of the sky.” AUTHOR’S NOTE: This was written for magic8ballz in return for her very generous donation in the AI charity author auction. I hope you like it! ( After Idol's tenth season wrapped up, there was a big concert scheduled for Sydney. ) Current Mood: accomplished (Comment on this)
poisontaster	2:59p	And Don't Forget to Breathe I was putting together what new material I have for Appetite and I was really pretty shocked at how little it comes out to be, when assembled. Part of the reason for this is that there are two scenes that I've spent a lot of words on, but it was all writing and rewriting them, trying to find the "right" take for them. So there's verbiage, but most of it is garbage. Or…if not garbage, than discards and it's a real struggle for me to be Zen about this and say that it will come when it comes and accept that with equanimity. There are some stories I can bull my way through. I used to be better at bulling my way through a stubborn story. But now it's a talent that seems to have deserted me and, as usual, I'm not sure how to recover it. On the other hand, I feel like AKB is going like gangbusters. Which is awesome and I am thankful for that, but, at the same time, it's hard not to feel like my success with AKB and that all my excitement and creativity going toward it is detracting from my other goals. And while a part of me doesn't want it to end, the glimmering of the end on the horizon is also a relief. Of course, it also brings up a certain morbid curiosity about what, exactly, will take its place as the object of my obsession. And, of course, the fear that nothing will. In my current spate of 'trashy' reading, I'm reading LKH's Skin Trade and I realized a big part of the many, many things that bother me about the Anita Blake books (and their [de]evolution over time) is the distinct lack of femaleness. ( A little more about that. Not specifically spoilery. ) Another thing that I really want to write about, but haven't quite figured out how to talk about it without potentially offending people, is mini_nanowrimo. On the one hand, I understand that it, like anything writing related, is a tool and what people get out of it and how they use it and what it means to them is entirely individual. I can't dispute that. I can't argue with that. But, at the same time, I confess to a certain (un-modly, personal) frustration when people either miss a day of writing or miss a day of posting and decide to pack it up and give up on the challenge entirely. I mean…I get the disappointment of not meeting the goals that you've set for yourself. Boy howdy, do I get that! And I do understand the impulse that, if you cannot be perfect, you'd rather be nothing at all. But I also feel like it's a childish impulse, in its way. The older I get (and the theoretically wiser) the more I think less and care less about perfection and care and think more about perseverance. The way we do one thing is the way we do everything. In this life, we make mistakes, we fail. We fail in so many ways. Some failure is inevitable. And, generally speaking, we don't have the option of packing it in, taking our ball and going home. Generally, we have to stick it out, strap it on and clean up our messes. And I find a certain grace in that. Much more grace, in some ways, than the people who do manage some level of perfection, because it takes guts to faceplant and then get up again and move on. I feel like we spend so much time trying to self-talk ourselves and everyone else into not making any mistakes, to being perfect and we spend none of that time teaching ourselves or each other how to recover from those inevitable failures. Or that a failure doesn't need to be the end of everything. And that a failure in one part doesn't equal complete catastrophe. ( Some more thoughts on the matter. (The opinions within are those of poisontaster, and do not represent the comm as a whole or in part.) ) Current Mood: busy Current Music: Alexi Murdoch - Breathe (Comment on this)
poisontaster	2:59p	And Don't Forget to Breathe I was putting together what new material I have for Appetite and I was really pretty shocked at how little it comes out to be, when assembled. Part of the reason for this is that there are two scenes that I've spent a lot of words on, but it was all writing and rewriting them, trying to find the "right" take for them. So there's verbiage, but most of it is garbage. Or…if not garbage, than discards and it's a real struggle for me to be Zen about this and say that it will come when it comes and accept that with equanimity. There are some stories I can bull my way through. I used to be better at bulling my way through a stubborn story. But now it's a talent that seems to have deserted me and, as usual, I'm not sure how to recover it. On the other hand, I feel like AKB is going like gangbusters. Which is awesome and I am thankful for that, but, at the same time, it's hard not to feel like my success with AKB and that all my excitement and creativity going toward it is detracting from my other goals. And while a part of me doesn't want it to end, the glimmering of the end on the horizon is also a relief. Of course, it also brings up a certain morbid curiosity about what, exactly, will take its place as the object of my obsession. And, of course, the fear that nothing will. In my current spate of 'trashy' reading, I'm reading LKH's Skin Trade and I realized a big part of the many, many things that bother me about the Anita Blake books (and their [de]evolution over time) is the distinct lack of femaleness. ( A little more about that. Not specifically spoilery. ) Another thing that I really want to write about, but haven't quite figured out how to talk about it without potentially offending people, is mini_nanowrimo. On the one hand, I understand that it, like anything writing related, is a tool and what people get out of it and how they use it and what it means to them is entirely individual. I can't dispute that. I can't argue with that. But, at the same time, I confess to a certain (un-modly, personal) frustration when people either miss a day of writing or miss a day of posting and decide to pack it up and give up on the challenge entirely. I mean…I get the disappointment of not meeting the goals that you've set for yourself. Boy howdy, do I get that! And I do understand the impulse that, if you cannot be perfect, you'd rather be nothing at all. But I also feel like it's a childish impulse, in its way. The older I get (and the theoretically wiser) the more I think less and care less about perfection and care and think more about perseverance. The way we do one thing is the way we do everything. In this life, we make mistakes, we fail. We fail in so many ways. Some failure is inevitable. And, generally speaking, we don't have the option of packing it in, taking our ball and going home. Generally, we have to stick it out, strap it on and clean up our messes. And I find a certain grace in that. Much more grace, in some ways, than the people who do manage some level of perfection, because it takes guts to faceplant and then get up again and move on. I feel like we spend so much time trying to self-talk ourselves and everyone else into not making any mistakes, to being perfect and we spend none of that time teaching ourselves or each other how to recover from those inevitable failures. Or that a failure doesn't need to be the end of everything. And that a failure in one part doesn't equal complete catastrophe. ( Some more thoughts on the matter. (The opinions within are those of poisontaster, and do not represent the comm as a whole or in part.) ) Current Mood: busy Current Music: Alexi Murdoch - Breathe (Comment on this)
kyuuketsukirui	2:02a	Daily Happiness 1. Carla got her new computer today! My old laptop (which she's currently using) is really starting to die (looks like it needs a new hard drive), so instead of saving the new computer til Christmas, we decided she'd just start using it now. 2. Had a nice walk tonight. Four miles, which is longer than we've done in a while. She's been busy with school, I've been busy with work, there's yoga two nights a week interfering with our schedule, and then for the past couple weeks she's been sick. But tonight Alexander wanted something from the Apple Store, so we walked down to the Promenade and back. Stopped at El Pollo Loco on the way, yum. 3. Speaking of chicken, I was boiling a whole chicken earlier today for use in enchiladas and I kind of forgot about it on the stove and so it got cooked way longer than I meant it to...but that ended up being a good thing! The chicken was just falling off the bones! (Comment on this)
Friday, November 20th, 2009
kyuuketsukirui	1:19p	Supernatural 5x10, Modern Family 1x08 ( Supernatural 5x10 ) I also watched Modern Family, but I don't really have anything to say there. There wasn't anything wrong with it, per se, but it was the weakest episode so far and I just wasn't finding much to get excited about. (Probably because the main storyline was about Phil and Claire and I just don't care about them.) (Comment on this)

[ << Previous 25 ]