If You Love Me

If you EVER loved me, I beg you, do not let me get busy and forget about this. You have my permission to call me, leave comments and harass me, and beat me repeatedly, etc. But I must not forget that Wednesday, May 16th through Friday May 18th there will be a Battlestar Galactica Season 3 marathon.

Why is this important?
1) We finished the Season 2 DVDs.
2) The Season 3 DVDs do not come out until August.
3) We should all be aware that Battlestar is my new crack.

How is this going to work?
SciFi is going to air BSG from 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM on three consecutive days. Unless my work schedule changes, these are days that either I do not work or I have the evening shift. Therefore, as far as I can see, we're going to do this old school. I am just going to have to sit in front of the VCR for seven hours straight and make sure I change the tapes so I get it all.

This is a very serious matter.

Maybe I need a ticker???

Very... Badly... Burned...

So, since I have one of those Eastern European complexions that allows me to usually skip the sunburn and go straight to tan, I thought it would be OK to slap some sunscreen on my face and the tops of my shoulders and go to Jazzfest yesterday.

This was an error. Seven straight hours in the sun is not cool when you do not have a base tan. I only get sunburned like this about once every two years, but that is enough for me.

Today I am a lobster. A crispy lobster. And it sucks. Also, I have a horrible tank top line that it will probably take me the next two months to get rid of. But we saw Rebirth Brass Band, and the Norah Jones show was awesome, and I ran into someone I hadn't seen since we worked together at summer camp seven years ago, so it was cool.

Now I'm going to take an Advil and try not to rub any parts of my skin together ever again.

Rumors of KOTOR...

Both Club Jade and TFN are reporting a rumor that Bioware has a Knights of the Old Republic MMORPG in the works. While all sites are stressing the fact that this is just a rumor, it is interesting news considering fans have been waiting for word of KOTOR 3 for three years now. I'm of mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, I feel that the KOTOR story was deliberately left unfinished after the last game, and I want it to be wrapped up. On the other hand, if they decided to continue the KOTOR franchise as an online game, of course I would play it. The downside of this is they would be charging a monthly fee to play it. But I still would have to. Now, you might say, "Sarah, be reasonable. No one is tying you down and FORCING you to play video games."

But you obviously don't get it. I would have to play it. And that is all there is to it.

Note To Sports Merchandisers

Official NHL.com Buffalo Sabres store = on my shit list

Yes, it is cool that there are now female-sized shirts available to female sports fans. Yes, I appreciate that the situation is way better than it was 5-10 years ago. I appreciate the effort, guys, I really do.

But. This doesn't mean I need everything to be pink. Seriously. Is the logo pink? Then the shirt shouldn't be pink. It needs to be blue. Or, in the flavor of the old jerseys, I will also accept red. I mean, come on. I've seen cute female-sized Drew Brees jerseys here, and I own a perfectly cute me-sized Saints t-shirt. Hockey needs to get with the freakin' program. All I want out of life this morning is to purchase some Sabres gear over the internet for the playoffs.

All I want.

Sigh. I guess I will have to fall back on my old standby... the little boys' shirt.

Things Looking Up

Just a brief note to celebrate that my $370 in tickets were just dismissed in traffic court because they lost the paperwork! Whoo hoo!!!

And now back to our regularly scheduled paper writing...

They Found the First Potentially Habitable Planet!

And it's only 20.5 light years from us! It's in a system called Gliese 581. I think this is the coolest news I've heard in a while. But I think everyone I know is aware of my opinion that we should pull out of Iraq and immediately go into space. It's absurd that we put a man on the moon forty years ago and haven't done anything since. Space is where it's at.

Some things about Gliese 581c:

- It circles the star every 13 days, compared to the Earth's 365. That's a whole year in less than two weeks!

- It's in the constellation Libra.

- It is roughly 5 times the size of Earth.

- They don't know for certain that it has water or an atmosphere, but the mass and temperature conditions are right, and it's the best bet they've found out of 220 planets so far.

If there's nobody out there but us... seems like an awful waste of space!

Last Week of Class

This is more or less the week all my stuff is due for school, so I'm going to be either a) not here, or b) posting stupid things that do not require much thought. So, in that vein, here is Starbuck in a fort she made out of the Sunday paper. It looks like a bunch of newspaper and a tail, but I assure you it is Starbuck. She loves to make forts out of the paper.

If I Show Up On Your Doorstep, Chances Are You Did Something to Bring Me There

I know I just posted an Oblivion screenshot. And I've really promised myself not to do this very often, namely because what my character Thayet (Level 21) does in the game is of interest to no one but me.

However.

I have finally acquired the last missing piece to The Outfit I Have Wanted All Game: a black hood. And I am really super giddily excited about it. So much that, of course, we had to have a massive photo shoot. It looks like a very simple outfit. But please bear in mind that I play a thief, and it is surprisingly difficult to put together an all-black ensemble in Oblivion. Unless you want to wear a black robe, which is fine for some characters, but Thayet doesn't think the look is "her." The hood really pulls together this look, I think. I am so dangerous and shifty!

Contrary to what I imply on here, Oblivion is not all about arranging your bookshelves and playing dress-up with your character. There are quests and guilds and a plot.

... Heh. Oblivion is totally all about dress-up.

Having A Personal Problem

So I seem to be having a great deal of personal issues lately that prevent me from coming up with timely and interesting entries for my blog. Not the least of which is the fact that I seem to have misplaced all of my bras. Seriously. Now, you may ask, why does not being able to find a piece of feminine underclothing mean one cannot post on one's blog?

I don't know. I just know that I have been frantically running around for the last fifteen minutes trying to find a bra-- any bra. And before that, I had planned on posting something on my blog. Coincidence? I think not.

See, I have these two bras that are sort of my go-to bras. They are both from the Gap. One is flesh-colored (for white shirts) and one is a black push-up (for dark shirts and/or going out to bars). But I obviously can't wear them all the time, because there is only one of each. Yet, there are certain items of clothing I own that require the use of these bras. So I must save them. To this end, I have several of the EXACT SAME Victoria's Secret Pink cotton bra in different patterns. All of which are MIA.

Where are my bras? It irks me.

On Brian Engblom's Hair...

Sweetie: Why does this guy show up on TV every playoffs?
Me: Brian Engblom?
Sweetie: I think the question we need to be asking is, who is he? And why does he have such a bad haircut?
Me: It's a mullet.
Sweetie: It's a neo-mullet.
Me: He used to play hockey. In the 80's, which explains the hair.
Sweetie: It's like he shaves the sides and then it's long in the back.
Me: It is some awful hair.

By the way, Buffalo Sabres 2007... representing for Upstate all the way to the Cup. You heard it here first.

Today's Oblivion Screenshot

Photographic Evidence

... of my cats' strange obsession with anything I do in the bathroom. They are like weird feline sharks that begin to circle at the sounds of pee or running water. It is somewhat unsettling. I snapped the picture a few seconds too late to catch them both standing up with their front feet on the rim of the tub, gazing at the water. (As you can deduce from the picture, Starbuck also has a strange obsession with Jolee's tail, which is what she's looking at behind the door.)

I am having a standoff with Jolee over his toenails. No sooner do I get his mats in shape than the nails on his 15 abnormal front toes start to grow out of control. Pretty soon the fur poking out between them will cause him to resemble Bigfoot. I have to figure out how to clip his nails so he doesn't hurt himself (his extra toes curl in on themselves). It's a catch 22. If I take him to the vet or groomer, I'll get shredded. If I do his toes and grooming here, I'll get shredded. I told him, "All right, you win this round, but I'm going to be forced to bring in the big guns." Maybe his debilitating fear of Mike will cause him to freeze long enough for one of us to clip his nails.

P.S. This is also photographic evidence of the new bathroom tile that caused all that misery two weeks ago.

Stressed

It seems like I'm so behind in school stuff I have to do before the end of the semester. Seriously. I feel like a bad person. It might... be Oblivion that siphoned all productivity from my February/March. I have a super ton of stuff to finish.

I need to go to the bank. I need to make several phone calls. I need a Roly Poly sandwich (no, seriously, I think I need it to live). Doing Romeo and Juliet with 7th graders makes me want to watch Shakespeare in Love, so I might do that this afternoon while I work on some stuff.

Do not even get me started on Starbuck crawling all over me and licking me while I am on the phone on a job interview-related call. Do not. She is growing into such a bully these days. I wish Jolee would smack her down more often, because I can't bring myself to.

The Sweetie and I are BOTH doing the job interview thing this week and next week... and I hope we ace them, because we are both so over the starving grad student lifestyle. Wish us luck!

Actually I think I can do it

... It is just a pain in my ass. I went back and looked again. I have this problem with not being able to let things go. And it's not really as hard as I thought. I think the easiest way is to find an existing "new" template with similar elements and then modify them. You can't just copy/paste because the new templates are XML, not HTML. But you can copy/paste individual elements. Damned if the font in their template isn't better than what I'm using.

I win at life. Well, I sort of halfway win.

Clearly this situation is going to require coffee.

1:09 AM:
Here's what I've got so far.

I Am Not Savvy Enough for New Blogger :-(

I really would like to have the drop-down menus, label functionality, quick sidebar editing, and other content provided by the new Blogger (previously Blogger Beta). But I apparently don't have the technical knowledge to implement this template in the new Blogger. It sucks. I think I finished this template right around the time the new Blogger came out of beta. And I like it. So there is no way I'm going to trash it. I just spent a little while fiddling with the template editing function, and I can't get my CSS to display properly.

I'm at this middle place where I know enough to have built this page entirely from scratch, but I don't know quite enough to make it work using Blogger's superspecial tags that govern their widgets. I know enough that I wouldn't want to drag and drop edit my site like I'm 12. But I don't know enough to translate this template into the new Blogger without a bigger headache than I have time to deal with right now. This isn't even a complicated template. I just want my freakin' boxes to be gray, all right? And my custom graphics to stay where I put them. Or, you know, to show up at all would be nice.

New Gig At The Hathor Legacy

Just FYI, for anyone who's interested, I am proud to announce that I'm going to be blogging on The Hathor Legacy's new book blog. I've been a fan of the site for several months now. They are a site dedicated to critical analysis of female characters in TV and film. Recently they branched out and added two additional blogs, one on books and one on feminist issues in general.

If you want to know which posts are mine, my nickname there is Duru Antilles, and I have the blue twi'lek icon. I posted this weekend on Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness series.

All Too Easy

Have you ever been faced with an assignment that was just too easy? So easy, in fact, that you didn't quite trust it? This is how I feel about one of my classes. It's an online class in which we have had exactly two assignments the entire semester.

Online classes are usually harder than real classes because they want you to post all these responses to make sure you're doing the reading, and to create a class discussion. But this class... well, it's nice that the guy trusts us to actually buy the book and read it on our own. At the same time, though, part of me keeps thinking there must be a catch. It... can't be this easy.

Just now I read the syllabus yet another time, to make sure there weren't any components to the class that I was missing. But nope. I guess it really is that easy. And yet I am wary of it.

I Hate You, Rock of New Orleans

OK, I'm back again. This is my day off, and I'm working on a short story on the computer anyway, so it is apparently also a blogging day. I have to rant about 104.1 The Rock of New Orleans. I have had it with this station's persistent sexism. It drives me up a friggin' wall. Mike claims he listens to the station all the time and doesn't hear anything misogynistic. I'm like, you must have a higher tolerance level than me, or just be oblivious because you aren't female. Because just now in the car I CLEARLY HEARD them play the tagline, "The Rock of New Orleans: good music, hot chicks." And you cannot tell me that is appropriate to use as a tagline for your radio station. You cannot. There's another slogan that says something about "T&A," which I've also heard. And really, a visit to their website is all you need to confirm everything I'm saying. It's like the thought that they might have female listeners never occurred to them, or it did, and they just decided to ignore us.

I think I'm going to write them a nasty letter. They'd probably just roll their eyes and say, "Go listen to the Diva." Because that is the kind of guy (clearly it is a guy) I imagine runs the station. But I don't want to listen to Diva 92.3, because I don't like the music. I don't like pop, I like 90's rock. Both my exes listened to The Diva, the "girly" station, and I don't remember either of them having to deal with offensive content. I don't understand why there's a need to "gender" a radio station at all. Hello, it's radio. Shouldn't it be about the music? Exactly how are "hot chicks" relevant to the radio format? YOU CAN'T SEE PEOPLE OVER THE RADIO. And shouldn't there, you know, not be porn on a professional business website?

Why don't you boycott them, you ask? Why don't you not listen to the station if it makes you foam at the mouth?

I think this is what pisses me off the most. Because 104.1 and Bayou 95.7 are the only two stations I like. I love the music 104.1 plays. It puts me in a really uncomfortable position. I've sort of made this compromise with myself where, when a song stops and the talking starts, I immediately switch stations to keep myself from getting all worked up. But I'm still offended and I don't like it.

P.S. I also hate the two entitled Uptown mommy-types who double-parked their two unnecessarily giant Lexus SUVs next to me in the parking lot at Roly Poly so I could barely get out of my spot. First of all, why don't you just kill some baby seals while you're at it? Second, here's a thought: if you were both going to Roly Poly, each with ONE small child, why didn't you just ride together? Because I'm perfectly sure four people can fit in one of those monster vehicles, and then the rest of us wouldn't have to seethe because you've blocked off most of a tiny parking lot. And I thought going out of the house would be good for my mood. Heh! :-P

I Want an R2 D2 Mailbox!

There are 400 of them. The U.S. Postal Service made them in celebration of the Star Wars stamp series that comes out on May 25th. Apparently they have been spotted across the U.S. And what is up with there being one in Baton Rouge and not here? (I don't know why this surprises me... there aren't any street corner mailboxes here, period. They never put most of them back after Katrina.) They're pretty cute. I kind of want to be a geek and hunt one down to take my picture with it too!

But wait, it's better! They have a site where you can go vote on your favorite stamp. Whichever one wins, it will get its own sheet. I cannot pick! They're all good.

For Those of Us Who Spend Time Wondering About Scintillating Topics Such As What the Foliage on Other Planets Looks Like

From Whatever, I just got the fascinating news that plants on other planets might not be green! Apparently it has to do with what type of star that particular solar system has. I didn't picture other planets as all looking like ours, but it's nice to have scientific evidence to back that up.

However, it also states that it is unlikely plants on other planets will be blue, since plants absorbing blue light apparently happens pretty much across the board. Personally, I am kind of sad about this. I have love for the color blue. I want a blue tree in my yard.

The ocean in my novel is green, not blue. Now I'm wondering if I need to look that up. A responsible writer, I think, would.

Also, I threatened to quit my job tonight, burst into tears (which I'm now regretting, because it makes me look like a wimp, when the truth is that this is ONLY something I do when I've been keeping my hatred of a situation inside me for weeks, or in this case months, until something snaps, which means that my tears are almost always tears of extreme, extreme frustration, rather than tears of "I didn't like what you just said, wah"... I wish there was a way to put a label on my face saying THIS IS ANGER just so people were clear on the point), and had a freak-out over the fact that I haven't been making money there lately. I made less than $10 an hour tonight, and I cannot live on that. I'm stressed. I owe medical bills, taxes, and traffic tickets currently.

Also, there is a giant cat-sized rat that inhabits the trash room/parking lot of the restaurant, of the type that causes even manly kitchen men to scatter in fear. And it is gross. Seriously, it is exactly Starbuck's size, except of course with shorter legs and a skinnier tail.

I don't really want to talk about work, though. Or the giant rat. I need to drink heavily and watch Battlestar Galactica Firefly. (On second thought, a show that begins with the nuking of human civilization might not be the best idea.)

Dedicated to Jolee Bindo's Feet

I have a foot fetish. But it isn't what you'd think. (Although I have remarked many times about how my significant other has one of the nicest sets of male feet I have seen.) No, I admit that I am minorly obsessed with my cat's giant mutant feet.

I think I have mentioned several times that he has giant mutant feet. I love to touch his feet. Love them! They are huge mittens of brown velvetyness. They might be the softest thing in existence. Unfortunately, he won't let me touch them. He got all mad at me for trying. Then he started licking them off, because of course, my petting them made them SO dirty. But I just think his feet are so cute. My vet says he has the most toes of any of his clients.

Currently he is flopped out on the futon next to me, twitching his tail in annoyance because it is totally obvious that he has exposed his stomach to entice Starbuck to attack him, and she is having none of it.

The aforementioned significant other went to Nashville for work (was it Nashville? I think it was... is it horrible that I don't remember? It was somewhere in Tennessee) for two days, so it's just me, J.B., and S.B. here. I just realized there is crud in Jolee's eye if you blow up the picture. Lest you think I do not take care of my pets, I should mention that he won't let me touch that either. He has a bad attitude.

Where Have I Been?

I don't know.

Busy, for one thing. I worked some extra shifts to make up for being out of town. I wrote a major paper. I stressed out over school, because in case you weren't aware, I have a job offer on the table that's dependant upon me finishing my classes. I... sat around not bothering to move because I have this psychological thing where, if I'm unshowered and gross, I can't begin to deal with life. Oddly, that extends to posting on my blog, even if none of you have any way of telling whether or not I've showered.

But I have showered, fortunately. We got our toilet and shower back on Thursday night. I am in love with the toilet. I never thought I'd say that.

I played a couple hours of Oblivion. Now that Mike's playing too, it is hard to wrestle him away from the computer. And I read two Jennifer Crusie trashy novels (not entirely trashy, because I feel she's too clever to be labeled trashy, but romance novels anyway) yesterday.

But I don't have any major thoughts right now that don't have to do with Oblivion or the short story I'm writing. So... yeah. You'll have to put me on hold. Although I might have something interesting to post tomorrow. Depending on what thoughts occur to me.

Why haven't they made KOTOR 3 yet? Why am I stuck in a rut where all I want to do is game? Why do I suck at life?

Sigh.

But I Want It Now

I've been cruising the SFBC and Amazon to see if there are any books I want to order. I don't know, I get itchy when I haven't bought a book in a long time. And it has been months since I bought a book. I came to the sad but undeniable conclusion that, whatever I order, it will not be:

a) Red Seas Under Red Skies, by Scott Lynch (July 31)

b) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling (July 21)

c) A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin (whenever GRRM finishes it).

And therefore, it will not be enough. Although, Tad Williams' Shadowplay and John Scalzi's The Ghost Brigades are options I will have to consider. But only upon re-read of the first volumes.

This Week In Oblivion

Mike finally started a game. I wish he hadn't. Hmph.

Last night Thayet leveled up about 20 points in alchemy. Yes, I managed to get to Level 17 without bothering to do any alchemy. But I decided to go on a flower picking spree across the countryside, to gather ingredients... while avoiding those pesky Oblivion gates. I have a green glass sword now. It is a rather bright color of green.

Fun things I have done in Oblivion this week:

-Killed Hieronymus Lex for fun to see if he was a good fight. (He wasn't.)
-Incited two riots in Imperial City, in which many NPCs ended up dead.
-Killed the former Gray Fox to see if I could get the Boots of Springheel Jak back. (I couldn't.) Then killed his wife because I was irritated about the boots.

Midget Kitten

Mike: Is that as big as Starbuck's going to get?
Me: I don't think so... what is she? Five or six months old maybe?
Mike: She just seemed like she doubled in size all at once, but she's been this size a while.
Me: I think she's still growing. Look, her neck's all scrawny, but she eats so much. I think this is her awkward phase.
Mike: Maybe this is as big as she'll get.
Me: You think so? Do you think she's a midget? Oh my god, what if she's a midget? What if she's a mini-cat?
Mike: I don't know, you've had cats. You tell me.
Me: I don't know!

Hmph. She's just very small. Still about half as big as Jolee size-wise, and probably 1/3 of his weight. Sometimes I worry about whether I should feed her more. But I don't think it's possible for her to eat more.

Screw Microsoft

I so did not plan on spending the last two hours trying unsuccessfully to run KOTOR 2 in Vista. What a huge waste of my afternoon.

10:08 PM
I'm in! Back on the Ebon Hawk... and I do not look like I have a sense of humor about this.

Use Resources Wisely

I got home from work, and the toilet was no longer in the middle of the kitchen floor. It was back in the bathroom, but it was not hooked up. It was the Last Straw.

There has to be a toilet in this building somewhere, I thought, and dammit, I am going to find it. Exploring the basement apartment, I discovered two toilets, none of which were hooked up to the water pipes, and one shower, with no fixtures. I checked the driveway and the street. No van. No workers anywhere. I went up the stairs to the landlord's apartment. They had just done the hardwood floors. I did not care. I was going to use that toilet. I took off my shoes. The floor was still fresh, but well, I am nothing if not light and crafty.

I hopped over the top of the child-proof gate, leapt the sticky hardwood flooring in the hallway, climbed over the piano, and there it was, in all its glory: a working toilet. The working toilet. Satisfied, I came back down the stairs, grabbed my shampoo, a towel, sandals and a bathing suit, and went out into the backyard to take a shower in the hose. Never underestimate a pissed off Girl Scout.

Camellia Grill... Word Word!

http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/current/camellia.php

Bidding starts tomorrow on Ebay for seats at The First Supper!

Oh Wait

We found the cat poop this morning. Of course they would bury it in a towel. They're cats. The good news is that there is a bathroom in the upstairs apartment. The bad news is the bathroom door cannot be closed because there is a piano in the bathroom. And workers going in and out gutting the apartment.

Lovely. I took the morning off from work because we have to go to traffic court, but we can't shower or get anything done. I can hang out in my cat poop bedroom, does that count? This is the grossest situation ever.

So not happy. I have to run and make a fax. Do you think the Office Max has a shower?

OMG SO TRAUMATIZED!

So. While we were gone for the weekend, the construction men were supposed to finish the bathroom floor. It turned out it was a good thing we were going away, because they ripped out the toilet and the sink. (We only have the one bathroom in our apartment.) I was a little concerned about the cats Friday morning, since they were hiding in the bedroom super freaked out about the workers AND I was going out of town. But I put out their food and water, cleaned their boxes, and said goodbye.

On Saturday morning I woke up with the horrible thought that there was a huge hole in the bathroom floor from where the wood was rotten, and it would totally be like Starbuck to crawl into it and get stuck in the walls. I was afraid they would tile the floor over the top of her and she would be walled up in there like a poor kitten in an Edgar Allen Poe story. Also, when we left, the back door was hanging wide open. I don't think Jolee would ever venture out the back door, but Starbuck might. So I was very anxious to get home and make sure they were both A) still here, and B) not in the floor. While in Atlanta during our connection, we get a message from the landlord that the contractor got sick this weekend and didn't come back, so the floor did NOT get done and we also have NO TOILET.

Yes, this is right. As we speak, we have no toilet.

But this isn't why I'm traumatized. So we get home and I unlock the door and run inside, calling, "Kitties! Kitties! I'm home! Jolee! Starbuck!" No cats run to greet me. I expected them to pop right out when they heard me, so I thought, "Huh." I ran to the back of the apartment... to find THE BEDROOM DOOR CLOSED AND LATCHED! I glanced in the kitchen and none of the food had been touched! The litter box hadn't been used! I rip open the bedroom door and there is Jolee, all wide-eyed. He comes scooting out with his butt low to the floor, like he does when he is half-immobilized with fear, and Starbuck comes running out behind him. They both were just screaming at me.

I feel like the world's cruelest pet owner. I cannot believe the workers locked them in the bedroom. They were in there with no food or water the whole time I was gone! I know it's only two days... but I feel so awful! Jolee is especially upset. He just darted around, inconsolable, for half an hour. (Mike says it is because he is a Prima Donna. But my babe is not a Prima Donna. He's just sensitive.) They have had a ton to eat and drink now, and used the box, and they seem to be calming down. I'm sure it was an accident-- they probably shut the door to keep the dust out of our bedroom and didn't know the cats were in there. I'm amazed there isn't cat poop all over the bedroom, but I guess since they were STARVING they didn't have to go. They managed to tear some yarn off the carpet and pull a splinter off the door, but they didn't destroy anything.

Starbuck is running races around the living room, and Jolee just galloped across to join her. They are both crazy hyper at the moment, now that the food has digested. I know they will probably be running around all night like a herd of furry elephants, but there is no way I could bring myself to yell at them, because they have been locked in that little room for days. They need exercise.

It wasn't my fault, cats! I promise! Poor babes. :-(