the maw of Fafnir

First, and most importantly: Happy birthday, Nodya!

( An entry containing stuff about my computer, my wireless router, lentil soup, the merits of brownies versus boardgames, and the Superbowl. )

Geez, this entry turned out awfully long. ::throws up an lj-cut::

Thing I'm happy about: It's the last day in November, which means this is the last happy/unhappy/working on post that I have to post. I may do it again anyway, but for right now, that's it.
Thing I'm less happy about: I feel very underprepared for the backpacking trip I'm doing this weekend.
Thing I'm working on: No stress! NO STRESS!!!

So just ignore the last entry. Today, I definitely rolled out of bed, took a ten minute shower, threw on jeans and the first sweater I grabbed, and ran out the door, slightly late. We went bowling last night and I slept badly, so go figure. Also, it was not sunny yesterday, although it was definitely not cold, and today it is supposed to rain. So that just goes to show you that things are not always as you expect them to be.

[ETA: which is not to say, by the way, that I'm no longer in love with this city. I am still very much enjoying my time in New York. Just all the expectations of yesterday kind of fell apart, although I did manage to schedule meetings with people...]

Thing I am happy about: Having dinner with my awesome brother at someplace other than Joe's House of All Things Peanut
Thing I am less happy about: Excel sheets full of sites I was supposed to look at yesterday but didn't because I was asleep.
Thing I am working on: I should really do that whole "get more sleep" thing.

I didn't really remember to post yesterday, so I'm backdating this entry. This might be because I got up, I went to work, I went home and went to bed. At six pm. Boy, I have an exciting life. Admittedly, this is coz I was still slightly sick, but so it goes. I feel a lot better today. Er, tomorrow. Whatever.

Anyway, it was a rather inauspicious day (or sarcastically auspicious, either way). I left the house without my glasses, had to go back and get them; nearly missed my train; fell asleep on the train and nearly missed my stop; discovered that the plane tickets I'd bought to NYC were wrong so I had to change them; and I was still sick. All in all, I could have done without the additional stress.

Thing I am happy about: Normalization of drama. This means, in short, that all-consuming emotional things are starting to settle out one way or another.
Thing I am less happy about: The price of tickets at Thanksgiving. While it is 150 dollars cheaper to fly from MA to CA than from CA to MA on the same days, it is still too expensive for Jeremy to come out and visit me.
Thing I am working on: Getting less sick. This one was obvious.

There was a wedding (congratulations to Nancy and Albert!!) and hanging out with gamers and making pizza in the city and getting hit on by a 21 year old and sleeping on a loveseat and more hanging out with gamers and end of World of Warcraft tabletop and pretty views of the Bay late late at night and tapping a deer while driving back from said pretty views. End of weekend.

I'm endeavoring to make this weekend as much fun, though the only concrete plan I have is homework. This is midly terrifying -- I have homework, and it may not be simple. I'm taking two classes (with a third starting in November). The first one is a marketing class taught according to a curriculum at the Haas MBA school at Berkeley. The second is an intro to Java class at Stanford. The third is (what else?) New Kingdom Egypt literature, also at Stanford. So, Mondays and Tuesdays (and eventually Thursdays) will be bad for me trying to do anything. Which is why I went to see a movie at 10pm last night. Never mind my propensity for staying up late in general anyway.

Ironically, I'm more awake after a week of not drinking caffeine (minus a small incident where I forgot that Dr Pepper contains caffeine and drank a full glass of it before being rather embarrassed) and sleeping too little than I have been when I used to drink lots of coffee and sleep too much. I'm wondering if the caffeine had some weird interaction with my body chemistry that didn't used to exist. Slowing metabolism? Who knows. In any case, I may just have to give up caffeine permanently, as much as I love coffee and tea. It also probably helps that Lou is staying in my apartment -- there's no way in hell *anyone* who broke in would get close enough to hurt me with Lou around. Probably this certainty is making me sleep better. Who knows?

I'm REI-bound in the next week or so. I'm likely going camping/hiking/somethingorother in Yosemite in a couple of weeks for a weekend. I'm terribly excited -- I miss being outdoors. And drinking tea (caffeinated or otherwise) in slightly cold weather. I'll never admit to sometimes liking being cold, but sometimes it's kind of nice, despite how much I'll complain about it.

I need to write a snippet, but I'm having problems thinking of something to write about. I write so much in my livejournal and was planning a DnD campaign for 6 months that I've kind of forgotten how to write about something that isn't terribly concrete. I really want to go home and sit in some crunchy leaves and write about being in Massachusetts sitting in a pile of crunchy leaves, but it's a long trip to write a snippet. I'm sure I'll think of something - suggestions are welcome, fiction & non-fiction alike.

Now I have Dido's "White Flag" stuck in my head. Have a video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=BhGHLC0tbcw

I love my fishies. They are cool, and try to eat my hand when I'm picking snails out of the tank, which really freaks me out to the point of me shrieking at them. I honestly believe that the snails think that I'm runing a den of iniquity just for them, since they keep breeding. Today's snail count that i pulled out of my tank was upwards of 50. One tank really doesn't need this many snails.

On the other hand, it's kind of good, since they're a "canary" for knowing when I should change my filter. The worse off my filter is, the more algae there is in the tank. The more algae there is in the tank, the more visible snails there are. As a result, the more snails I see, the more I need to change my filter.

I did a 50% water change today, which went a lot more smoothly than the last time I did it. I didn't actually have any help this time, so I feel all accomplished and everything. I tried scrubbing down the things in my tank, but it didn't seem to make much of a difference, so I just ran them under hot water.

The three males in my tank have very distinctive personalities. First, there's Mars, who's the dominant male. He's biggest, and his tact towards the females is to chase them around the tank, demonstrating how much prettier his dorsal fin is. It reminds me very much of Ares' posturing in the Greek Mythos, especially when he's morphed into his Roman equivalent and has the centurion ruff.

Jupiter is a little smaller, and he has stripes on his tail. Originally, when he was silver and black spotted, he had an enormous black spot on him - something like the Great Red Spot, but black - hence the name. Since then, he's turned black. (Actually, all the males went from being silver to turning completely black. Go figure.) His tact with females is to stalk them and then launch himself on them when they least expect it. Watching him stalk has got to be one of the funniest things to see. He listerally *lurks*. Again, going back to the Greek/Roman roots, where Zeus used to trick females into sleeping with him. Jupiter is a lot more devious than Mars, but seems to get lucky less often.

Pluto's a different case altogether. He's definitely the smallest and until recently, seemed to have no interest in any of the other fish. I joked that he was waiting for his Persephone. Anyway, now he's halfheartedly going after the females, but he seems a lot more concerned about his territory, and will often attach Mars and Jupiter if they get too close to him. Linking it to mythology is a bit of a stretch, but Hades used to be very concerned with his Underworld, and rarely let anything out of his realm. I keep hoping he'll end up with Alpha Centauri, who's the smallest and (I think) prettiest girl in the tank. She's all silver and light and quite small.

I still can't separate out many of the females. For a while, I knew who Alpha Centauri, Venus, Earth, and Saturn were, but I think I've confused them again. It's difficult because their size, stripes, and spots keep changing on me. I have no idea what happened to Saturn, since the distinctive tail stripe has disappeared. I can recognize Alpha Centauri, because she's so different, and Venus half the time. I've christened one Earth, who has a continent shaped splotch on her side, but I don't know how long that's going to stick around. I also kind of think she used to be named Saturn.

Anyway, I have pictures on my camera of my tank, so eventually, I'll post them. When I get around to it. I'm really bad with this whole posting pictures thing.

My plan this weekend was to clean my apartment and Get Organized. I even had a thought of taking a "before" picture and then an "after" picture and posting them here. Unsurprisingly, this didn't really happen much. I did spend about 4 hours on Saturday going through old mail and separating out Important Things from Bills and then putting them into a file box. So, now I have an empty box (because I'd been stashing my mail there) and a paper bag full of old envelopes. Dear god, so much paper everywhere. I have Thoughts on how to reorganize my entire apartment, especially given the lack of media storage solutions I have right now.

I also really want a pycnopodia. Hand Cthulu (or Deep One spawn) for the win.

Motto for the Snail Den of Iniquity: We do it slowly.

I went to Dobromir's bachelor party on Saturday (it made sense for me to be there - there were about twice as many girls as guys). We "sat around and watched porn." The groom got very drunk, and "his grandfather was there." The "plot" of the "porn movie" might have involved a bartender giving a groom a tequila body shot and perhaps lots of dancing at a place called the Buddha Bar. It may have also involved chains and bowling balls, but I don't really remember much beyond that. It was a great "porno flick", and I met lots of nice and fun people. There was Bon Jovi, too, so you know that makes it an automatically good night.

I personally will now no longer have peppermint schnapps in anything other than hot chocolate. Taste of toothpaste + (Jager || other hard alcohol) = bad. In this case, a liquid cocaine shot almost did me in, but I persevered and woke up in the morning with a hang over predominantly from not sleeping enough (and not the alcohol). In order to counteract this, I then stayed in bed until about 530pm, at which point, I took a shower (coz, damn...) and went to play world of warcraft, where I got really distracted by backstory writing and didn't contribute much. It kind of makes me sad, because I love my character, but she has no idea what the hell she's supposed to be doing and is now in the Twisting Nether, looking for an old friend.

And today, I've gone to brunch & eaten pancakes, had a corset fitting, and am now at home, debating on the wisdom of things like cleaning my apartment, going to borders and buying season 5 of Buffy, getting food, visiting the grocery store, reading a book, or watching Star Wars (IV-VI) or Rome (season 1).

It is not a bad day to be me.

Also, my bus driver has picked up a peculiar habit of calling me a princess.

sigh....

Waffles are good for breakfast, especially served with blueberries and heated maple syrup. I may need to find a waffle iron to make these. And a mixer. And possibly some more bowls. And perhaps a way to ensure that I always have non-expired milk, eggs, flour, baking soda, etc. in my apartment.

Okay, that sounds like far too much work. I may just have to continue to steal them from people.

Also, I probably should purchase a new mattress. My current one is one of those cheap ones from Ikea, and I'm not sure it's actually doing much for me. On the other hand, I did wake up this morning with new and exciting back stiffness, which just goes to show that I can still apparently sleep differently enough to cause weird contortions.

And finally, I'm going to go shopping for shoes and jeans because I apparently need new clothing. Or something.

Today, I was glad to discover a couple of things:

1) No matter how much time you spend talking to people or trying to understand them, inevitably you will be surprised by them. In some cases, more than once.

2) There are still people in the world who believe very strongly in the success and brilliance of love, and who are not necessarily jaded by whatever situations they might have been in before you knew them or after you lost them.

Both of these things makes me quite happy, even though I'm not sure that I fall into either category. It's just good to know that things like Truth, Love & Beauty still exist as ideals and that people are very different on an individual basis.

In completely unrelated news, I had an awesome dinner at Kaygetsu, which consisted of 6 courses of unidentifiable foods and fantastic tastes and much green tea. I had spent a good few hours stressing about what I was going to wear, how/whether to do my hair, how/whether to put on makeup, and other things, before watching a couple episodes of season four of Buffy (yes, I have seen all of it more than once but I'm rewatching it) and forgetting to be stressed until about 10 minutes before I had to leave. Thank goodness for skillz which allow me to get ready and look good within 10-15 minutes.

I also realized, after some conversation, that I'm vaguely addicted to my Livejournal and that I tend to write in it more than is good for me. Of course, this isn't actually reflected in my entries, given that I spend a lot of time thinking about what I'm going to write, deciding how much information I want to divulge, and then writing whatever part of it I feel like I can write, sometimes expounding further in a friends-locked post. (Though, as you may have noticed, I don't like friends-locked posts much.) Usually, I get the urge to post something 2 or 3 times a day, but generally restrain myself to posting once every 2 or 3 days.

Henry is safe in Texas -- I know this because I called him and he picked up. I thought, for whatever reason, that he was two hours behind (so calling him at midnight my time wouldn't be so late for him), but, as it turns out, he's two hours ahead. And now much less well-rested. Sorry, Henry.

I have also added large amounts of things to my Amazon wishlist. And I kind of wonder when I think I'll be able to afford the complete Star Trek seasons of the original series, the Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine, as well as the whole set of movies. In the meanwhile, I kind of also need to get Buffy 5-7 and Angel 3-5. It's a pity that my birthday is so close to Christmas. Although I don't get any fewer presents, I only get them once a year...

I also kind of want to go and buy an entire new wardrobe, with shoes and everything. I've recently had an increasing urge to become more girly. I don't think this will actually happen, although I should probably go buy another pair of flat shoes (maybe puma SpeedCats or more ballet flats) and maybe a pair of peeptoe pumps.

I have at least two snails in my tank. One of them is named Sparky. I think the other is Trouble, both in name and in actuality. Apparently, snails are hermaphroditic, so can produce without a mate. And apparently, they do this often enough to take over the tank. I have experience with this, actually, since I found one snail in the morning, and twelve hours later, there were two of them. Coincidence? I think not. I have to figure out what to do about them, although the internet tells me that most snails are generally beneficial to the tank.

Finally, I realized that it was the last week in July, which means that Summer is nearly 2/3 over. This is both sad (end of summer) and good (beginning of pumpkin pie and a return of Christmas music). Also, at the end of September, my parents will have been married for exactly 40 years. My dad wants to go watch a large quantity of P-51 Mustangs take to the air in Ohio, but I'm not sure we'll be able to all make it out there for that. And it's no fun without all of us.

As part of summer going away, Formula 1 season is also drawing to a close, with Louis Hamilton, the rookie, in the lead for the Championship. Will Kimi, Alonso, or Massa be able to steal his early lead? Only time (and the remaining races) will tell.

If this were the normal size of my LJ braindumps, would you really want to read two or three of them every day? Yeah, I wouldn't, either.