joy and shadows

Slow connections, beware. Here it comes!

( If you didn't think this wasn't going to be Laguna-centric, you haven't been paying attention. )

( Laguna and Raine goodness! )

( Beefcake. BEEFCAKE! )

( One more! )

Because my co-workers and I have the collective maturity of a twelve-year-old boy, the subject of the Better Marriage Blanket came up at lunch. They seemed to know what it was, and though it wasn't hard to figure out what they were talking about, I was advised to google it. So I did. But, what's even better than the blanket is this WebMD blog post about it. Enjoy.

Now that the babby has been around for a year, maybe it's time to re-evaluate the babby filter, especially since I've had some new friend additions since then.

So!

If you want ON the babby filter, leave me a comment.

If you want OFF the babby filter, do likewise. (No hard feelings, I promise!)

Hmm... What do I do before bed tonight?

Do I doot around in the Dissidia 012 labyrinth some more and listen to Kain grump it up?

Or do I read some more of Let the Right One In, now that I have my book back? (Thanks ssilverfish for the rec!)

This is a toughie.

Because I've been shipping this couple for a ridiculously long time, and they need some FST love. Kinda vintage, for you FF8 fans out there. (Also, it was time to get this damn thing off my hard drive.)

Right-click to save files - they are hosted on my webspace.

Zip is here.



( Stormchaser: A Laguna and Raine FST )

Rick Grimes goes postal with a rock

Awesome. I can't wait for Halloween.

We have had some hilarious acronyms come through recently in company emails that I'm sure were not intended as they are read. Or maybe they are.

For example, something called: Project SOL.

Then there was the FOD Management team.

Just today, I saw that a new site was being launched called [company]-CRS.

What's next? The FUBAR initiative?

It is astonishing how much junk one can accumulate. I have wedding gifts from eleven years ago that are in their original packaging. It is beyond time for a garage sale, so I can unburden myself of the following:

1. Cosplays. My conning days are probably over, so perhaps someone else will want to dress up like Anna Williams or Seung Mina. Or, not. My skillz in the sewing area are far from expert. The only considerations that keep me from binning all of it are 1. I spent an awful lot of time and $$$ on these and 2. my husband made some of the weapons, so he might not be too pleased to see them end up in the trash, either. I doubt anyone else is going to want to dress up as Yoshi, though.

2. Other assorted sewing stuff. Patterns. Fat quarters I am not going to use, ever, because I won't have time to quilt again until JP goes off to college.

3. Wedding gifts. I am probably never going to use that chip'n'dip set. Or a Belleek gravy boat (it doesn't match anything else.) Or a footed cake plate. Or a salad bowl. Or a Lenox holiday wine holder (??????) Or any one of about six lead crystal vases.

4. Baking and decorating items. I have approximately 1,000,000 cookie cutters. These were great when I had more time to bake and decorate cookies (like, about thirteen years ago, for about a week.) It doesn't help that my BIL used to work for Williams-Sonoma, so every holiday and birthday he would give me a big haul of WS stuff that was very very nice but ended up on the shelf. Also on my shelves are useless things like a worn-out Foreman grill (WHY do we still have this, when I have an ACTUAL GRILL in the backyard, plus a panini press) and a GranPappy deep fryer I bought when I was convinced I would make torta fritta more often. (Times I have made torta fritta since buying the fryer: 0.)

5. The Lenox Windswept crystal my mother bought me when I was sixteen. This is a lesson in why you should never consult a teenager in matters of taste. This pattern was trendy at the time, and I thought it was just faboo, and now it's embarrassing because it's so very, very eighties and ffs it's frosted. (So was my hair, at the time.) My mother thought I should start amassing my wedding crystal for some reason, and now I have four or five large boxes of flutes, wine and water glasses, and lord knows what else that I will never put on my table. Plain crystal wine glasses are fine, plus my husband and I tag-team excellently in the Dropping Things on the Floor department.

6. Stuff my grandmother left me. My father's mother had a lot of stuff, most of it of sentimental value only, and because no one else in the family wanted to be the one who threw it out, they gave it to me. Then my aunt Anne, who took a lot of that stuff, would decide she didn't want it after all (but she didn't want to throw it out either) and gave it to me as well until I told her to stop giving me Grandma's junk. Right now, among other things, I have a heavily tarnished silverplate tea service, highly unattractive crewelwork flowers in frames, and a dusty, sad-looking samurai doll (I named him Hiroshi) who looks like he's been drinking.

7. My doujishi collection WAIT NO NEVAAARRRRRRRRRR

Either way, it would be great to get rid of some of this stuff before my cellar looks even more like an episode of Hoarders. :/

Just watched the last shuttle launch here at work. I can't believe that the era of the starship is already over. Losing the space program makes me unutterably sad.