the maw of Fafnir

Does anyone know of a place in the area that will take gemstones and make them into jewelry? I have recently acquired a pair of pearls, and need to find someone to make them into earrings for me. Of course, I don't want them just to be made into studs, so I actually need a designer...

I really hate dress shopping.

I got to see Daniel last night! And sing karaoke really really badly off-key! And drink turquoise drinks! It was a lot more fun than I thought it would be.

I'm wearing a ridiculously awesome outfit right now -- popart graphic top with grey, black and red circles on a field of white, dress pants, an awesome white half-trench, and my new shoes (patent leather mary janes). it's kind of an odd outfit for me, but it looks good if you had no idea that this wasn't the kind of thing that i often (ever) wear.

Thing I'm happy about: my three hour meeting at 9am this morning during which i was helpful and productive!
Thing I'm less happy about: it's been a good day. Shockingly, I have little to be less happy about. Maybe that I oversteamed my milk in that last latte. Or that my feet hurt a little from these shoes.
Thing I'm working on: getting through the next hour of work.

i have my bag. luckily, my halloween socks arrived undamaged.

i had a fantastic dinner last night where my food was artistically arranged and the combination of flavors in a specific fish dish could be considered orgasmic, even if you aren't really a food person. no, seriously, i was rendered speechless by how good it tasted. and i'm picky.

i'm beginning to feel overwhelmed by work, but think that maybe i can handle it if i just click my heels together and wish it to be done.

the good fairies did not come and clean my apartment last night while i was sleeping. i guess i didn't leave them enough cookies.

For Christmas this year, I want a pleasant surprise.

Sadly, this cannot be a new computer, for I now have a working Admin-access computer with accompanying monitor (nice), keyboard (average but at least the right color) and mouse (OMG, DIE). Need speakers, or at least some way of hooking the ones I have here up to the computer in the kitchen. I don't really want to move the speakers, but I don't have any way of plugging in the computer into the outlets in my living room. Because the outlets in my living room are from the sixties, when they didn't have 3 prong appliances. Neolithic twerps.

In other news, I found a recipe for bread. And I will attempt to make said bread sometime this weekend, maybe. Assuming that I don't reread the recipe and go "HOW LONG?!!!" and run down to the local McDonalds to acquire some of their McWonderBread instead. Not that that's the same kind of bread AT ALL, but beggars (or at least lazy ones) can't be choosers.

In additional other news, I called my parents something on the order of 5 times today. Once to say "Hi", once to let my mom know that I thought my shirt was ruined because I spilled coffee on it, once to ask my dad about checks with old addresses, once to tell my mom that my shirt was fine, and then finally to let them know that I had spent large quantities of money on their card for food since I'd just spent excessively large quantities of money on my card for electronics and was running close to my credit limit. They were highly amused. Highly amused.

I ate toast today. No, really. I really did eat toast, so this is now officially an "I ate toast" blog.

Actually, right now, I feel more like troglodyteking since I have a bunch of stuff that I want to talk about in a high-minded philosophical manner, but I can't formulate it well enough at the moment to be able to write it down. It involves something to do with relationships, so I'm not sure it would be all that interesting to many of the people on here, especially those concerned with logic and problem solving.

See, that's the biggest tolerance that I think most relationships have to develop. Most (not all, there are always exceptions) guys are very much like "you have a problem? Great, here's how to solve it and let me be logical in the meanwhile" and girls (again, not all) tend to want to explore the problem to the fullest extent and meander about before trying to come up with a solution that they're happy with. Guys just sort of optimize the problem and discover the correct solution, regardless of how easy (or nice) it is to implement. That, and I like complaining. Gives me something to talk about.

It was raining today, yet another thing that reminds me of troglodyteking. He does often like the rain. Bunches of my guy friends (who coincidentally ALL like to hike) were overjoyed by the rain and the coolness of the weather. Meanwhile, I went out for a small walk, got completely drenched and ended up shivering for a good half an hour. I'm not ready for fall, much less winter. Though, I did check www.farmersalmanac.com and it said that this winter was supposed to be mild. I wonder whether it predicted the drought that we had last year, since I'm getting the sense that it's going to be a long protracted rainy winter. We'll see - maybe I'm just pessimistic and the weather gods will surprise me with their benevolence.

On the other hand, winter = Christmas = family = good, so maybe by that transitive process, we can say that winter = good. But maybe not.

So, in conclusion: I ate toast. I went shopping. It rained. I was cold. The end.

So, my shopping rant. I promised one, so here it is. In my trying on of over 40 pairs of jeans (no exaggeration), I found one that fit properly. One. Most of my shopping was done at the gap, so there are 6 different styles (Classic, Essential, Flare, Bootcut, Long and Lean, and Curvy), in which I need to try on at least two sizes, and all the rinses (average of about 3 per style) are a different cut within the same style. So 6x2x3 = 36 PLUS whatever additional sales jeans I found, jeans at J.Crew, and jeans at Macy's. Not to mention the trying on the pairs which fit several times to make sure that they fit better than the others. By the time I got to Express, I looked at the jeans and ran screaming.

Also, shoes this season are really ugly. I can't deal with peep toed flats or ankle high lace up bootie things. And everything's really shiny - like, actually shiny and plastic, instead of Firefly shiny, which would be good. Though, I did covet a pair of red shiny opentoed pumps and also some Puma shoes, but decided that these were cooler.

In other news, I'm likely buying a digital piano keyboard. It's admittedly not that impressive as a keyboard, but onetruedavid, the resident keyboard snob, tried the same model at Guitar Center yesterday and it didn't burn him. One of my coworkers is offering it for a small discount, so I'd probably buy it from him, since it has the benefit of 1) being cheaper; 2) coming with a stand; and 3) coming with a little bench.

Oh, and the big, news-related thing... http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/07/apple-introduces-ilife-08/ And I'm totally drinking champagne right now.

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.

This weekend was just awesome. I mean, whoa, awesome.( Cut for length )

Then work this morning, where I have gotten no work done. Ah, well.

ETA: fucking quotation marks.

For all you Gilbert and Sullivan fans, courtesy of joie_de_livre: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkJdEFf_Qg4 It is very much stuck in my head this way now...I can even see the lighting scheme that I'd use in Dink to make it possible.

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Her Noble Excellency Prisma the Unlikely of Londinium-le-Thames Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

And in other news, instead of going hiking (because it was raining), I bought The Most Ludicrous Shoes Ever. And then I went out and bought a denim miniskirt and red tanktop to wear with them. I went *outfit* shopping. I'm so amused, but I love them so much. I was trying to buy a pair of jeans and some sensible shoes (which I also picked up, but still, I think I'm only barely breaking even). Also, I am apparently pear-shaped - baby got back and then some.

Also, there was DnD, and someone said that it was a good session! So, I'm not a terrible DM! I'm causing terrible roleplaying conflicts and directing pompous NPCs, and planning more than I need to, so that's good. And then there was talking, and trouble wasn't caused and I played well with others, and received some interesting email.

All in all, a pretty damn successful weekend.

today, i am happy about: i can't think of anything happy right now. i'm overworked, stressed, worried, and generally sad. i want jer to call, but it's not logical for him to. i want to be in MA, but i don't think it'll make a whit of difference. i want to not be doing work right now, but that's kind of my job. i guess that today i am happy about borrone's pumpkin pie, coz it's yummy.

today, i am less happy about: my hair. it isn't as short as i want it, even after the haircut that I got today. also, see above.

today, i wish that: i had a pair of mistletoe boxers, like they have at j.crew. there are too many good puns to be made with a pair of mistletoe boxers.