Trek casting call
Haven’t posted online quiz results in a while, but the results amused me on this one that raininva and rattrap posted.
Birthday presents
Got some cool stuff from Starr for my birthday… a refractor telescope, a black tee with a handcuff graphic (“I can’t believe I’m buying you another black t-shirt”) and… this!
Can you guess what it is (besides an afghan, of course)?
Narcis II: The Wrath of Sassoon
Okay, I admit defeat. I had fun growing my hair out all year, but as the weather cooled it started to bug me. The wind was blowing it in my face, it got matted under hoods and caps, and was always on the wrong side of my collars.
So, without fanfare, I went and got a haircut on Saturday. What do I look like now? Somewhere between the 2003 pic in this previous entry, and the usericon on this current one.
Reactions? Everyone thinks it’s a huge improvement, including the folks who said the long hair looked good. My cubicle-mate says I look like a choirboy now.
I’m not saying I’ll never grow it out again (and style it better if I do) but, for now, the short hair is back. And I must confess, it does save showering time in the mornings.
Highly-rated lap
Every morning for years now, I perform a little ritual of dragging my semi-conscious carcass out of bed and into my office, where I wake myself up with the morning’s email and Friends page.
Now there’s a new element to that ritual: every morning, little Midori sees that I’m awake, jumps up to my chair, curls up her kitten body in my lap, and goes to sleep.
As if it wasn’t hard enough getting out of this chair to shower and dress…
(I have to keep grabbing her, too, as she forgets that my lap is not infinite, and tries to roll over in her sleep.)
Visual scanning jammed
I’m trying to remember when I bought my Umax 1200 SCSI scanner. It’s gotta be at least 12 years old… maybe 15 or more.
It’s certainly old enough for the adhesive holding the glass platen to the upper casing to fail, dropping the platen down into the mechanism and jamming it.
I think the old thing’s trying to tell me to replace it. I’ve been having to run hacked Linux software to use the scanner with OS X 10.4 as it is. Wonder if I can find a legal-size hi-res USB scanner for a decent price. Anyone got any suggestions?
200 Things to Do Before You Post
So, there’s this list of 200 things you’re supposed to go through and bold what you’ve done. Some of them are very specific: I’d like to see Siouxsie and the Banshees in concert, for example, but it’s unlikely I will ever have the opportunity; I imagine that “fallen in love at an ancient Mayan burial ground” is pretty rare, too. A few of them conflict a bit; “Visited all 50 states” and “Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states” can both be accomplished, but at a real cost in time and money.
In the final tally, if I counted right, I managed 84 out of 200. I’m pleased with that result.
EDIT: Rain reminded me of one I missed. 85 🙂
Never deal with a Dreadlord
Just watched Unlimited Escapism, Vol. 0, by “Baron Soosdon”. 14 minutes of wild visuals and trance music… nicely soothing on a Woden’s Day evening.
This image of Petite Nikita, however, made me want to run a Shadowrun (2nd ed.) game set in a highly-technological future of Azeroth…
I doubt that anyone would be thrilled to find that their back-alley street doc was an undead Forsaken 🙂
Good News and Bad News
Yesterday was a real roller-coaster ride.
I was slammed with tickets at work yesterday, and fell behind despite my best efforts. I’m catching up a little bit today, but what a mess. There is never a lack of things for me to do here, let me tell you!
So, back in April, the driver’s door switch in the Hyundai broke. The car believed that the door was constantly ajar, meaning I couldn’t keep the power locks locked while the car was in motion (BAD), the dome light wanted to stay on all the time (turned it off), and the open-door dinger would chime erratically (psychosis-inducing).
While I still have to take the car by the dealership for several reasons, it finally occurred to me that with three pennies and a bit of duct tape, I could restore proper function to the switch. Now the locks work right, I’ve got my dome light back, and the dinger is no longer suggesting that I go on a three-state murder spree.
Then we headed over to ptownhiker‘s superhero game; and, less than a block away from the venue, someone’s cat darted in front of the car. It was over before I registered the blurred shadow. We pulled over immediately, and found the owners, but it was far too late. The owners thanked us for having the decency to stop and find them… thank goodness I was heading straight to a big gathering of friends, because that was a hell of a downer.
The WWII superhero game, on the other hand, may have been the best session we’ve had in the campaign. All the heroes pulled together as a team and contributed something vital to the rescue of a torpedoed troopship in the North Atlantic, and the evening was full of crazy plans and laughter. One of the heroes has what is basically the Portal super power, and we come up with a new way to abuse it almost every session 🙂
And this morning I found where I’d accidentally hidden my iPod from myself. So, an eventful day-and-a-half.
EDIT: Here’s a Flash version of the Portal game. I wish I hadn’t found this at work 🙂 http://portal.wecreatestuff.com/
Resting Place
Since the issue has come up, this is what I’m currently thinking of for the fateful day:
I recently heard the story of a person whose passing wish was to have her ashes scattered at midnight on a local golf course.
Problem was, no one in the family had access to the golf course. So the family and friends had to sneak in, in the middle of the night, in their funeral garb; scatter the ashes, and get the heck out, riding adrenaline highs and laughing nervously the whole time.
When I heard that story, I thought that was awesome.
Area 51 is probably a bit much to ask of you folks, but I’m sure I can come up a suitably interesting place before it’s time.
