Happy belated Thanksgiving everyone! The best thing about holidays is that I'm supplied with enough leftovers to last me a week, or at least until my next day off. Also, I begged some goetta off of my parents. My mom makes a big batch every year and it's the traditional breakfast food for Thanksgiving and New Years in my family. Sooner or later I'm going to have to learn how to make it, as it's one of those things that's just not the same store-bought. For dinner I ended up making ratatouille--I'd been assigned to bring some sort of vegetable dish, and that seemed to be something that had a lot of room for error. It turned out well, despite that I combined two recipes and that the two cutting boards I have are each about the same size as a piece of computer paper, so there were piles of veggies everywhere.

Otherwise, we had the annual "conversation" about eating my (extremely vegan*)cousin's friends (yes, that's how she words it). At least she's starting to come around to the idea that maybe, just maybe, if you want to convince someone of something, attacking and getting them all defensive first might not be too effective.

And then there was the whole fruitarian thing. This is apparently a mutual of a couple of my cousins who only eats fruit, because it doesn't kill the entire plant. He also won't eat seeds/nuts because those have the "potential for life". So, ok, ignoring all the other issues with this lifestyle and the ideas behind it, I finally had to leave because it became almost physically painful keeping myself from mentioning that if everything that had the potential for life actually achieved it, we'd have a slight crowding problem on this planet. But oh well, it wouldn't be the holidays without some sort of drama.



*I should probably mention that normally have nothing against vegetarians, that I agree with them that it's probably a good idea, but I am lazy. However, my cousin takes it to a level that is rather special

:sigh: My lone pair of khakis have finally developed enough holes that they're unfit to wear to work. This makes the third pair of pants in as many months that I've killed--one pair of jeans was obviously on its way out for a while (still might try to patch them, cause they are comfy and I hate loosing clothing that I like, but as I'm not painting as much as I used to I don't have that excuse for holding onto ratty clothes), but the ink stain from the exploding pen on another pair of jeans is just annoying, as otherwise they're fine. This is why it boggles me when I hear about people having clothes that are 10+ years old that are still wearable. The only way I could manage that is if it was never actually worn. Ah well.

In more interesting news, I finally got around to uploading the rest of the photos from my Italy trip, mostly from the day at Pompei.



Here's the rest of the set on flickr

And the full set (80 something, yeah, I know, this isn't even as many as I took) on facebook

I took a lot of photos. Lots and lots of photos. To spare everyone's sanity I've gone through and picked out some of my favorites of the first half.



Here's the rest of the set.

And if that's not enough, here's the link to the 100-something set that I uploaded to facebook (it should be public, but I don't do a lot with that site, so I'm not sure).

Wah, one day I will learn that when cooking potatoes, whether I'm boiling or frying them, to cook them more after I think they're done. Because while I've never managed to over-cook them, I've ended up eating lots of semi-starchy ones because they're still technically edible damn it and I'm hungry. :sighs at potato salad that is not all it could be:

Oh, and hazzah, I have returned from Italy (which I don't think I ever mentioned here that I was visiting, well, that was where I was all last week) alive, intact, and amazingly on time. I'll post photos as soon as I sort through the 344 that I took for the ones that don't suck (walking + photographing didn't go very well. Also, I need a tripod). The trip was much fun and I'm so glad I went, however it can also be summarized as a combination of Roman ruins in the rain and a tour of southern Italian train stations.

Hmm, I don't think I'm quite as over the jet-lag as I thought I was, as everything I just tried to type as a follow up made no sense whatsoever. Weeeee!

This image has been rattling around in my head for a while.

( Hey! Look What I Got! )

So we got a roomba, right? Well, my roommate, who I should mention is probably the messiest out of the three of us (and to be fair, if I'm going to clean, I tend to forget about the floor unless there's something obviously awry), has gotten a bit obsessed.

He's running it for the second time tonight in an effort to figure out the best strategy with what doors to block and how to best use our two "lighthouses" so that the roomba covers the most rooms without getting lost/dying in the middle of the floor.

At one point earlier we were having a conversation where I thought we were talking about my mom, and he thought we were discussing the roomba. It didn't take too long before we figured it out, but still.

At least our floors have never been cleaner.

Here's what I made (or finished making rather, started it a while ago) today.

Happy Halloween everyone :)

I love fall.



( more... )

We've gotten a roomba. My dear roommates named it Celia 2. I got lectured on calling the roomba an 'it' because I was hurting 'her' feelings. C2 is apparently deeply religious, which really, if we've learned NOTHING from BSG is that religion and robots aren't the best combination. A good portion of the evening was spent roomba training. The three of us are very easily entertained.

I'd been threatening to make chocolate chip cookies for a while now, and finally got around to it tonight. We have a bunch of random kitchen crap that I'm pretty sure was foisted off onto my boyfriend by his family, as he certainly never uses it. I knew we had a mixer, but it turned out to be extremely evil, and then smelled of burning, so I decided it'd probably be a better idea to just mix the dough by hand. Also, I was certain we had a cookie sheet, but, uh, no not quite. I found a broiling pan, and am using that instead. It's working ok, but the cookies are a little more prone to raw-in-the-middle-burned-on-the-outside than I'd like, so I'm thinking I'll refrigerate the rest of the batter and go buy a real baking sheet tomorrow.

Also, remember the roomba? Well, the roommates were trying to figure out how the lighthouses/virtual walls that are supposed to confine the robot to one room worked, while I was messing around with the cookies. They kind of failed. There's nothing quite like trying to mix dough while dodging a robot that seems to think the place it really needs to clean is right where you're standing. I tried just letting it run into me, but it wouldn't run into me and turn around, it'd run into me, move an inch sideways, run into me again, and repeat.

I think I posted the pencils to this ages and ages ago, but I've been messing around with painting it on and off for awhile now, and I think I'm finally finished.

Even though I think I'm having my annual fit of hating everything I draw (not a bad thing, means I'm getting better at seeing what's wrong with my artwork--however, there's a lag between leveling up my ability to see problems, and my ability to fix them, which gets annoying as all hell, and makes me prone to melodramatically declaring that I can't draw), at least I think I'm starting to get close to a painting style that I'm happy with. And, I owe my old teachers a thousand apologies for being so damn stubborn about using texture, or rather my refusal to. You'd have thought they were asking me to pull my own teeth, and now I have no idea why I put up such a fight.

( Pigeon-Ox-thing )