Friends

11:11 pm - Oh hai guys.
Since I was up at 4am, I desperately required a nap, so I did not get as much done as I'd hoped. But I did get my edits done, and got dinner all set up in the crockpot. (Ginger beef, delayed from Monday because we had insufficient beef on Monday.)

I get a paycheck now! And where did it go? Well, it's not all gone. But.
* Sock Dreams! Because, as stated in my $WINTERHOLIDAY wishlist post, my socks were getting holey. Plus I got wool knee-highs, because I walk to the bus in ten-degree weather now.
* A backpack what is messenger-bag-shaped, like the red Sailor Moon schoolgirl backpack I loved so very long ago. So I can carry my netbook and knitting and stuff in a more ergonomic fashion.
* Pants.
* Yarn.

All practical, see? Hey the yarn is practical. It's (almost) all for gifts (only one skein for me).

Work is going well; crazybusy, but I like that in a job. Our new volunteer training, which I am in charge of organizing, starts Saturday, so pretty much my entire week is given over to preparing for that, and I am very nearly done.

I have the new Brust book, and I get to read it before Adam, because he loves me very much. *nod* Also because he has books to review for PW before he can get to it, and he knows I can devour it in one or two sittings.

ARISIA ARISIA ARISIA. People start arriving... Tuesday? I need to see which corsets currently fit. Also, I need to figure out what to rad at my reading. Any requests?

arianhwyvar was the first to sponsor me for the BARCC Walk for Change! Yay! You can be the second.

I still need to write people's commissioned pieces. With luck, I'll get sleep tonight and can work on some tomorrow, so I can have them for

s00j and

asim at Arisia. Still not in the writing groove, but I've had zero opportunity for what, three months now? to sit down and write. Pretty much since Elayna's accident. My hope is that I can get on a schedule and get that prioritized.

I still do not have my biopsy results. They were promised on Tuesday, but I'm willing to give a little leeway due to New Year's Day. They'll be getting a phone call Friday morning if I don't hear from them tomorrow. Clearly gluten-free is much better for me and I'm doing it anyway, but a girl likes to know.

Elayna's bloodwork came back normal, so YAY. I mean, she is tired and sometimes cranky, but she is a teenager. Will still be keeping an eye on her, of course...

Gluten-free meals at Arisia will be difficult, I'm sure. I know there'll be at least one entree in the Green Room I can eat - and Staff Den took a survey about food allergies and sensitivities, but I don't *know* who's running staff den, so I don't know if that'll be adhered to. Not a lot of restaurants with advertised GF menus around Central Square (lots in Harvard). So meals with me will be less spontaneous, but do please still include me; we'll make it work!

And people dragging me out for meals - please include

s00j,

omnisti, and

stealthcello, if at all possible!

Still hating the hair, or lack thereof.

And now, book and bed.

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10:27 am - Girly, Happy Ferrett
I like staying at Crystal's house. She has unguents.

Crystal's bathroom is special because it is ornamented with an abundance of shower gels, body washes, facial scrubs, and ointments. As such, the shower becomes a special luxury; I go in old, frumpy Ferrett and come out anointed with unearthly scents of payayas and sea salt and cookies. I dabble in everything she has available (but not too much, no, I never want to be a bad guest; I scrimp out just enough to get a taste for it) and take luxurious showers where I am transformed into some sort of perfumeried chemist.

When I come out, only I know that I am suffused with cranberry, my skin exfoliated, my hair scented of lavender. It is a secret known only to me, since when I am at Crystal's I am at work, and the long amorous hugs that would give me away are few and far between at StarCityGames.com.

I might load my own bathing parlor with such scents, but they give Gini fits of sneezes and rashes. Plus, it seems like a lot of work, buying all that stuff from Lush. I don't have time to wander through malls and shopping forms, finding just the right hint of jasmine-infused cream to soothe my aching feet. That's not my lifestyle; I'm too busy beating Dragon Age to search for emollients.

Still, for a day I can wander through the banquet. Today, I smell like banana bread. AND NOBODY KNOWS BUT ME.

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08:42 am - The Problem With Your Momma
In debating large numbers of people on the Internet, you almost run into someone's mother. And it's difficult to get around her, even though she obstructs rational debate.

See, most people have a few strongly-held opinions on their upbringing. And why not? The circumstances that forged you helped make you who you are. And one of those strongly-held opinions tends to be about their parenting. For a lot of folks, their momma did a great goddamned job, or Mom was a worthless wastrel who held them back from their true potential.

The problem is when the mother in question is exceptional in one circumstance or another, and the child (now grown up and participating in discussions) cannot realize this. To wit:

"HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT CRACK-ADDICTED MOTHERS IN THRALL TO THEIR PIMPS ARE, ON THE WHOLE, LESS DEVOTED TO PARENTING? MY MOTHER WAS A CRACK HO AND SHE WAS A SAINT!"

Or:

"HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT BEING WEALTHY AND BEAUTIFUL IS USUALLY BETTER THAN BEING POOR AND UGLY? I CAME FROM DANBURY, CONNECTICUT, LAND OF PLASTIC SURGERY AND SOCIALITE BRIDE TANTRUMS, AND YOU SHOULD SEE WHAT MY MOTHER DID TO ME!"

The problem of Your Momma is not restricted to Your Momma; it's basically any circumstances where someone has a deep-seated emotional tie to what is, on the whole, a circumstance that is either a) really, really rare or b) so personally painful that they are blind to the idea that other circumstances might be even worse. It doesn't have to be Your Momma; it could be Your Body, or Your High School Experience, or Your Sexuality. Regardless, the Your X issue really makes it difficult to carry on rational debates.

Because every debate, at its core, has to involve generalizations. That's because the really good debates, the ones that can't get settled, involve people, and people are such a multifaceted array of personalities that you cannot come up with any set of circumstances we could inflict upon the planet that would make every last human being happy. No matter what you did successfully, someone would gripe.

Thus, the best we can do is try to discuss what's going to make the vast majority happy. This involves discussing the things that will, in general, encourage people to make good decisions and finding the things that are bad decisions. That's tricky enough as it is, especially given that trying to find that majority and then discuss what's going to motivate/thrill them is a task that's almost impossible for humans and their small-numbers minds to encompass.

But it gets more difficult when you have people who are clearly from a background that's exceptional who cannot recognize that ("My mother was a single, paraplegic, out-of-work leper, and how dare you say that mothers like that are unlikely to provide a decent home for their kids?"), then you're placed in a position where you're not debating with them - you're debating with a formative event in their lives.

So it's almost always impossible to get across the point that "Look, what happened to you isn't what usually happens to people in that circumstance" (or worse, "What happened to you is indeed very terrible, but other people in even more horrible situations may have had it worse") without triggering all sorts of emotional landmines.

You're dealing with the core experiences that have shaped people. If someone feels good about themselves out of the gate and their Momma was a devout Christian who taught them the Bible, well, Christianity is very likely to be something that person feels that every right-thinking household should have. And if someone spent years recovering from the wreckage of their childhood and their Momma was a devout Christian who taught them the Bible, well, they're quite likely to be convinced that Christianity is a plague upon the Earth. And neither one is likely to acknowledge the pros of the other side and the cons of their own.

I'm not sure that's entirely bad. Our personal reaction to things is the only way we can analyze the world. A society of people who quoted statistics, ignoring their own personal experience, would be inhuman and rather creepy. And the fact that marginalized peoples - who, horrifyingly, are often told that their experiences are not only fringe cases, but do not even exist because majority idiots often believe that a minority existence is some kind of illusion that doesn't really happen - use this furor to push their way into the mainstream means that Your Momma has some good power behind it, too. Sometimes, that exceptional experience needs to be highlighted even if it's not the norm. (Sometimes because it's not the norm.)

But still, it does mean that it's almost impossible to find what the majority of people think because nearly every edge case is convinced that their way is just How Things Are. Any attempts to show other folks that that hey, maybe their formative experiences aren't representative of the entire galaxy will result in an argument that will inevitably feel like a personal assault - and flames, flames, flames.

I don't remove myself from this circumstance, of course. I had a sister-in-law who we spent two traumatic years battling insurance companies, trying to save her life because she had a rare kidney condition and scumbag insurance folks who we could not affect. I've done a lot of research to see that my circumstances are not that exceptional, at least in America. But at the same time, whenever I debate this fact of what is clearly a very poor insurance scenario involving a disease that only fifty people on Earth have had, I feel my own blood rising because goddammit, you had to be there and see what those assholes did to her. This is why I don't post about health care as often as I should; I'm simply not capable of holding a rational debate beyond a certain point.

It's my Momma. And what am I gonna do? I'll tell you what I'm gonna do: I have seeded this very essay with tons of outs, strewing it with "some people"s and "a lot"s and "most"s. And now even though I've written an entire essay on how people in edge cases often cannot recognize that they are the product of statistically-anomalous circumstances, and allowed room for those edge cases to flourish, I will brace myself for the inevitable barrage of comments on how, "Well, I don't feel this way."

Good for you. That wasn't the point.

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07:05 am - Odin's Day
Administration
Hello to new reader

encarmencita!

Medical
I kinda walked from Harvard to Central, Central to Porter to Davis back to Porter back to Davis, and my legs are like "GTFO". Less walking today. But I want to get to the point where I can do something like that regularly.

Energy levels were markedly up yesterday, yay. :)

Knitting
The TARDIS scarf will be a basketweave scarf instead, because that I can actually get done in time. I can attempt the TARDIS scarf elsetime.

Also, started the baby blanket for

badlittlemonkey's and

rintrahroars's SO FREAKIN' CUTE baby, a simple gull lace pattern in peacock-blue superwash wool.

Vote!
* Asimov's Magazine reader awards. May I point out that a certain

theferrett's first story is there?
* Fantasy has a poll, too. I remind you that they have published some great stuff this year; highlights have been the stories by Aidan Doyle, Nicole Kornher-Stace, Samantha Henderson, Rachel Swirsky, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Genevieve Valentine, and Camille Alexa, IMO.
* And yep, Clarkesworlde, too, with shiny stories by Ekaterina Sedia, N.K. Jemison, Nnedi Okorafor, Richard Parks, Cat Rambo, Nick Mamatas, Alex Dally McFarlane, and so many more.

Special attention to Jemison's story in Clarkesworld and Doyle's in Fantasy, as I think those are the stories I forwarded around most this year.

Link Soup
Today's link soup consists entirely of cool stuff I showed Elayna as soon as she stumbled downstairs this morning.
* Video of Incus's "Dancer Through Time", featuring beloved

s00j on lead female vocals!
* If you like horror movies, you absolutely must watch this.
* This is so crazy perfectly appropriate. Also, Daleks = ponies.
* Snow Totoro!

Daily Science
A giant stream of gas flowing from neighbor galaxies around our own Milky Way is much longer and older than previously thought, astronomers have discovered. The new revelations provide a fresh insight on what started the gaseous intergalactic streamer.

Plans
Work, home, lunch. Need to get Electric Velocipede edits done. Perhaps I will have some writing time today? We'll see what happens. No plans for *tonight*, which is good; with so much approaching, I need to have some time to not be in motion.

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January 5th, 2010

06:43 pm - New post
This one is about staying on target when the day is off-track.

Also, I'm about to be really irritated with the Dell people about my lovely new computer. The "a" key keeps flipping up and showing me its underbelly. Not coming off, but not exactly a tight fit. Grr.

And gods am I tired. I am trying to make it to 8pm before going to sleep. It's touch and go whether that's going to happen.

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07:14 am - Tew's Day!
Administration
Happy birthday to

sinboy!

Medical
Tiiiired. I need to remember to go to bed earlier on worknights. I need to remember that I have worknights.

BARCC Walk for Change
The Boston Area Rape Crisis Center Walk for Change will take place on April 11. Sponsor me! And walk with me - join Team Venture!

Girl Scout Cookies!
Elayna is selling! Are you buying? I'll have an order form with me at Diesel tonight. (You don't pay until delivery.)

I am not shipping cookies, as that is crazymaking and ended up costing me out of pocket in shipping and handling; this is for locals and people who can pick up in March.

Let's Try this Out
It's not worth the time to go home for two hours on Diesel nights, so I'll be staying out and running errands.

You have unlocked an achievement: LACE SHAWL
Finished the Travelling Woman shawl! Screwed up in a few places, but it's a learning piece, and it doesn't really show unless you're examining it. I need to re-block it, because the yoga mat wasn't thick enough to take the pushpins; it can be stretched out more and given a pointier edge.

I hate the pattern for the TARDIS-y scarf and have ripped it out twice, once because I got lost, once because I'm pretty sure that even though the pattern calls for 5s it'd be better on 6s. The crazy-making aspect of the pattern = knitting through the back loops, which just feels wrong. I will try again today.

No Link Soup Today
Because I must go pack a lunch and a book and a knitting and my netbook. Because, y'know. Out all day.

Hopefully I'll have a little more time tomorrow. I would like that. I've got stuff to *do*, you know.

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January 4th, 2010

02:32 pm - My eligibility. Let me show you it.
Oh hai guys. It is time for the annual self-effacing "um, so there are some awards..." post.

Hugo-eligible stuff
Who can nominate? Aussiecon and Anticipation members (Worldcon '09 and '10)
How does one nominate? Click here!
What's eligible?
* "The Angel of Fremont Street", Chizine, January 2009
* "Fortune", Ravens in the Library, February 2009
* "Valentines", Interfictions 2, November 2009.

All short stories.

As 2009 marked my first publication, I am also eligible for the John W. Campbell Award.

Rhysling-eligible stuff
Who can nominate? Members of the Science Fiction Poetry Association.
How does one nominate? Click here!
What's eligible?
* "When Her Eyes Open", Lone Star Stories, February 2009 (long poem category)
* "Twelve", Cabinet des Fees, March 2009 (short poem category)

Rose and Bay
A new award for crowdfunded fiction;

dulcinbradbury nominated Wind Tunnel Dreams already (thanks!), so I shall just nudge y'all when it's time to vote.

And that is all for now. Yeah, I was a slacker from February '09 onward - life went crazy. Must get back on track. I do have a few poems & flash fiction coming out in 2010, but I need to be doing more. Hopefully once I get an actual schedule going.

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01:07 pm - New post
At Living Graciously

Should I keep mentioning these, or is it just annoying?

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08:17 am - 2010 arrives for realz
Today's challenge: clean my office. Dear gods, I don't wanna work today. But I'm just starting off with "clean my office and get all my filing done." That's pretty much a whole day. Ugh.

None of this is helped by poor sleep and intestinal distress. But it's okay; I can pout while I clean my office.
Current Mood:

sleepy

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08:00 am - A Paean To Experienced Women
I like girls who've slept around. A lot. The more they've been with other people, the more I'm likely to want to be with them, for a very simple reason: I figure they're more likely to know what they're doing.

It's no guarantee, of course. Some novices just know how to move, while others can sleep with a thousand men and still never learn a damn thing - but in general, those who've had a lot of sex generally have the experience to be better in bed and in a relationship. They have new techniques to show me, are less inhibited, are far more likely to tell me exactly what they want emotionally and physically.

Which is another way of saying that I have always been attracted to slutty women.

I'm a little uncomfortable with that term "slutty," of course; I've never understood why having a lot of sexual experience was supposedly a bad thing for a girl, whereas being a virgin was something desirable. It just doesn't make sense to me - because logically, all other things being equal, the girl who's been around the block should be the one you'd want.

Let me be clear here by saying that in an ideal world, for long-term relationships, sexual experience shouldn't much matter. If you're looking to date someone, it shouldn't matter how much or how little they've slept around - what's important is whether you like them. What happens after you've tumbled in the sack? Can you carry on a good conversation, laugh at the same jokes, dance to the same music? Sexual compatibility is an element of any relationship, of course, but if you don't actually enjoy spending time out of the sack then all the hot monkey sex in the world won't make you a good dating partner. (A magnificent booty call, perhaps, but not a boyfriend.)

So for me, "sexually experienced" is like a +1 on a scale of one to ten - a preference, not a dealbreaker. It's not going to make me want someone I find loathsome, but it can push someone over the top from "meh" to "hello there."

Yet there are guys I know who are obsessed with finding virgins, or ideally sexually naive women - the minute they find someone who's slept with another guy, they're turned off to the point where they have to be talked into dating them, like a deflowered girl was some battered Datsun on a used car lot. They can't date anyone who's been touched. They can't bear to hear that their partner's been with other men.

And why? What does a virgin get you?

I mean, yes, it's cool to introduce someone to an activity for the first time - you get to watch their excitement as they go, "Wow, this is cool! Who knew?" And that is, I grant you, pretty neat.

Yet you also have to teach, and answer a lot of questions, and endure the inevitable awkwardness of someone exploring stuff for the first time. I mean, it's fun to introduce someone to the game of tennis, too, but I think all things being equal you'd want a partner who's at your skill level, rather than trying to train up an endless series of newbies. (Not that making love is anywhere near as complex as tennis, of course, but a good sex partner can show you things you never knew how to do.) And you deal with people who may not be used to the emotional pitfalls of sex, of which there are many, which can bite you in the ass if you're not careful.

The Cult of the Virgin seems to spring from a lot of issues that I'm deeply uncomfortable with: first off, that as a guy, your goal is to get to women first and mark your territory. Your whole goal is to basically treat women as though they're some kind of fucked-up Pokemon ("You use HOARY PICK-UP LINE on Hymenestra! It's super effective!"), collecting them because of some trait they possess as opposed to who they actually are.

It's as though women don't really exist until you come along and validate them with your amazing schlong. At which point they only exist as long as you possess them.

Second, by sleeping with someone, that attitude puts you in quiet competition with everyone they've slept with before - and if you can remove that competition, thus making her worship you by producing these feelings and knowing that no one has ever surpassed them, that you are somehow now superior. It seems to be a desire born out of a fragmented ego, the terror that maybe your dick isn't the magical holly wand with the phoenix feather core, the concept that your best way to satisfy a woman is to hunt down someone who doesn't know what she's doing and, via social pressure and studied insults, keep her so that you're the only one she ever knows. Congratulations, Bluebeard. You've done it.

Third, it's kind of a passive event. Not to knock anyone's virginity, but the reason I like sexually aggressive women is because in general, they know what they want and have had the motivation to go get it. One suspects that if a man of the virginical persuasion were to find a woman who actively wanted to be deflowered, without having to go through a song and tapdance to change her mind, he'd be repulsed. It's as though these guys get off on the mind control aspect, the thrill of breaking down someone's defenses in a kind of brainwashing thrill, and then pouncing on them.

Me? I'd rather be pounced upon.

Keep in mind that I'm not knocking you for what you may have or haven't done. If you're a virgin, I'm cool with it; it's not something I find really attractive in a sexual partner, but by God if you're going to get upset every time some pudgy, toothless forty-year-old with a blog says, "Well, I'm not that into your type," well, you should learn to pay a fuck of a lot less attention to me.

Still, the concept that virgins are the best thing to have just strikes me as being, well, illogical. If anything, a sane society should hold up a woman who's had some experience as being a finer thing, since the experience will make it more likely (if not guaranteed) that your relationship will work inside of the bedroom and out. (And ideally, it would be done in such a way that doesn't lead to teenaged girls then bashing virgins the way they currently mock sluts - but goddamn, humanity's so stupid that if there's any slight difference they'll turn that distinction into a way to make you wish you'd never been born. The "if one choice is good, the other must be bad" paradigm has destroyed more innocents than I'm comfortable with.)

So down with the Cult of the Virgin! Up with the Mild Preference for the Experienced Woman! And guys, get used to the fact that you're not there first, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

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07:17 am - Monday
Administration
Happy birthday to

desperance and

jpsorrow!

Medical
Had a sluggish weekend, but less pain. Skin is clearing a bit. They said I should have my results in a week, but seeing as we had a holiday in there, I'm guessing it'll be a few extra days.

Real Food
This was om nom nom. I had seconds. More savory than sweet. This, unfortunately, was pretty bland. More spices next time!

Lunch today will be homemade chili or leftover butternut squash risotto, and dinner is this, because we failed at actual menu planning and it looks easy. *nod*

Arisia
Schedule is online!

Scary Stuff Going on in the World
* "I am for sale - who will buy me?"
* It's not over in Iran.
* And Mousavi says he's ready to die.

Link Soup
* Hey, BPAL fans -

shinysayyadina interviewed Beth for Tor.com!
* The Happiness Project. You in?
* Obama makes history, appoints trans woman.

Daily Science
Will a neutralino steal Higgs's thunder?

Plans
Work. Block simple Noro shawl before that, if I've time. Come home, prep dinner, review all of the other links Ive got stacked up here that have video. Do self-pimpage re: award eligibility. And all of the ther stuff I can't think of right now because I am rushing out the door.

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January 3rd, 2010

03:16 pm
New post at Living Graciously. Input welcome - help me stay on track.

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01:21 pm - Data and What To Do With It
I was tracking my XBox achievements on True Achievements the other day when I realized I had statistical proof that DJ Hero wasn't a very popular game. Specifically, my multipliers are ridiculous.

First, some mild geekery: when you accomplish certain tasks in an XBox game, you're given achievement points, or "G." Finish the first level, you might get 10G. Kill all the enemies on a level using only your fists, you might get 50G. The harder the accomplishment, the more G you should get.

...in theory. In practice, since developers design their own achievements, some games are overly generous (in one Simpsons videogame, you get 5G for just pressing the start button) and some games are ludicrously stingy (if you can find all 200 glowing balls in Prototype, you deserve more than 50G). So some of the hardest accomplishments may well short you on G, whereas a game that's generous (usually kids games) hand them out like candy.

So to even it out and have your score reflect your actual gaming talent, True Achievements evens it out by assigning multipliers based on how many people have this game, as compared to how many people actually got this achievement. For example, that Prototype achievement may be only 50G - but True Achievements sees that only 12% of game owners have actually gotten this level, and multiplies that achievement by 2.88 for an "adjusted" total of 115G.

(Of course, since you have to sign up for True Achievements before it starts tracking, it means that 12% of the most devoted gamers in existence have gotten this achievement - the actual number's probably closer to 2%.)

Though DJ Hero has some fairly easy accomplishments, there aren't a whole lot of people who've gotten them. Which means that compared to other games, there aren't a lot of people who've picked up DJ Hero and really gotten into it. In other words, it may have been purchased, but it's not getting played.

As a game publisher, I'd be fascinated by those numbers. The paradox of the sales is that the sales are roughly equivalent to quality, but not exactly. A heavily-hyped game could sell a lot before people realize it's not good. The sequel to Halo 3 (or ODST) is going to sell a zillion copies even if it's a remake of Pong. What the Achievements can tell you, if you structured them appropriately, is whether people enjoyed the game once they bought it.

Just as a quick example, one of the fine tricks of any rhythm game is your choice of songs. Did you get the mix right? Did people, by and large, feel that this is a good mix? Well, if you put in an accomplishment that could be achieved incidentally, like "Played all songs," then you could see what percentage of people thought your songs were good enough to play all of them. (It wouldn't be strictly true, since there are idiots like me who'll unlock everything, but you can filter me out.)

Likewise, you can see what level people got to on average before they quit. Was that level too hard? Did the story flag here? Regardless, you could analyze those breaking points and try to find out what stopped people, and fix that in the sequel. Or to see whether this game deserves a sequel, regardless of the actual sales up-front.

There's whole worlds of data to analyze. And then I think about Netflix streaming, where you can see not only how many people watched the movie, but how many got to the end - and the points where they gave up. What happened at this point in this film where people flung up their hands and said "Fuck this," and how can you fix that in future movies? Obviously, there will be anomalous points of data, where the baby started crying and they just figured what the hell - but with enough viewings, you can see where people paused, where they walked away, giving you some clue as to what they liked about the movie. And you can see what movies get rewatched, and what sections of movies get rewound, and you can use that.

I'm not a data miner. But if I was, man, I'd be drooling over the access to all of this. It's incidental tracking to see how you reacted to something, anonymized, and usable. I'd like to think that someone was putting all of this glorious data to good use.

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January 2nd, 2010

11:03 pm - Up in the air
Have acquired juggling book. And practiced the first couple lessons. Yes, I really am serious about this resolution.

Update: I am now successfully dropping and chasing three balls! Go me!

Updated update:Am I completely weird to think that juggling is sexy?

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08:42 pm - Life with 'song and Adam
Note: Victoria is my daughter's cat. Her nickname is Victoributt or Butt. Also Bitchcakes, but that does not apply to this conversation.

Adam: "I brought you coffee. And a Butt."
Me: "I don't *want* the Butt. ...okay, I want to grab her head." *grabs her head* "She finds that oddly comforting."
Adam: "She's purring."
Me: "I know."
Victoria wrests her head away; I grab her feet.
Me: "Victoria. God was drunk when he made you. Because you have bunny feet. Not cat feet. Bunny feet."
Adam laughs.
Me: "God was like platypus-what? I'm gonna give this cat fuckin' bunny feet. And throw in a bunch of extra thumbs, why not. Pass the beer."
Adam: "And make her squeak instead of meow."
Me: "Yeah. MOAR BEER and here is your cat-thing."

That cat is messed up. But beautiful.

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01:50 pm - Not so much a resolution as a committment
I will only eat real food.

The celiac actually mostly necessitates this; gluten shows up a lot in additives and in the overprocessing of food. One of the easiest ways to cut gluten is basically to eat real food. Food that looks like it did when it came out of the earth. Meat without fillers.

I've been trying to do this for a while, actually - getting us off of convenience food. But when you're the only person in a three-person household that these things matter to, you get voted down a lot.

Not so much when there's a medical necessity.

And no, Adam and Elayna aren't going off gluten, not unless Elayna also has celiac (bloodwork will come back next week), but we can still all eat real food, and we damn well will. *nods* Because it's healthier anyway. And it's cheaper anyway. It just takes more effort, but not too much, if one plans adequately.

So this is dinner tonight. Every recipe on her site is gluten-free and dead easy, requiring basic staples instead of 16 kinds of flour and arcane spices that you pay $20 for to use in one recipe ever, and hello, crockpot. (I love my crockpot.) I got her book for Chanukah. And this book, too, because sometimes the fancier recipes are good and I will not give up baking.

I say it's not a resolution because resolutions imply the possibility of failure, to me. I have to go gluten-free. No option. I can't just decide in March "oh, I suck, I'm breaking that resolution." You know? And so since I'm already making a broad, sweeping dietary change, it's easy to expand it just a little: no soy (I'd been cheating on that in the past, because trace amounts are in everything), and no hyperprocessed food (which makes cutting soy easier anyway). It is a mere coincidence that this is resolution season.

Which is not to say that everything will be super-healthy. I bought this today, too. :)

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09:21 am - Well Done, TiVo!
Step 1: Discover your account has been cancelled because you didn't update your credit card. Proof that you don't use the TiVo enough, but let's say you feel an urge to settle debts.

Step 2: Go to Tivo.com's activation page, as it says to in the message they sent you, to reactivate your account.

Step 3: Put in your TiVo Service Number.

Step 4: Get the following message straight from Tivo's site: "Oops! The TiVo service number you entered has already been activated. If you think you may have entered an incorrect number, please try again or call Customer Support at 1-877-367-8486."

Step 5: Call number. Go ahead. I dare you.

(EDIT: Apparently, some people can get through; when I call from either my home phone or from my cell, I get a "This number has been disconnected" message. Weird.)

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08:17 am - Truth or Dare
I'm by no means an expert on the subject of Truth or Dare. Having been an uncombed, neurotic, and isolated mess through much of my teenaged years, I missed out on all the "classic" adolescent games; I've never played spin the bottle, never played post office, never had seven minutes in heaven. So I've only had a handful of Truth or Dare games, and all as a grownup.

Still, it seems that every game of Truth or Dare I've played follows the same basic patterns, regardless of who's there:

1) All the girls will give the other girls sexy dares involving mouths, hands, and bras. When daring boys, however, it's "You go eat a bug."

2) Unless you're directly involved in a sensual dare, the truths are generally far more interesting.

3) ...But you're pressured into choosing dares anyway.

4) There's always one person there who was just sort of hanging around and is now sucked into the game of Truth or Dare, and is hoping that nothing really crazy happens because they're not going to do it if asked.

5) As a result dares will take forever, because people really want to go for something risque and astounding in the hopes of triggering some wild orgy, but they hem and haw as they try to find the line between wild and sex AND what the lowest tolerance in the room is comfortable with. (I can, however, easily see an opposite world where someone's shouting, "SHOVE THIS COKE CAN UP YOUR TIGHTEST BODY CAVITY!" while everyone else is like, "WHOAH, GIRL.")

6) The iPhone apps and pre-generated games you can get for Truth or Dare are either so tame that you can't believe it (DARE: Dance with a broom) or so aggressive that you feel like it's a yappy, aroused dog at the end of a disintegrating leash (DARE: Put Dan's balls in your mouth).

7) The wild orgy is always, always tanked by the network of anti-attractions - Mattie doesn't like Dave and Aaron that way, Dave's only into boys, and Jack and Rayna are a committed couple. You try to devise a Travelling Salesman algorithm that will satisfy all people in this room without having any anti-attractive nodes touching, yet can create nothing. So you get some mild titillation, perhaps touching someone you like in a way you weren't expecting, and then go home feeling like hey, you got more than you would have, but it coulda been different.

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January 1st, 2010