Category Archives: Play

Gig in Vail, CO

Music, Travel

In which I’m going out of town! YAY!

resortThe guy who books me for his Children’s Benefit holiday concerts every year, and on whose album I sang the summer before last, has booked a gig for his sometime-band The Seventh Ray.

In Vail! Colorado! In the freakin’ Rockies, bitches!

I’m going to Vail for a gig! Driving out in a van fulla musicians I adore! Staying at the Vail Cascade Resort & Spa! And GETTING PAID for the WHOLE ENDEAVOUR!

Date & Time: Saturday, May 5, 2007, 6:30PM
Place: Vail Cascade Resort & Spa (Vail, CO)
Event: Retreat with Sai Maa

I’m so happy I could die!

(Seriously. I haven’t been paid for a gig since, like, the mid 90’s.)

I’ve only been to Vail once, and it’s a trendy little stuck-up resort town. Even the Denny’s is chichi, puh-leese.

But it’s in the mountains where it’s gorgeous, and I’ll be hanging with a bunch of my favorite players! And I get to meet a saint, which is never a bad thing.

I wonder if I can take my dog with me. Hmm.

No Bother At All

MP3s, Weather

In which I’m amazed, dismayed, and groovin’.

1. It fucking snowed. Snowed! On April 11th!

2. I drove past Los Portales and it appears to be closed. Like, permanently. WTF?

3. My b(r)other and I send each other MP3s via gmail. I finally got the last few he’d sent me downloaded and imported into iTunes and synched to my iPod, and damn if this isn’t just wonderful. (It rocks when your bro is a kick-ass drummer.)

That is all.

Geek Post, YHBW

Web, Wishlists

In which I go on and on about crap like WP plugins and widgets and CSS.

I have made this new template work! Yay! In more than one browser, even! YAY ME!

It turns out that IE gets pissed if the math doesn’t work in one’s CSS; in other words, if your container is 800 px wide and your left column and right column (including padding or margins) does not equal 800, the page fails to render. Which sucks. Also, if you have an element inside a column that is wider than the column itself, the page fails to render. Which sucks.

Here’s the list of crap I accomplished last night:

  1. Make this layout work in IE.
  2. Find and install an RSS icon.
  3. Link to Rants9.
  4. Make an Archive page that works.
  5. Make a Category heatmap.
  6. Make the padding around Flickr images in the sidebar not suck.
  7. Add All Consuming to the sidebar.
  8. Add Current Status plugin to post pages.
  9. Figure out HOW to alpha sort my Blogroll.
  10. Feel like I have a template I can enjoy for more than two weeks!

So I know most of you probably hate this template, and want to go back to something else, and/or think it’s too busy… change sucks, I know. But sound off anyway. Hurt me.

I’ve quasi-updated the SiteTech page, which tells you all about what I’m running here on the site. I need to update it further because I’m not using some of the things listed there.

Now I’m gonna run and get some lunch. Ciao, babies!

Update: I bought soup and a sandwich from Revelations, where I found The Purse I Want. OMG! It costs $50, which is a lot for a purse, but it’s wonderful.

It has a long strap, so I can wear it across my body the way I like to, and it’s small yet big enough for all my electronics. I want I want I want I want it.

Maybe after Bindu sees the vet and the jeep sees the mechanic. *sigh* Poverty sucks.

Breakfast

Recipes

In which breakfast is the best meal of the whole morning!

Vegetarian white trash breakfast from hell…

VWTBFH

…is a light rye, veggie sausage, plasti-chee sandwich, with a hash brown patty and a home-made latte.

It. Is. Good.

…and Dinner: In other news, a falafel place opened up (!!!) in the front of the Hickory House bar. It’s a weird place for a falafel restaurant, but that’s not the point.

The point is there’s falafel in town again! I had dinner there. It was excellent. Falafel, baba ganoush, tahini, tabouli, pita, hummus. OMFG, I’m so happy! I sat at the bar, read an ebook, and ATE FALAFEL WITH MY COCKTAIL!

I might expire from joy, my babies. From joy!

Money. Underwear. Chocolate. Luncheon.

Finance, Gadgets, Weather

In which my financial situation gives me The Dread whenever I think about it, which is not very often. Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

Last night, my roommates went to see Clapton in Moline, IL so I had the whole blessed house to myself for the evening. I sat in front of the computer and dicked around with my PPC — the surgery appears to have worked! — and worked on this page, which I still haven’t been able to update without breaking. Grr.

Before I took my new-to-me PPC apart, it had WM2003SE on it. Taking it apart caused it to lose power, which caused it to reset itself to factory default… and now it has WM2003 on it. Which bugs me, because I want SE dammit! (The only difference between 2003 and 2003SE is landscape mode, which I don’t even use. It’s the principal of the thing.) Now, I just happen to have a 2003SE image and I found instructions (gawd I love the intarwebs) on how to to force-flash the ROM, though, so I might try to do a little illegal upgrade tonight. *evil genius laugh* I’ll need an assistant, though, because one needs to press and hold the “reset + press scroll in + contacts + power” buttons — all at the same time! — in order to force a ROM update.

Yes, I realize that none of you care about any of that. So I’ll move on and tell you that I bought new underwear at Walmart the other day! (I buy cheap-ass Walmart underwear because they’re cheap, they’re cotton, my dog will eventually eat them anyway, and because there’s nowhere else in town to buy undies that aren’t organic cotton and way out of my current budget.) New underwear = happiness. Continue reading Money. Underwear. Chocolate. Luncheon. →

Tweaking the X5 for fun and profit… Plus: rabies!

Gadgets, Pets

In which that tiny little screwdriver comes in handy!

PPCOnce upon a time, I bought a little glasses repair kit. It came with a little magnifying glass, four tiny little extra screws, and this kick-ass little screwdriver all snug in a plastic case. I use it to tighten my glasses once in awhile, and I cleverly keep it someplace utterly random — my knitting bag! — where I can always find it.

I just used the kit’s little screwdriver to take the X5 apart. There it is, guts exposed! My new toy isn’t working properly at all; the screen either doesn’t respond or it responds incorrectly, and a touch screen device with a FUBAR touch screen is basically a paperweight.

I dug around here and found that the precise symptoms my X5 exhibits are common with older X5s, so I’m mid-fix as I type. Once I’m done with this post, I’m going to reassemble the thing (and then REINSTALL ALL THE CRAP I’D INSTALLED JUST A FEW DAYS AGO) and if it’s fixed, I’ll keep it. If it’s still a glitchy POS, I’ll send it back.

In other news, now that I live in town I have to register my dog [ordinance #1000 on the link] at City Hall. Which means I have to give her annual rabies shots, which pisses me off. I vaccinate my animal/s every three years because vaccines last for three years, they’re expensive, and over-vaccinating kills pets just like it does people.

Gah. I hate stupid regulations. I don’t mind paying $10 a year to license my dog, but there’s just no way I’m going to vaccinate my 10-year-old bitch for rabies each and every year, no way at all. I tell you what: there’d better be an elderly animal exemption, or my bitch ain’t gonna be legal.

Creamy Spinach Soup

Recipes,

In which I liked it enough to make it a second time, which means that the recipe goes on the intarwebs for YOUR reading pleasure!

This soup is easy to make, nutritious, and cheap.

I’ve made it twice — the first time I made it up as I went along, and it was yummy enough that tonight AmmZon requested it again! So I decided to write it down, lest it be lost like that amazing soup Chloe made that one time that was “too simple to forget” but was.

Creamy Spinach Soup

So here goes: a simple, filling spinach soup my household really likes.

Creamy Spinach Soup

In a large pot over medium flame, heat:

  • 1 T. butter
  • 1 T. extra virgin olive oil

add and saute until translucent:

  • 1/2 yellow onion, diced
  • 1-2 cloves garlic, minced.

Add:

  • 2 c. whole milk
  • 2 c. broth, vegetable or chicken
  • 1 c. water
  • scant pinch ground cloves (optional)
  • 1/4 tsp. ground tumeric (optional)

Add:

  • 1 large potato, peeled and diced
  • 1 carrot, peeled and diced
  • 1 pkg. frozen spinach

Creamy Spinach SoupBring to a simmer and cook until the potatoes and carrots are tender.

Using a slotted spoon, remove the solids into a blender. Add a little broth and pulse until smooth, then return to the soup pot and stir.

Adjust seasonings:

  • kosher salt and black pepper to taste.

Ladle into warm bowls and serve with a good, crusty bread.

Servings: 4-6
Cooking time: 20-30 minutes

Recipe Source
Author: Me!
Source: goblinbox.com

Now that you’re into recipe mode, go read this one.

A Brief Overview

Blurbs, Gadgets

In which this is all the news that’s fit to print, and it ain’t much.

We had friends over so I stayed up way too late last night, and now I’m sleepy. You’d think someone pushing 40 would have figured out how to go to bed on time, but no. I act like a little kid and stay up too late even though I know I’m gonna suffer.

Today I had a Subway sandwich for lunch because I’m not convinced that Mexican food alone provides enough dietary variation.

My new PPC arrived yesterday! It’s not refurbished, it’s used. Fairly heavily used. It’s a little glitchy — it doesn’t respond to the touchscreen properly while the sync cable is plugged into it — but I surfed around and found out that the glitch is something I can easily fix if I’m willing to take the unit apart, which I am.

The best news in the PPC so far world is that the latest version of Mobipocket Reader Desktop is fuckin’ hawt! It puts me in mind of iTunes, actually. One can finally organize books in useful ways, and it connects directly to ebook stores (my favorites Mobipocket and Fictionwise, as well as several others) so that purchasing, downloading, and syncing ebooks is effortless. Yay! And the Pocket PC version is also updated, and allows one to have more control over how the library is organized.

In other news… I feel this terrible, dark, foreboding depression this afternoon… it feels hormonal, like I’ve got PMS, but it’s not time for PMS. I sure hope an after-work nap takes care of it because I don’t particularly enjoy feeling as if my dog just died.

Update: A nap totally helped. Now… what to do this evening? Laundry? Dinner? Hmm.

Bookworm

Reading

In which there’s a totally half-assed review of a book I’m still reading!

Alpha CentauriI’m currently reading Alpha Centauri, which came in one of the boxes of books my mom sent.

“From a grossly overpopulated Earth in 2239 A.D., an exploratory colonization mission to Alpha Centauri finds Mies Cochrane carrying an autovirus inside him that, after sexual intercourse, halts conception – the perfect birth control. The explorers discover the remains of an ancient civilization and a way to see what caused their extinction through the eyes of the last, long-dead inhabitant. The authors make a strong statement about overpopulation, solutions to it, and humanity’s purpose for existing. This thought-provoking book, a mix of sexually explicit passages and scientific exposition, is recommended for adult sf collections.”

Mies is not only carrying permanent birth control in his testicles but is a rapidly destabilizing schizophrenic as well. Another character is a voluntary neuter, and a third is a voluntary hermaphrodite. The sex is freakin’ awesome weird, and if there’s anything sci-fi needs it’s more awesome weird sex! I mean, seriously. What could possibly be better?

All the reviewers at Amazon hated Alpha Centauri because, apparently, the sentence fragments and gratuitous sex irritated them. I’d like to reply that not only is the science superfantastic, but the sentence fragments — usually used when we’re sharing a character’s thoughts — are not distracting but impactful, and if a person’s paying attention to the story arc at all the sex isn’t gratuitous. The destabilizing schizo is infecting other characters with permanent infertility when he sleeps with them; they’re an 11-member crew stuck light years away from a dying earth in a system with no habitable planets – the sex is not only part of the human condition but PART OF THE PLOT. The surgical alterations various characters have undergone help us to examine human sexuality in interesting, story-moving ways. When we find out that Doc really believes men are incapable of love and only say the word in order to get laid, we begin to understand why he chose to spend 20 or 30 years as a neuter, free of his sexual imperatives.

Sci-fi isn’t actually supposed to bore one to sleep.

In other news, BabyGirl has her own blog.