In which I go on and on and on about a fucking TV show. Srsly. Me, the girl who loathes television. Don’t even read this.
I have a BF who has satellite and an HD television and we could spend all kinds of time just watching what’s on, but we don’t. We watch DVDs of Torchwood.
Torchwood, if you’re not familiar with it, is a BBC show. It’s a spinoff from the Doctor Who universe, with several characters appearing in both series. It was created by the new Doctor Who’s producer, Russell T. Davies. The show was developed almost entirely as a vehicle for John Barrowman (who first appeared as Captain Jack Harkness opposite the ninth Doctor). Harkness is the first acknowledged non-het character in the Who universe, and he makes up for it by basically shagging everything he sees, be it girl, boy, or alien.
I love Torchwood because it’s total entertainment crack.
It’s British, which means accents (which means that any and all utterances sound more profound than they truly are). It’s sci-fi, so not only do we get to examine deep themes but we don’t notice we’re doing it since there are monsters and aliens and gadgets and wonderfully cheesy special effects. (This is actually why I love sci-fi: I think it’s the bestest context for playing around with existential questions.) And, best of all, it’s got more snogging and shagging than any other sci-fi series I’ve ever seen… and I’ve watched a million hours of sci-fi so I know what I’m on about.
For instance, in last night’s episode (season 2, episode 11) Gwen rushes back to The Hub to speak with Jack about a case. She bursts into his office, only to find him half-dressed and snogging a similarly unclothed Ianto. She backs away, stammering, but they pull themselves together and rush out after her.
Jack: Gwen! There’s always room for one more! We could have used you an hour ago for naked hide-and-seek.
Ianto: He cheats. He always cheats.
Ianto is my favorite character and gets all the best snarky asides.
The good news is that Torchwood didn’t get axed after its second season, and will be returning for a partial third. The bad news is that after we watch episodes 12 and 13 tonight, we’ll have only the special left until the third season is aired NEXT SPRING! OMGWTFBBQ!!!1!! What am I supposed to DO with myself until then?!?
The name ‘Torchwood’ is an anagram of ‘Doctor Who.’ (The name was used on the dailies and rushes when the ninth Doctor’s show was in pre-production so people wouldn’t know what they were and leak clips to the public. Davies later wrote the name into the Who series in preparation for the spinoff.) I love Torchwood and will probably begin the series again at the beginning and watch the whole thing again twice before Spring!
Apparently, the folks at CERN are also huge Torchwood fans.
In which you’d never believe I could be quite this enamoured with something that you’d normally think is not my style, but I love it so, so very much!
Over a year ago, Baby Girl turned me on to bidz.com. Last week, I freaked out and bought a couple of rings from them… no reason whatsoever, total impulse buy.
When I got home last night, there was a package on the stairs. I carried it up to my room and ripped into it with glee.
Behold my new ring! It’s a 29.5 carat CZ set in sterling silver! It’s big, it’s gaudy, it’s tacky, it’s VERY sparkly, and I adore it. It makes rainbows in the sunshine, even! (The other ring paled in comparison, so I gave it to my awesome co-worker and she liked it enough to give it a home.)
If for some reason you can’t actually see my new GINORMOUS RING over the Internet, you may view a close-up of it here. That picture is totally LIFE-SIZED.
In other news, I got my teeth cleaned this morning. I love clean teeth!
In which there are two things! Two exciting things! Two!
The first exciting thing is that last night, while watching an episode of Torchwood, I completed the Big Brown Sweater. (You may cheer; I will hear you even over the Internet.) It spent a year and ten months on the needles, but it’s finally finished and it rules.
(The pattern is Abigail, the yarn is Decadence in chocolate, and both were from Knit Picks. Teh BF was forced at gun point by my pointing my coffee cup at him to photograph it this morning so I could put it on the intarwebz.)
It fits, it’s soft, it’s brown, I made it myself, and I intend to wear it every. single. day. from now until summer returns next year! Yay!
The other cool thing is that yesterday I decided to become obsessed with bento. (I believe it was this page that finally decided me, but I’ve had bento boxes on my wishlists for quite awhile now.)
Today I ordered the! cutest! bento box set! ever! and a few other necessary bento accoutrements (vegetable shapers, mini sauce bottles, a boiled egg shaper, resuable silicone food cups for separating wet from dry foods, and an onigiri mold) from jbox.com. They should be here late next week, and from then on I shall spend a little time after dinner every night cleverly packing leftovers for the next day’s lunch.
This new hobby will not only satisfy my cooking creativity to a certain extent (I hardly ever cook any more!), but will stop me eating at the Mexican restaurant across the street from work like twice a week. It will help me control my caloric intake, something I desperately need to do because I’m forty and built just like a brick these days, and it will have the added benefit of being way totally HELLA COOL!
In which there are fun times, my babies, fun times!
Saturday was Sibling Errand Day! My bro and I went to Chevron together and then to Taco Loco for GIHUGENT BURRITOES!!! Later we went to Walmart, where he bought a DVD player and blank media, and I bought some much-needed clothes (a long-sleeved t-shirt, three pairs of socks, and a pair of jeans).
When I got the jeans home I tried them on again and decided that they sucked – they were low rise so they basically won’t stay on my hipless body when I sit down – so I didn’t take the tags off of them. The other things I tossed into my dresser. I did a load of laundry and knitted on the Big Brown Sweater while watching a rip of War, Inc. with my bro on the new DVD player.
All in all, a highly wunnerful Saturday. Burritos, clothes, laundry, knitting, and a movie! I felt like teh winnar! W00t!
Saturday night I played with Barefoot, Cookie, and the Professor at Sapolil Cellars’ tasting room. My boyfriend and my brother came down to listen and drink wine. I got wine-drunk like I always do, and after the gig we went to Shari’s and pigged out on junk food.
I was pretty miserable after all that, so I ended up passing out on the couch over at Kaje’s place. I slept a lovely twelve hours and felt much refreshed.
Sunday I got a personalized tour of World of Warcrack. Kaje was playing when I woke up, so I went and sat on the counter behind him and drank my coffee and he showed me all around the place. One word: DORK. (Yes, I’ll probably start playing too; everyone else I know does.)
We went back to Walmart (yes, I went there twice this weekend. I know it’s disgusting; shoot me) and I exchanged the jeans for some knit tees and some other pants; KJ got socks. Then we went to Shopko so he could buy a crock pot. (I bought some Halloweeny Lindor truffles.) Sunday night we watched Destiny of the Daleks, which was KJ’s first exposure ever to the fifth doctor. He loved it.
Bindu and I enjoyed a morning walk to work today that looked like this:
This morning, my brother deposited a belated b-day present on my desk. It’s a Zippo lighter! With the Serenity logo on it! I love it because it’s mine and because it’s awesome.
In which there’s just a little blurb.
I changed my site’s theme.
Doubtless you’d already noticed that, though. You’re a smart lot, you readers of the ‘box. I lurve you, each and every one!
Two minutes until cocktail hour!
In which it is all about the joy that was my local post office today.
This awesome woman (who blogs here) sent me a box (because she is hella awesome) containing:
Yarn, with Sci-fi!
I happened to be at the post office because I was sending a RAOK package myself, to Vuboq, containing needles and stitch markers and manga that needs a home. When I checked my PO box to collect my dentist bill and the occasional bit of junk mail that I usually find, there was a ticket in it that said, “Parcel too large for box.”
So I was all, “OMG! A package! For meeeee!” And yea verily, it was yarnz!
Long story short: the Internet just plain rocks, because on it you meet people you can send stuff to, and people who send you stuff too. And it’s all just freakin’ bitchin’.
In which I oversleep.
It’s autumn, which means it’s getting cooler and I’ve been a little bit congested and sleepy for the past week. I always get this way when the season changes.
Last night, I made vichyssoise over at KJ’s house, and we each had big bowls of it with some crusty slices of a lovely French boule with butter while watching an episode of season 2 of Doctor Who. I served the soup hot, actually, which means it wasn’t technically vichyssoise but simply potato leek soup, but the point is that it was packed with dairy fat.
I *heart* dairy fat. Oh em gee.
Then I went home and slept until 10:46 this morning. I’m supposed to be at work at eleven. Oops.
In other (knitting) news, I’ve started the second (and final!) sleeve of my Big Brown Sweater and should be wearing it soon! (It’s only been on my needles for twenty-two months.) The yarn is freakin’ amazing and I imagine I’ll absolutely live in the thing all winter.
I’ve also found a home for my old Denise circular needle set, the one that Teh BF’s killer b-day present superseded, the one that NLW gave me when she upgraded to the Knit Picks set herself: I’m going to ship them to Vuboq because he doesn’t have a set of interchangeable circular needles! This makes me terribly happy because I’m glad to see them going to a good home; I got a lot of use out of them while they were mine!
In which I bitch about aging, and the road not taken, and blah blah blah.
They say that “40 is the new 30” (which probably is more a nod to the efficacy of modern medicine than anything else) but 40, IMO, is nothing at all like 30.
For me, being 40 means that while my mental outlook is damn near bulletproof – I know what I like and I no longer worry about what people think, and have learned much about what I require from my lifestyle in order to be mentally, spiritually, and emotionally comfortable – my physical experiences are getting pretty weird, to say the least.
I can no longer deny myself proper nutrition and rest and still function at all. I am watching my hair slowly but surely migrate from my head to the rest of my body. My cycle is no longer textbook perfect; my luteal phase seems to be getting weirder as I slowly pull away from my reproductive years.
I can no longer eat all the Mexican food I want; it now turns immediately into pudge. I get random aches and pains in places I didn’t even know I had. There are the mornings my feet feel like sausages, and the evenings I feel totally wiped out even though I haven’t done anything particularly energetic.
There are the new wrinkles in my forehead and around my eyes, and there is the increasing size of the veins in backs of my hands [this grosses me out inordinately]. There is the fact that everything jiggly is about two inches lower than my body-image tells me it should be.
My vision continues to deteriorate, and I’m getting those black floaty things in my field of sight (future vitreous or retinal detachment, anyone?). I have developed a few spider and varicose veins in the past couple of years. My (remaining) hair has more silver in it than ever.
I am hyper-aware of mortality, particularly my own, whereas even three years ago the thought that I’d get old and die literally never crossed my mind. (That could be a side effect of living with an 86-year-old grandmother, and dating a man who lives with his 83-year-old mother, more than an artifact of my own age.)
Over-indulging, in anything at all, costs me much more recuperative time than it once did; the sad thing is that this goes for nookie as well as food and vodka. (Nothing says “you’re getting old” like requiring three days to recover from a particularly good fuck because you threw your back out. Can I get a witness?)
Also somewhat disturbing is the realization that I have already achieved who I’m going to be: I do not harbor any hidden easter egg hacks; I’m not going to suddenly get smarter or prettier or more talented. (Or more driven, for that matter.) Statistical odds say that I’m not going to make it in entertainment, I’m not going to get that PhD, I’m not going to become a brilliant writer of fiction, and I’m not going to guest star on the Today Show for having accomplished any of those things… simply because I haven’t already done so and I’ve reached the age I have.
Not to say I don’t have anything left to do in my life, but one can safely extrapolate from past trends. I’m good, but I’m not that good… and even if I were, I seem to be a little lazy. I’ll dabble in entertainment like I always have, and I’ll (probably) retain my native intelligence, and I’ll keep writing in the small ways that I do (it’s not like keeping a damn-near daily blog for 8 years is a non-accomplishment, and you should totally read my riveting technical manuals), but I will always be a small fish.
So, that’s kind of a weird realization. There was once a subtle but ever-present feeling of possibility, that literally any life path could open up before me at any moment. That feeling is, if not gone, at least vastly reduced for me now that I’ve turned 40. I don’t expect myself to bust out with anything more remarkable than I already have done.
All the entertainers I see are younger than me. And if they’re not, they started on the road to household-name-ness when they were significantly younger than I am now. I spent my ‘making it’ years in Iowa rather than in a big city working, and while I don’t regret that I do realize that that decision cut a lot of branches off my potentiality tree.
In other words, this is it.
This is me.
WYSIWYG.
And that’s okay. (But it’d be better if my body was still, like, 20. Srsly.)
In which Teh BF totally comes through with the goods!
Yesterday I got a belated b-day present from Kaje. And it’s not even electronic, but it still utterly RULEZ. It’s needles! Circular knitting needles! Awesome cute kick ass knitting needles that have been on my wishlist for, like, two years!
And not just any needles, but the Options Interchangeable Harmony Wood Circular Knitting Needle set, in actual fact. These needles freakin’ rule, bitches. They’re all multi-colored laminated birch and I totally *heart* them.
I might even feel compelled to finally finish the Big Brown Sweater, which is well over a year old now and only a sleeve and a half away from total wearability!
Does my boyfriend kick ass or what. KNITTING NEEDLES! Holy cow. I am totally teh winnar.
In which I recap a very, very killer vacation.
Most of it’s already a blur. But here is the Flickr set, and below are the most important highlights:
I played a lot of slots and drank a lot of booze.
The food was uniformly great.
Vegas looks pretty nasty during the day but is like a giant, endless Times Square at night. It’s fun, and gaudy, and weird, and I enjoyed the hell out of myself.
The shrine between Bally’s and Caesar’s Palace was beautiful and unexpected.
Teh BF is a completely easy-going travel companion, which bodes well in general.
On my birthday, my friend Adam – who booked me as part of the opening act of one of his very first shows ever, when he brought Richie Havens to Iowa about a decade ago – took me and his sister Mona, and our friend Jason, and KJ out for birthday dinner at Nove, a chichi restaurant at the top of the Palms. The food was incredible, the view was stunning, and the company was superb. I had so much fun I could have popped, but I didn’t get any pictures because it was so dark in there.
After the meal, we went downstairs to The Lounge and listened to my new favorite band, Santa Fe and the Fat City Horns. (You can hear ’em here.) Holy fuck, this band smokes. They’re like the new Tower Of Power. They’re all monster players – studio cats and seasoned players all – and they groove like you simply would not believe. This is the band I want to be in. I bought a CD and ripped it to my iPod when I got home last night. It’s been on the top of my playlist since and will probably stay there for months.
Although we never managed to make it over to Fremont street nor go bowling (we’d had the idea that bowling in Vegas would be hella fun), we did accomplish some sushi-eating on our last night in town. We stopped at Ah Sin and gorged on all-you-can-eat sushi. (Well, I gorged – I had six rolls. Teh BF had, like, four.)
I bought myself a new wallet. It was ten bucks. (I’m a big spender, I know, I know.)
When we got back to W2 yesterday evening it was thirty degrees colder than we’d been used to, so we stopped at the new Thai City restaurant and ordered yummy spicy food. I had the green curry and it was brilliant; Teh BF had pad thai and when I saw him on my lunch break was still raving about it. Thai City absolutely rocks.
In other, totally unrelated news: yummy cell phone pr0n! I totally want this, omgwtfbbq. Srsly.
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4 random books from my Library!
