chibirisuchan

Weight loss for geeks: 10 lbs in 6 weeks, woot!

2009-11-15T03:53:29Z

So in addition to having six doctor's appointments and two surgical tests between now and the middle of next month, just to add insult to injury I'm on a pretty stiff cholesterol-lowering and exercise-increasing diet thanks to some liver complications that mean (a) I can't take painkillers (which when you're having the internal surgeries to figure out exactly why you have so many bleeding problems every month is NOT an enjoyable experience) and (b) I can't take the standard cholesterol-lowering medications.

(By the way, if you can avoid it, I strongly recommend avoiding the "surgical explorations, liver problems, and no painkillers" method of getting oneself put on a medically supervised diet.)

What with Mom still getting over her surgery and going through chemo and the rest of the stress in my life, though, spending hours and hours every day calculating up exactly how many calories of what type I've eaten was just not on the agenda.

So I needed a complete no-brainer. Writing things down on scraps of paper didn't work because I lost the scraps of paper. Writing things down in Google Docs didn't work because it meant I could only eat when I had Internet access. Trying a combination of the two TOTALLY didn't work, because I forgot what I'd written where when.

What I needed, I told myself, was a portable abacus. I wanted something I could wear around and could use to count things with, and not have to remember what I'd had for breakfast or for lunch because the numbers would be right there looking at me. So... I made some counting bracelets.

The charm parts are on necklace clips so that I can move them around -- one charm's the target and the other's the counter. So I can set my target at 1400 calories (14 beads) or 15 grams of fat (15 beads) or whatever it is I want to count with that bracelet, and then the counter gets moved when I eat things. And then I don't put anything in my mouth unless I know how many calories of what it's got in it. (If something's got like 260 calories in it, I add an apple and round to 300/3 beads.)

The hilarious part is that I've essentially stopped cooking for myself and going to small independent restaurants, because microwave dinners and big-chain restaurant food have already done all the math, and I don't have time to spend an hour cooking followed by three hours of online research of every ingredient involved, integrating calculations by mass and by volume, dividing by portions, and so forth. (The hours of calculating version is what my dad does with his diabetes-management diet, but Dad is (a) retired and (b) not what I would call sane.)

So the counting bracelet keeps me honest, and I've learned a lot about the things that do and don't fit into 1400 calories a day (hint: chicken and fish are good, because they make you feel like you're not hungry a lot better than just about anything else that isn't oil or fat).

Then we get to part 2: exercise. I'm busy, stressed, and don't have either the time or the desire to pull yet more hours out of my day doing boring and repetitive things that I don't want to be doing and yet should be doing for the rest of my life.

Biking back and forth to work was great over the summer, but now it's dark way too early and I have no particular desire to die on the road in the interest of exercise that was supposed to have extended a life I don't plan to cut short due to being on the bad side of the mass/velocity equation that means the one on the bike always loses out to the one on the car. I live in a university town where several walkers and bikers die every year due either to drunk students hitting them or due to being a drunk student who walks out in front of something. So, no biking after dark.

What I want, I tell myself, is something that fits exercise into the stuff I'm already doing.

What I really want, I tell myself, is something that lets me work on my computer or watch the news or so forth while I'm exercising away. But it has to be small and portable because I have a tiny living room with a fireplace and three extremely inconveniently placed doors I can't block since they're the only way to get to the rest of the house. A proper full-scale exercise bike would mean I'd have to kick my sofa to the curb because there's no other wall it could go on. I have a little set of pedals to exercise with, but I can't exercise with my laptop on my lap while my knees are going up and down, and my TV tray is way too low, so I'm both knocking my laptop around and bruising my knees when I try it.

Enter the Geekcycle:

1) Already-existing chair (acquired for $5 at a rummage sale years ago)
2) Already-existing exercise cycle ($30)
3) A laptop cart with its support post off to the side and an adjustable height mechanism so I can push it high enough and tilt its top enough to not bang my knees while pedalling. The particular one I found was $35 at the local Wal-mart, which normally I avoid like the spawn of Satan, but the shipping fees would've been insane and none of our marginally-friendlier big-box stores had one with its support leg off to the side for less than $150, sigh.

(note the absence of cat on the cat stand in the background? That's because he's decided that whenever I'm pedalling away on my geekcycle, he needs lap time RIGHT THEN, and then stalks off in a huff if I keep pedalling even after he's jumped into my lap. ...Cats. XD)

Upshot: I've lost 10 lbs since the end of September between the counting-bracelet and a minimum of half an hour a day on the geekcycle. And a lot of the times when I get into the geekcycle, I look up and find three or four hours have gone by while I was pedalling-and-doing-everything-else.

It doesn't get me wheezing, it probably isn't doing anything for my aerobic capacity due to not getting me wheezing (I'm asthmatic so I have an odd relationship with aerobic-"improvement" exercises), but I don't care if it's not doing anything for my aerobic capacity as long as I can look the doctor in the eye and go "yes I spent 15 hours working out this week" and I didn't actually mind.

For me, the two big lessons I've learned that I'd never quite mastered before are:

1) My internal mental math isn't reliable enough; trying to sum up "200 calories from a bowl of cereal plus an apple plus a lunch bar -- or was that yesterday? -- leaves me with how much for dinner?" just doesn't work for me. I forget something I ate earlier, or forget which day I had what, and ended up thinking I had more leeway than I actually did. But the bracelet just works painlessly: it's always right there and never gets lost and never depends on network access.

2) I just don't like exercise for its own sake. Exercise to get me somewhere isn't so bad; it doesn't set off my "frustrated waste of time I could've been spending more enjoyably" triggers the way sports and DVDs and so forth do. But if it's not to get somewhere, I do best when exercise is something I can do in the background while occupying my brain with something else that I'm much more interested in. I almost feel guilty about the fact that I'm not miserable while I'm pedalling away on my bike, because for the rest of my life, between the asthma and the blood sugar crashes, exercise was pretty much defined as ritualized penance that you had to suffer with or you weren't doing it right.

With the geekcycle, I may not be doing it right enough, but I'm doing it, and it's something I can do with no interruption to the rest of my life, and it's awesome. :)

Anyone got a couple hours' reading time today?

2009-10-10T16:43:56Z

I'm trying to finish off an origfic by a deadline but since it's origfic I don't know if I'm the only person it would make sense to due to the info being only in my head. (that's one thing you don't have to worry about with fanfic -- everybody else knows the world and the people too!) Also I'd like to have some kind of indicator of whether or not it sucks. ^^;;;

Anybody have a couple hours' reading time today?

I'd really like to get some idea whether the tree I'm barking up is even worth barking, so to speak, so that if I need to toss it out I'd still have next weekend for mad high-speed rewrites...

I've got the replies screened so that if anyone feels like leaving me their email address it'll be safe. I'll probably just grab the first volunteer I know well enough...

ETA- I have a volunteer! Thank you! ^____^ (fic sent along...)

got the pictures worked in!

2009-08-01T22:16:24Z

Posted the recipes themselves last weekend, nabbed some photo sorting and editing time today...

Cooking with Zack - Mrs. Fair's home cooking
Pairings: N/A (...what, mouth/food? XD)
Rating: G (I assume)
Warnings: Capsaicin overload. Also, Zack playing with fire. :3

( And_Cupcakes on IJ )

( And_Cupcakes on DW )

Fan-fanworks, overthinkeritis, and Way Too Many Serrano Chiles (TM) later...

2009-07-26T20:21:04Z

Gongagan cuisine at its finest.

As inspired by Jou's birthday-fic Cooking with Zack. :3

Pictures coming... later. (On the bright side? I bet I have leftovers for a week!)

There are times I would not believe my life if I was not living it myself

2009-07-24T02:56:50Z

Finding oneself locked into one's own guest bedroom is not an event one prepares for.

House is from 1933. All the doors are original. None of them closed when I bought the place. I've replaced all the latches with same-period inserts and the original door hardware is still there. For 3 years this was no problem.

Tonight? Tonight I closed myself into the guest bedroom because it's also the office and the tea room, and the cat is not allowed into the tea room because he's convinced that somewhere there is catnip if he can only destroy enough to get at it. So leaving the door open is not an option.

Putter putter putter, tinker tinker tinker, done with project, go to turn door knob... and it turns and turns and turns and turns and I'm pretty sure it's gone all the way around and hey look at that it HAS gone all the way around and there has been a complete failure to engage the latch. And it goes around again. Oh fun. Now what?

Two windows. One goes out on top of the evillest thorniest (and best-smelling) rose bush ever. The other goes out on top of the giant thorny juniper bush. Did I mention I'm only wearing my pajamas? And that I don't know if my neighbors with my spare key are home from work? And that my parents live in another city? And that if I climb out the window, there is not a darn thing I can do to get back into my house because my purse is in the living room since, strangely enough, I was not anticipating needing my house key while going from room to room INSIDE my house?

And all the tools are in my bedroom and my basement and my garage. I have tools all over the place. I think I even have some in the kitchen. The guest bedroom? No tools. I could get the doorknob fixed with a flat head screwdriver. No screwdrivers in here. Folded over tea bag edges are not sturdy enough. (Yes I know this by empirical experimentation.) The wire hook on a hanging folder is too squiggly to twist correctly. (Also empirical experimentation.) No coat hangers for attempts at lock picking from inside to see if I can get at the latch. Headphone jacks do not substitute for coat hangers. What else have I got in here?

...well, it's the tea room. I have a teaspoon.

I broke out of my guest room with a TEASPOON.

I have since:

Breathed a huge sigh of relief that I didn't need to jump out the window in my pajamas into a thornbush and hobble across the cobblestone street barefoot and half-naked to the neighbors' house,

taken apart and repaired the lock, and

made damn sure that I have a flat-head screwdriver in there now.

...I should probably make sure I have a flat-head screwdriver in all the rest of the rooms, come to think of it.

I swear I wouldn't believe my life if I wasn't living through it.

More FF7 sackboys

2009-07-12T02:55:15Z

(More crocheted madness over at weloveamigurumi -- Sackiroth has comrades now! SackZack, SackCloud, and SackVincent are in action, along with Jenova's yarn-dripping hacked-off crocheted skull. :3

...I wonder what it says about my sanity that I have actually crocheted a hacked-off skull and left the stuffing and yarn dangling as the equivalent of blood and guts.

There'll be more Adventures of Sackiroth posts One Of These Days(TM), because I have literally hundreds of pictures snapped at various cons and plotting out various bits of mischief between the sackboys, but I'm unlikely to have time to code 'em up until the annual "summer work-inundation from hell" period is over. Normally it doesn't hit 'til August; this year it hit in June and hasn't slowed down yet. But one of these days...

By the way - it's my birthday tomorrow. :3 If anyone happened to feel like telling me which of my fics they like best, or quoting a favorite line, or writing a drabble (or a recipe) into a comment, that definitely counts as presents in my worldview... :)

Oh yeah -- one more thing on my wish list?

Would anyone be willing to make a short (20-seconds or less) sound clip of Sephiroth's Advent Children lines about "On your knees; I want to hear you beg forgiveness" or "I've thought of something to give you, Cloud. Shall I give you despair?" ...and then run it through the filter that turns it all chipmunk-pitched?

This is on account of how Sackiroth has a voice chip in him, and I would looooooooove to get that on there. (Particularly in chibivoice.) But I lack the requisite editing skills. :3

One of those months / 'nother recipe

2009-06-14T19:50:35Z

GRAWR.

(Don't ask. Boring RL stuff that continues to conspire against ficwriting time.)

In other news, Winry's Thirty-Second ~~Automail Cleaner~~ Hot Chocolate Fondue is good for whatever ails you.

not your everyday sandwich

2009-05-27T04:29:35Z

for anybody who likes chocolate-covered strawberries?

character recipes over at and_cupcakes. :3

*flat now, zzz*

It seems to be going around like the flu

2009-05-20T19:02:17Z

THE ANONYMOUS WRITING FEEDBACK MEME

....okay I edited the font size there, but the whole HUUUUGE HEADLINE NAO thing kinda gets on my designer's instincts a little...

So what would you like to see next?

2009-05-18T19:28:12Z

Given that the number of ideas I have waiting in line for free time is always a multiple of the amount of free time actually available, what would you like to see get worked on first?

(Note 1: The results of this aren't going to be binding on account of how the amount of work I have left to do on various next-installments varies from "a couple more pages" to "first I have to do the outline and then...", but I will keep it in mind when priority-setting.)

(Note 2: "All of them! All at once!" is just as much not an option as "Naruto," thanks guys. XD There is a reason I used radio buttons rather than ticky boxes.)

View Poll: What world would you like to see a ficbit from next?

I may have created a monster

2009-05-01T02:44:35Z

...no wait, I know I have created a monster.

sackiroth

I'm going to take random Sackiroth pictures (and SackFair pictures, and eventually SackCloud and SackAngeal and SackWhoeverTheHeckElse pictures once I get 'em done) and post 'em to the community with Ever So Helpful Commentary(TM). (See also Sackiroth's introductory speech. Also my cat's stupendous level of unimpressedness with Sackiroth's attempts at cat intimidation.)

Once Sackiroth gets to Jou, she says she'll take pictures of him around Japan and post those too! <3

icon meme!

2009-04-21T02:26:24Z

From white_aster!

1. Reply to this post, and I will pick five of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.

ChibiSydney from Vagrant Story. I made this one because all the in-game art is Really Really Serious and I have a weak spot for the combination of cute, fluffy, and evil. So this is ChibiSydney's "who me?" face. (I use it both for 'who me?' in the innocent sense and 'who me?' in the shamelessly scheming sense...)

ChibiSephiroth likewise. :3 I forget which doujinshi cover this one came from, but I like cute-and-evil and I also like tea, and I use it for both "ChibiSephiroth is not amused" and "tea" purposes (although I also use Calcifer for tea and other recipes... did I mention the cute-and-evil thing? XD)

I didn't make this one; chocofeather on LJ did. Both the 'd'awww so cute!' and Seph's 'wtf are you doing you overgrown featherduster' expression grabbed me by the neck the minute I saw it. :3 Someone's also going around with a more green-tinted version of this icon (I've forgotten exactly who) but since my screens tend to skew dark when I've dialed them down enough that they don't set off glare-headaches, I could see the detailing better on this lighter version.

Yet another ChibiSephiroth icon, this one made by freetimer_icons. I tend to pull this one into service for things like the KH/FB crossovers, chibiverse ficsnips, and anything else where Sephiroth's generally stunned/bemused/bewildered response involves some variation on "...", "*staaaaare*", and/or "*blink blink*".

Sydney from Vagrant Story again. I made this one for a general 'wooot!' sort of icon, only a little more dignified than 'woot!'. (Because I have no shortage of tongue-in-cheek icons for when I'm feeling goofy. :3)

And bonus rambles for the icon in this post -- I made the Kadaj "someone help me, I can't see a damn thing" / "lol haircut plz" icon for the Discworld/FF7 crossover fic with Granny Weatherwax and the Sephlings, because boy oh boy did it fit. (And yes, every single time he does that looking-through-the-bangs thing, I want to take after him with either scissors or embarrassingly girly hair clips, because I spent 6 years trying to grow out my bangs once I graduated high school and wasn't subject to my parents' haircut enforcements, and I hated the "can't keep them out of my face" stage with the passion of ten thousand burning suns...)

ETA, second batch of icon prompts from Jou:

- did I mention the thing about evilcute enough times yet? I use this for an all-purpose "cheesy grin" / "RUN IN FEAR FOR I AM PLOTTING SOMETHING YOU ARE GONNA BE SCARRED FOR LIFE BY!!! tee-hee" icon. Made by kigaru_icons on LJ.

- oh man, this one. XD This is the actually-small-enough-to-be-uploadable-as-icon version of my micro-AMV-in-a-GIF.... involving selective revisions of Limp Bizkit lyrics. *ded*

I think it kind of speaks for itself, and what it says is "what the hell were you smoking when you made that monstrosity?" According to the notes from the original post, though, yes I was both drugged to the gills and running a fever at the time.

- not actually "Zack and Kadaj after a hairspray accident"; it's from a Naruto doujinshi involving Kakashi (the silver-haired one) and Iruka (the dark-haired one). I wish I'd had the brains to note down who made it for me; even that many years ago, the story of my life involved getting free time to write "one of these days(TM)", so she put it on the icon for me. ^__^

- I needed Fran and Balthier for the No True Pair community fic set, so I went and found this one, shared by iconage on LJ.

- oh come on, you can't tell me he ISN'T doing the hair commercial I-take-my-shampoo-waaaaaay-too-seriously-and-in-rather-disturbing-ways hair-toss thing there. XDDDD The original art was from some FF7 compilation official art poster thing; I just cropped it selectively and there you go.

Guessing game

2009-04-14T23:50:41Z

I've got next to no wireless signal, so we'll see whether I can actually get this posted (and crossposted) or not... XD

I've wondered whether my writing has got as many identifiers as I guiltily suspect it does -- stuff that means you can take one (okay, maybe two) looks and go 'yep, that's chibirisuchan.' So here's a bit of a challenge.

I wrote one of the FF7 Anonymous Kink Meme fics. (The FF7 kink indexer has helpfully compiled a list of links that go directly to the stories.)

Anyone want to guess which one is mine? (And/or contribute more fics or requests to it while you're there? ^_~)

I'm screening comments so that folks can't see what else has been guessed already. XD

braggin' rights pt 2: Sackiroth! :3

2009-04-04T18:05:27Z

So, two days ago I didn't remember how to do a single crochet stitch.

By last night, here's what I'd gotten done:

2 nights ago:

Last night:

This morning I got one of his arms done and hope to get the other and his hair on today (around mad convention planning of course, but this kind of thing is good for handfidgeting while your brain and mouth are doing something else). Mwahaha!

ETA. waytoolate-oclock: Almost done! He has 3/4 of a skein of yarn on his head, and his hair is too heavy for his neck, so I drove a chopstick through his skull and need to chop it down to length later. (Maybe that explains some things, actually...)

And this may give you some idea of why he needs that cranial chopstick (or stick up his ass, depending on your point of view):

Close-up:

braggin' rights

2009-04-03T03:55:33Z

A little while ago, one of the LJ FF7 communities had a link to this adorable little sackboy!Reno amigurumi.

I went DUUUUUUUUUUUDE! ♥♥♥

Only problem? It had been about a quarter of a century since I'd touched a crochet hook.

At 7 p.m. tonight I didn't even know how to do a standard single crochet correctly.

At 10:45 p.m. tonight I have my first smiley sackboy head more than halfway done. :3

And it would have been faster if I hadn't forgotten a significant factor in my calculations: The last time I did any kind of industrial-strength yarnfidgeting, I did not own a cat.

Starting at approx. 7:05:
Cat: (yawn) (stretch) (spots the shiny crochet hook) ...whatchadoin?
Me: ...
Me: ...
Me: HOSHIT--
Cat: YAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRNNNNNN~~~~!!! ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
Me: AAAAUUUUUUUGH--
(insert bloodshed, mayhem, and much yowling from both parties involved)
Me: ...and STAY OUT!
Cat: No faaaaaair! You cheat, you lying cheating thumbiferous thing with thumbs that invented evil evil EVIL doors and it's not faaaaaaaaaaair -- didja hear me yet? Didja?
Me: ...
Me: ...
Me: ...
Cat: I SAID DIDJA HEAR ME YET?
Me: ...I think I could get to hate my life.

I finally gave up the notion of getting the whole head done when I stopped to look at the chart, moved my hand, made a really embarrassing noise, and realized that my entire hand had turned into a cramped-up painball and I wasn't entirely sure I could still feel my thumb. Note for next time: distribute the crafting over several days, not one soooooolid crochet session...

Still. Not bad for the first time I've touched a crochet hook in a quarter century. :3

ETA: Now with pictures!

I has a shiiiiny

2009-03-11T03:12:00Z

Paid off the last of the flood-related credit card bills with income tax return (woooot!) THEN I got $400 the state has owed me for 6 months that I thought I'd never see because of the budget crisis but hey mailbox surprise of the good kind! :3

And the last time I bought a new laptop? 1993. (I bought a thoroughly used one in 2001, but even at the time it was too unpatchable to network, and it's older than the invention of USB ports so if it doesn't fit on a floppy I'm doomed. So yeah. Kinda time for a new laptop. I've been doing just fine for years on work laptops, but it'd be nice to have one that was honest-to-goodness *mine,* y'know? Plus the hilarious part is I'll probably use it more at work than my work laptop, on account of how I most often use a laptop at work when in meetings or training sessions that last several hours and don't always have power handy. The official work laptop gets about 2 hours on a charge. This one? 9 1/2 according to specs, which I figure is probably 6 real-life. Still. Battery power goooood!)

...so. Shiiiiiny. :3 Should be here some time next week.

o-omg I really REALLY hope the self-indulgence is not an indicator that it's time for my basement to flood again...

Oh, Japan... ^__^

2009-02-17T16:17:26Z

Was in Chicago this weekend for May convention planning. To me, this meant a rare opportunity to shop in the refrigerated section of the Japanese grocery store -- it's not all that often when the outside temperature is above freezing so as not to damage things like fresh shiso leaves, but also cool enough that things can survive the 5 hour round trip without going bad! So I stocked up. :3

For the uninitiated, let me introduce you to some Japanese food staples. (The common themes will become readily apparent, I suspect...)

Tatsukuri: Take small dried fish (large enough that you can still see the eyes looking at you). Make them into peanut brittle, only without the peanuts and with extra bonus soy sauce and anchovies.

Chirimen-jako: Take even smaller dried fish (generally too small to notice the eyes). Make them into sticky caramel sauce with fish wriggles in, with extra bonus soy sauce.

Sakura-denbu: Take dried fish of some sort that will end up essentially unrecognizable (no eyes this time!) Make them into cotton candy.

Kamaboko, narutomaki, and others: Take fish. Puree and cook it into something the approximate texture of a dried-out glue stick. Decorate it with festive pink and white stripes just for extra wtfery.

Tsukudani: Take something (it really doesn't matter what it used to be, because you won't be able to tell by the time it's done). Boil it into jelly with the assistance of a gallon of soy sauce.

Shibazuke: Take an eggplant and maybe some cucumber and shiso too. Pickle it and add blazing magenta food coloring.

Jyuuzen-nasu: Take an eggplant. Pickle it and add daaark navy blue food coloring.

Aojiso: Take some cucumber and some shiso (perilla) leaves - the green kind, not the red kind. Pickle them and add some really freaky dark-blue-green dye just to make totally sure nobody mistakes this for the blazing magenta version.

:3 Yeah this is pretty tongue in cheek, but the creepy part is I am not actually kidding with any of these. You can occasionally find Japanese pickles without buckets of food dyes added, but they're pretty rare, and I tend to pounce on anything that's been dyed with red cabbage juice just because it hasn't been dyed with stuff that starts with chemical identification numbers. XD I was bummed to discover they didn't have any shoyu-goma in stock (soy-sauce-roasted sesame seeds - think dry roasted peanuts only out of sesame). Maybe they needed more space for psychedelic colored pickles...

FF7 AU - The Dragon of Nibelheim, part 2 of 3

2009-01-21T05:26:11Z

Over here, too tired to mess with fancy fake cut coding... ^^;;;

Fic pieces, more tomorrow I hope

2009-01-20T06:01:48Z

I don't think I ever linked this one in...

Title: Riding to the Princes' Rescue
Fandom: FF7 and Fruits Basket via Kingdom Hearts
Pairing/characters: Cloud and Tohru
Rating: PG 13
Prompt/challenge you're answering: Tohru rescues Cloud from some kind of trouble
Warnings: More Princess-of-Heart Tohru Madness! Not drinksafe.

...and here's tonight's entry (don't kill me too much, I'm planning to get part 2 up tomorrow):

Title: The Dragon of Nibelheim, pt. 1
Fandom: FF7 (AU)
Pairing/characters: Cloud and Sephiroth
Rating: R for being pretty disturbing
Prompt/challenge you're answering: Cloud and Sephiroth, transformation of some kind
Warnings: This one is NOT the fluffy Tohru fairytale world. ^^;; Watch out for the whiplash...

FF7 Vocal Album...ish

2009-01-18T03:42:00Z

So yeah, I've been a seiyuu music nut for (counts) ...just over a decade now. I have a couple hundred Japanese CDs I've collected in that time (largely when I was in Osaka and could raid the hundred-yen (i.e. about $1) used-CD stores like a crazed hyena).

I uploaded some sample songs by several of the FF7 seiyuu for Joudama. Some of them I picked because they were very in character, and some of them I picked because they were very, er, not what you'd expect. :3

http://www.sendspace.com/folder/qewviq

Here's my general description of what's there:

* Aeris sings THE FREAKIEST SONG EVER. Listen to the tune while you're reading the lyrics, and then think about her relationship with Cloud, Zack, and Sephiroth a little. Then go OH MY GOD a lot.

* Cloud and Zack singing several duets

* Cloud gets trashed and sings karaoke at Seventh Heaven with Rude on sax

* There's a perky bouncy happy-Zack song, and there's a heartwrenching Zack song that may make more ouch if you know that Zack is also Kamui. The lyrics particularly rip you to bits if you speak Japanese. I should translate it some time, because it looks like animelyrics doesn't have it... anyhow.

* Sephiroth sings too. (The one I picked is all about eternity and obsession and a never-ending circle. Heh heh.)

* So does Kadaj. The song I picked for him is called "Unfair." (Of course it is...)

* Angeal gets COMPLETELY TRASHED and sings about his bitchy relationship with Genesis' literary pretentions. I translated the lyrics over here.

* Someone also gets him stoned out of his gourd and sets him loose with a ukulele. (This one is even funnier if you think about some of Genesis' jealousy issues. I translated the lyrics here.)

* Of course, I also put a couple serious Angeal songs up there because Inoue Kazuhiko was my first seiyuu addiction and it's my upload folder. Lyrics to one, I never got around to translating the other.

* Rufus is terribly good at oozing. Someone translated it here, please pardon their Engrish a bit.

* All the Turks have solos (except Rude). Some of the highlights include Tseng's incredibly bitter Wutai rap, Elena swinging like nobody's business, and Reno being completely devil-may-care ("even now the world keeps on going round and round, unstoppably..." I should translate this sometime too, because it looks like nobody at AL has yet.)

* Yuffie. Rumba. 'Nough said. :)

XDDD maybe more later, dunno... have fun listening and breaking your brains!

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-24T23:40:48Z

Heartless Kitty Santa Commands You!

(yes it's a bad photoshop hat, but that is a 16 lb cat with allll his claws intact. I wasn't feeling enough like bleeding to try for the real live version. XD)

My friends and I specialize in Evil Cookies. Yes really. Christmas Orcs, Christmas Uruk-hai, Cthulhu Gingerbread, and D&D Monster Manual Sugar Cookies to be specific.

Here are the Orc & Uruk-Hai cookie recipes, since any gingerbread or sugar cookie recipe can be Warped to the Purposes of Evil(TM) if you're crazy enough and have a butter knife handy.

Christmas Orcs
(a.k.a. Oatmeal, Raisin, Cranberry, Pecan, Chocolate Chip Cookies, but ORCPCCCs is too hard to pronounce!)
(from Cookies for Christmas)

1 cup raisins
1 cup dried cranberries
Boiling water
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 sticks sweet butter, softened
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups rolled oats
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup pecans, coarsely chopped
Additional granulated sugar

Equipment: electric mixer; cookie sheets, lined with parchment paper or lightly greased; wire racks for cooling

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.
2. In a small bowl, combine raisins and cranberries. Pour in boiling water just to cover. Let stand for 10 minutes. Drain in a strainer and set aside.
3. In another bowl, stir flour, baking soda, and salt with a wire whisk, to blend. Set aside.
4. In a large bowl, cream butter with an electric mixer at medium speed. Increase speed and gradually beat in granulated sugar, followed by brown sugar and vanilla extract. Continue beating until mixture is light and fluffy. Keeping the mixer at high speed, beat in the eggs one at a time.
5. Reduce speed and gradually mix in the flour mixture.
6. Use a large wooden spoon to fold in the rolled oats. Fold in the chocolate chips, the pecans, and the raisins and cranberries.
7. Drop by teaspoonfuls 2 inches apart onto the prepared cookie sheets. Pour some granulated sugar in a small bowl. Wet the bottom of a water glass, dip bottom of glass in granulated sugar, and press each cookie gently to flatten the top. Dip bottom of glass in granulated sugar before pressing each cookie.
8. Bake cookies 10 to 12 minutes, until cookies are golden brown. Remove from oven, let cool on cookie sheets for a few minutes, then transfer cookies to wire racks to cool. Store completely cooled cookies in an airtight container.

Yield: 3 to 4 dozen cookies
Will keep: several weeks at room temperature... iiiiiif you can manage not to eat them all for that long. :D

Variant: Christmas Uruk-Hai have white chocolate chips in place of regular ones and cashews (or macadamia nuts) in place of pecans.

My power has been flickering due to the ice storms we've had (not aided by the silver maple tree that is sitting on the power line in the back of my house, I'm sure), so I may not be very fast at answering comments and I'm going to be netless for at least 2 days starting tomorrow, but Merry Christmas everyone!

All I want for Christmas is downtime!

2008-12-16T16:26:45Z

I now have five different Christmases to go to on five different days and I'm not even dating anybody. @______@

My brother's girlfriend can't get time off around Christmas itself and neither can a friend's husband from Pennsylvania so the current theory is apparently running "houseguests with toddler possibly staying with me for an unidentified amount of time this week, some time this week there's a Christmas party I have to cook for, decorate for, and bring gifts for due to being on the organizing committee, Friday night after work I have to drive to another town for dinner and then drive back because I can't get net access on my laptop from my parents' house and I'm watching the contact mail aliases over the weekend. During said weekend there's a second party in town for the rest of the town friends who don't know the houseguests with toddler but still want to have Christmas, and then my parents want me to come BACK to town to have a SECOND Christmas "because the other Christmas wasn't on the day of" and at some point in here my brain is going to snap and I'm going to be found in a corner cackling madly.

All I can say is some times I thank God I'm single, because (just for example) if I was dating somebody who had the statistically over 50% probability of divorced parents that would turn it into seven different events to get to and come up with gifts for (and again I'm cheating, I wrote a cookbook to give to people because I didn't have time to plan all the different gifts and it was stressful enough getting the cookbook produced and assembled without spending the $360 Kinko's would have wanted to do the printing) and AAAUGH.

/back to my regularly scheduled panicstressflail mode ^^;;;;;

Cats...

2008-11-25T02:49:58Z

So I get home from work, dinner/housework/weights/blah blah blah, put on the kettle, brew a pot of good black tea, pour a little bit of milk into a creamer jug, and set up to keep working on the laptop. Fine, dandy, cat curled up on other end of sofa, life is good.

Sip at the tea, add some more milk, stir stir, sip, type type type, sip, cat still curled up on other end of sofa, completely disinterested in everything.

Finish the tea 20 minutes or so later with no sign the cat has any interest in what's going on.

Get up and go to the kitchen to refill my tea mug with hot tea. This takes about 30 seconds.

Before I even make it back out of the kitchen I hear licklicklicklicklick.

I come around the corner to find the cat with his nose completely buried in the milk.

He looks up at my incoherent spluttering and gaping, blinks a little, licks his nose, and goes right back to drinking out of my creamer jug right in front of me.

Now, clearly the little brat knew it was against the rules on account of how studiously he avoided even twitching in that direction while I was sitting there supervising it, but he did a pretty damn impressive job of trying the complete-nonchalance-might-buy-you-anything 'nothing to see here, move right along' Jedi mind trick on me anyway.

Unfortunately, I was laughing too hard to scold him properly enough to actually discourage him...

Yay for Mobile PortaMiniCon Inna Car!

2008-11-23T23:41:13Z

*sends now-long-distance hugs towards icedark_elf, skeren,and Sam and Matt whose journal handles I didn't manage to catch...*

Top 10 Advantages to the Mobile PortaMiniCon Inna Car approach to mini-convention-staging.

1) It goes anywhere you want it to!
2) Only the cool people come!
3) No huge schedule planning!
4) No 8-hour lines for autographs!
5) No admission fees!
6) Con/staff suite = "actual nearby restaurant," not "neverending pan of soggy eggs swimming in water four hours past their prime". (ACen, speaking as an attendee since day 1, I love you but you have really got to lay off the 'eggs a la swimming pool' approach to feeding staff. No really. If I never see an ACen egg swimming pool again in my life, it will be too soon. Anyhow.)
7) Dealers room = handy nearby bookstore, no overcrowding involved.
8) Panel programming = hotel room with wireless + enthused fangirls.
9) Video programming = anything you stashed in your computer (see also hotel room + wireless -> YouTube).
10) Mobile PortaMiniCon Inna Car can hit several cities in the space of one weekend!

You guys are totally awesome and I really wish I'd been awake longer, but the full day of box lugging had just about wiped me out. (Today's day of box lugging likewise.) But thank you for taking the 2008 Mobile Con Tour all the way out into the middle of nowhere so I could meet y'all! :)

*goes to take more naproxen and fall over* my friend who's moving is a very nice guy, but damn he's got too much stuff...

Top 10 reasons my cat hates the Food Network

2008-10-13T23:37:07Z

because I can't watch CNN Politics every minute until the election or I'll go ~~further~~ off the deep end

#1: Food processors (aka "the evil cat-eating vacuum is HERE! I know it's here somewhere! I hear it! You can't lie to me! And I can't see where it's coming from!)

#2-5: Blenders, beaters, mixers, ice cream makers (see also #1)

#6: Graters and microplanes (aka "there's a mouse, I can hear it scratching, I can hear where it's scratching FROM, but there's nothing on the back of the big black box!")

#7: Teakettles (aka "I don't know what the hell that is, but it is JUST NOT RIGHT")

#8: Emeril (aka "there's a ~~live studio audience~~ cackling howling riotous swarm of mad humans somewhere and I can't get far enough away" ...actually I really see where he's coming from on this one)

#9: Whisks in metal bowls (aka "there's a mouse that's actually been precaught for me rattling around in something and I can't find where my present is!")

#10: Alton Brown (aka "where the hell was that ~~power drill~~ huge pissed-off rattlesnake noise coming from so I can NOT be there?"