| Hips Don't Lie |
[Dec. 28th, 2009|10:44 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | games, holidays | ] |
| [ | Mood-O-Meter |
| | unfit | ] |
| [ | Song of the Day |
| | Shakira - "Hips Don't Lie" | ] |
I had myself a merry little Christmas. Good food, good company, good times. The presents were nice too: I got some clothes, a whole bunch of books, a new camera, and some handy kitchen items. And Beth got, among other things, a Wii Fit, which we spent several hours playing with yesterday.
The strength training is boring and the yoga options are kind of awkward - you only do one pose at a time, and then have to fiddle with the remote to move to the next one, which has to get all your chakras unaligned or something. But some of the little aerobics and balance games are acutally kind of fun. There's this one where you shift your weight slightly to move a bubble down a river without touching the banks or running into a bee. Those stupid bees! They get me every time. We learned that Beth is a much better snowboarder than I am, but I totally kicked her ass on the hula hoop game. According to the body test at the beginning my Wii Fit age is 40, so clearly I'm going to have to shake my tailfeather an awful lot to get into shape.
What I'd really like is a built-in Wii Fit that could count calories burned and give me exercise credit for other, more fun games. I know I'd burn more calories playing DDR than doing Wii Fit's silly little step game, but they wouldn't be documented and the stupid animated balance pad would yell at me for slacking off. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 24th, 2009|06:18 am] |
So, uh, that took about 2 hours longer than I expected...
Actually, I'm happy with it. I think it's pretty and should look good, provided it fits. Please, please, please fit.
I feel a little bad for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) cornaryn, since I plan to be up in an hour... |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 23rd, 2009|10:36 am] |
So, yeah, I found my Christmas cheer.
Does anyone else have those moments where you're just kinda in love with everything? I used to think that tied into my mania.1 I've gotten my handful of random presents and last minute plans out of the way, bought what should be the last of my presents for family, and need to get around to canceling the amazon prime trial that I was really, really happy to have this week.
The Christmas cookie exchange went really well. There were more people than I expected, but I did eventually calm down. I even managed to never go into actual hiding.2 I ended up taking a tin of what we kept to the receptionists at the clinic yesterday, because cookies are yummy but we do not need to keep that many in the house. I still have peanut butter balls and peppermint patties that haven't been dipped yet... maybe tomorrow?
I have a few presents that need to be finished because some people can't stay out of my craft room long enough for me to both convince the sewing machine not to hate me and get work done (also because I procrastinate like whoa and haven't been quite all there lately, with anxiety from work things). I need to get a few pieces of jewelry done, as well - but if I can get in the right frame of mind, a few pieces shouldn't take more than an hour to put together. Especially if I stick to something easy, like earrings (and have all the pieces I need, please let me be able to find everything). The ratio of wrapped to unfinished on my gift spreadsheet is a little worrying, but I think I can do this. I also need to make sure I have everything for pumpkin cinnamon rolls to make for christmas morning, and see if mom wants us to bring any food things for christmas dinner. Busy busy busy... we get out of work early today, but I feel weird leaving when the majority of my floor can't.
I came up with a new knitting project last night, to be started after the sewing marathon preceding Twelfth Night. This is bad because I don't actually enjoy knitting, but I really want to do this. It'll be shiny. At least it involves spinning first, which'll make me happy. As long as I don't have to learn anything new3, everything should be okay.
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1. Current theory is that I don't have bipolar, and atypical depression looks more likely. I could type a lot here, but the summary is that I don't really do manic (and hypomanic/drug reactions are possibly more accurate labels for past events) and I don't have a current diagnosis.
2. Constantly moving to the room with fewer people in it doesn't count as hiding. Also, our current kitchen is not possible to hide in - it's too open, which is annoying as that's my usual place to hide.
3. Like purling. Hah.
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| Alas! |
[Dec. 23rd, 2009|10:31 am] |
I am in mourning. Apparently Entenmann's has stopped selling Devil's Food Crumb Donuts.
Perhaps you are not familiar with this pastry delight. A Devil's Food Crumb Donut isn't really so much a donut as a toroidal mass of very dense chocolate cake, glazed with sugar, lightly dusted with powdered sugar, and then sprinkled with tiny little nubs of sugar-glazed, sugar-dusted, dense chocolate cake. And you eat it for breakfast.
My family has a long history with Devil's Food Crumb Donuts. They were our very favorite Saturday morning breakfast food, like Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs without the milk. And because our parents had some sort of idea that they should be feeding their children healthy things, the donuts put in an appearance only rarely. Then eventually Entenmann's stopped selling them in Texas and we moved on to kolaches, but we still looked for them anyway, just in case. When I moved to DC I discovered that they did still exist, and I gorged myself and brought several boxes home with me to dispense to grateful Devil's Food Crumb Donut-starved relations.
But our local grocery store sucks and only had them sporadically, so they remained a rare and special treat. But after months and months and months and months without the slightest hint of Devil's Food Crumb Donuts, I checked the web, The Source of All Knowledge, and discovered that my favorite donuts in the whole wide world have been discontinued. It could be worse though: Entenmann's still makes them, they just only sell them as part of this Ultimate Chocolate Lovers's Variety Pack. If I want a delicious Devil's Food Crumb Donut I can have it, but I'll be forced to pay for and then throw out the other six inferior donuts in the box. And that's just wasteful. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 22nd, 2009|02:54 pm] |
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Why has it never occured to me before to use the private setting on lj to log my thoughts after therapy? I do so on paper sometimes, but paper journals still kinda of weird me out and I tend to either keep up with them, so I'm writing on random sheets of paper that get put in odd places. Now I just need to cart my laptop with me on those days. Sometimes I am the dumb. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 22nd, 2009|01:39 pm] |
I know what I want for my birthday.
It's going to be expensive, closer to memorial day weekend than my actual birthday, and the use of vacation time might mean no pennsic this year... but I'm going to start saving up the moneys. |
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| Oh, The Weather Outside Is Frightful |
[Dec. 19th, 2009|10:39 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | weather | ] |
| [ | Mood-O-Meter |
| |  lazy | ] |
| [ | Song of the Day |
| | Bing Crosby - "Let It Snow,Let It Snow, Let It Snow" | ] |
It snowed all last night. It's supposed to snow all day today, all night tonight, and maybe tomorrow morning too. This is having a serious impact on my Christmas grocery shopping plans, but at least it gives me a good incentive to stay home and clean my filthy apartment. Well, maybe. There's something about snow that makes you want to snuggle up with a book and a blanket and a cup of hot chocolate instead of doing anything useful and productive. Why does it always have to snow on weekends? If I'm going to be majorly inconvenienced by meteorological events, I at least ought to get a day off work for it. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 16th, 2009|12:33 pm] |
We have our Christmas decorations up, which is very exciting. I have a small rosemary bush as a tree; it is covered in little red ornaments and is very festive. This is, of course, in addition to the already existing tinsel trees.
My present projects are sadly lacking in general completeness. Must. finish.
I made seitan the other night for the first time. I'm still not entirely sure what I think of the general sponginess, but I it is decently tasty.
My anxiety is pretty bad lately - hence the last few posts. I'm normally pretty anxious in general around the holidays, and I'm honestly not sure of how well I'm currently handling it. I'm a little concerned about some of it, especially the large amounts that are due to my simply walking through the potluck area at work just now. I've also noticed recently that I'm doing a lot of repetitive motion things. Yay christmas?
This general trend to put bacon in everything, especially vegetable side dishes? Annoys me greatly. I've given up on any more than basic attempts to avoid it, and just hope I don't get sick.
Also, because people have asked - the "cookie exchange" is pretty open invite. There'll be cookies, people, and one would hope fun. There might also be games, because I like games. Feel free to bring anything, not just cookies, and you may want to consider bringing a container for taking cookies home (I may also have massive quantities of these that I bought last year for some purpose I can no longer remember.)
I've added my address to my contact info entry. Whee. Now I just need to get on the ball about the christmas cards... |
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| Harsh Reality TV |
[Dec. 16th, 2009|12:02 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | history, tv | ] |
| [ | Mood-O-Meter |
| | nerdacious | ] |
| [ | Song of the Day |
| | Sam Cooke - "Wonderful World" | ] |
Beth and I gave up our cable TV subscription months and months ago because we decided we just weren't using it enough to justify the $50 a month it was costing us. We kept the broadband hookup though, because the internet is the Source of All. And besides, you can watch TV on it now. Between streaming and the occasional torrent we've managed to keep up with the handful of shows we actually care about. And then there's Netflix, which introduced us to a whole new world of television options.
As it turns out, PBS and the BBC have a series of reality TV shows in which they take some normal, average volunteers and stick them in a simulation of a historical period for several months. Everything is as real as their finest historians can make it, which is often pretty damn real. The volunteers get some training in how to do things they don't often do in their 21st century lives and then are pretty much left to it, though as in other reality shows the producers sometimes throw in some plot twists to add excitement.
The shows are generally very entertaining. We just finished watching Colonial House, in which two dozen people try to make a colony work on the coast of Maine. We learned that academics make poor administrators, that laws aren't very effective unless backed up by considerable force and/or social pressure, and that moldy salt pork is gross but sometimes you really have to eat it anyway. My favorite is Manor House, in which one family and about fifteen other volunteers run an English country house 1920s-style, complete with upstairs-downstairs drama. A+++, highly recommended. |
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| Happy Birthday |
[Dec. 15th, 2009|03:01 pm] |
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To my lovely husband. I hope you have a wonderful day, and I hope you like the cake :) |
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