joy and shadows

The book meme that's been going around, ganked from andmydog among others

The rules:
1. Choose five to ten of your all time favorite books (I'm including plays in this one).
2. Take the first sentence of the first chapter and make a list in your journal.
3. Don't reveal the author or the title of the book.

If you guess the book and want to know, I'll tell you why it's on my list of favorites. (Some of my favorites are a bit obscure, I have to warn you; I'm a fantasy h0)

( The guessing game starts... )

Episode: Saiyuki 10

Scene: Four hooligans badly impersonating Sanzo's party

Hakkai: Now, now, don't be mean to the cos-players!

Arafel: *DIES LAUGHING*

The Story: I work with a fellow who has his own band. He would also like to have a nice working website, and since I have some small skill with GoLive, I will be helping him with that. However, making pretty spiffy graphics is not part of my skillset, so I'm hoping someone who reads this will be interested in either trading a couple fansubs or making some cash.

Here is his site. You can see that it doesn't look very nice. He knows that.

The Tide

(The sound is kind of a cross between Tom Petty and Jimmy Buffett.)

Interested? Click the LJ cut.

( Your mission, should you choose to accept it )

It's been just gorgeous this weekend. I'm so ready for summer, I can taste it.

Husband and I went off to Point Pleasant today, and boy howdy you'd think it was an 80-degree day in June by the crowds of people who were showing up by late afternoon. It was great to get out to the beach, especially since we didn't go even once last season.

Most of the businesses were open, and we had lunch on a pier over the ocean - nothing special, but the waves rolled in under us. Something about that thunder on the sand... it makes me miss Elberon all that much more. The guys in the office ask why husband and I don't pack up the damn car and go to the shore now and then, and I answer quite honestly that I was so spoiled growing up by having a relative who lived right on top of the beach that packing the car up with umbrellas, chairs, and sunscreen just isn't in my vocabulary.

Anyway, we walked the boardwark and the beach, saw a couple of boats run the Manasquan Inlet, and watched the surfers enjoy the rough surf. For all that it couldn't have cracked 70F on the beach, there were plenty of girls in bikinis getting some sun. We played skee-ball and I bought myself a caramel apple with peanuts on it. We even climbed into one of those silly photo booths and got a strip of four pictures. Two of 'em are cute - I'll bring into work, I think.

Here's a picture. Not of girls in bikinis, sorry. My husband's sitting on the jetty.

( big blue sea )

After our day at the beach, I exercised my Secret Power and got my husband to fall asleep by conking out on his chest. He's my snoozin' buddy that way. Got up eventually to make dinner, chicken stuffed with goat cheese and sundried tomatoes, and it was pretty damn good if I do say so myself. Then we went out for ice cream and that damn shop across the street is going to be the death of me if they keep serving amaretto ice cream.

I hope this week is better than last.

Recently, a FST was posted on fst entitled The New Joy of Sex Songs to Draw/Write Porn To.

Naturally, this got my attention.

This track was posted as part of the FST, and I just about peed my pants when I heard the porny part. If you don't feel like listening to the whole thing, slide along to about 3:30.

Someone had way, way, way too much free time with this one.

Speed Racer - Porn Mix

There's a new fencing school opening up in Somerville!

And I even have the right ring to wear to my class. Bitchin'.

My husband is the sweetest thing on two legs.

When I came home this evening, he was all shamefaced about something. He said he'd done something bad, but he could fix it. This of course made me very nervous, because there are any number of items we own that could get damaged. While I'm envisioning one bad scenario after another, he comes in from the desk room with two boxes from Dell. In the boxes are two 20GB MP3 players, one for me and one for him.

Why on earth did he think that might upset me? Because I started running last week, and my bribe to myself was to be that if I could run three times a week for four weeks, I'd buy myself an MP3 player. The CD player's kind of a pain to run with, because it skips and/or falls off the treadmill. (I don't have one of those pouches you wear on your back.) Funny thing was, I was sourly considering moving up the MP3 player schedule because the CD player was such a pain. So, now there's one for him and one for me. The player comes with a monthlong promo for Napster, but there seem to be some significant catches with that service that I will have to investigate. (Husband gets very concerned about illegal downloading, so I don't go into too much detail on the BitTorrent.)

Tonight we had planned to go out to Short Hills to get a new watchband for the Omega my husband's grandfather left him. Husband picked out a very nice brown leather strap, and then he bought me a new Skagen titanium watch just because. I took him out to dinner afterwards, and then we stopped at J. Crew because I wanted to check out a little pink dress with embroidered dragonflies on it. (We are very big on dragonflies, because when we go to Maine, these big fellows with green racing stripes buzz around and sit on our toes when we're out floating on the lake. They are our friends!) I expected it to make me look like the Fat Farm Refugee (short dresses are generally not that flattering on me) but what do you know, the size 8 fit and it was very cute. I didn't expect to take it home, but husband thought I looked so cute that he wanted to buy it for me.

Then I spent my Sephora gift certificate from my birthday on a small bottle of Chanel No. 5. What better way to top the evening off than with a little class?

Certainly didn't expect any of that this evening, and it was a lovely surprise.

I had about the best weekend ever.

Why, you ask?

I did NOTHING. It was GREAT. Here was my schedule on Saturday:

11:30 PM Friday - 11:30 AM Saturday: Sleep.
11:30 - 2:00 PM: Get showered etc.
2:00 PM: Started watching F1 Qualifying.
2:05 PM: Dozed off.
3:30 PM: Woke up in time for end of qualifying.
4:00 PM: Made cookies.
5:00 PM: Back to bed for a snooze.
6:30 PM: Woke up, went out to dinner.
8:00 PM: Finished dinner, lazed on couch.
11:30 PM: Watched FMA.
12:30 PM: Sleepytime.

Yesterday was a little more productive; I finally cleaned all my shit off the floor in the bedroom (sweaters, sweatshirts, random crap, whatever) and vacuumed. If this sounds like a small job, it wasn't.

Today we are all feeling a little jet-lagged due to the time change, and I have definitely been grumpy all morning. Not to mention that with the heavy rain this weekend, the ceiling fell in on our lab instruments again. Oh well, at least the UV-vis didn't get fried this time, though we'll be getting a new monitor for the IR microscope. Plus, it was definitely NOT a good sign when coworker picked up the computer and water ran out of it.

It would be nice if people learned to plan ahead for their goddamned microbiological testing and would not expect their chemicals to be in on Monday when they only requested them on friggin Friday afternoon, and didn't even tell me besides so they could be ordered. What am I, a goddamn peracetic acid factory?

The only good part of being grumpy is that I have called up at least five people who needed some bitching at and bitched at them. They will probably start feeling grumpy themselves when they get those messages, but I don't really care.

Gonna go running this afternoon. Last Friday I got on the treadmill and ran for TWENTY WHOLE MINUTES. And don't laugh, because for me that is a lot. Maybe that will make me less grumpy, a la Renet's icon. Endorphins make you happy!

WHY AM I SUCH A LAZY SACK OF SHIT?

I have TWO MONTHS' worth of lab notebook to update, and I'm reading Livejournal.

Time to get down to business.

...I hate updating my notebook. :P

I have Dove chocolate pieces.

That means you all want to be friends with me, right now.

Mmm, chocolate.