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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
K. Stonham's LiveJournal:
| Thursday, May 31st, 2012 | |
| 1:11 pm | Other People's (Fax Machine) Problems I am sensing a theme to my work week. Tuesday I get an irate call from the manager of our financial office, berating me for not faxing up on Friday a copy of the FedEx shipping label for the contracts. I pull my copy out of the drawer, tell her I faxed it just after 11am on Friday. "Well, you need to stand by the fax machine and make sure it goes through, because we never got it!" I go downstairs, pull the fax machine report from Friday, call her back, tell her what I'm looking at, and that our machine report says it went through to hers, no problem. "Well, we never got it!" I fail to see how her fax machine hiccups are my fault. Today, I get a first call, determine it's not one of our contracts, fax it over to the Neptune that (1) is affiliated with the office that issued the contract, and (2) actually covers the area the hospice was calling from. Three-quarters of an hour later, I get a call from the hospice asking for an ETA, relay the information, give them the number to that office. Not ten minutes later, I get a call from that office, demanding what's going on since I never called them back about it. I tell them I faxed the information to them. "Well, the fax machine is in [person]'s office, and we can't go in there when she's not here!" *facepalm* Again, their lack of planning and foresight is not my problem, not my fault. One and a half more days to the weekend; let's see how many more variations on this theme I can collect.... |
| 10:34 am | Old Stitches So even after switching out the hook-and-eyes for tie closures, his good Renfaire shirt (the linen one, with heavily-embroidered blackwork cuffs and collar) no longer fits Wonderful Husband. Which is a mystery to both of us, as (1) it fit when I made it, (2) his added weight since then isn't in the areas it doesn't fit, and (3) linen doesn't shrink that much in the wash! Which, I guess, means that I should try it on and see what adjustments would be needed to make it fit me. This also means that, after Costume College, I get to buy more linen, re-measure him, and make him a new shirt. With new collars and cuffs! And since by the end of it I got sick of the embroidery pattern for the old shirt, I want to find a new period pattern to play with. (I used the central/major motif from the cuffs of the Holbein portrait of Jane Seymour; after a while I took to calling it the "crosses and tombstones" pattern.) After consulting my (two) blackwork books, I came across the Jane Bostock sampler (third one pictured; click on it for a larger view) which has a couple patterns that seem suitably intricate without being overwhelmingly feminine... now I just have to find large enough views of the patterns that interest me, and chart them. |
| 8:18 am | Writer's Block: You're Outta Here If you could wipe one book, movie, or television franchise off the face of the planet (it never existed, nobody will remember it ever existing), what would it be and why? First question listed was submitted by Transformers: Dark of the Moon. It is my One True Hate, on so many levels, and for so many reasons. Frothing rant still pending until I'm cool-headed enough to actually do it justice. |
| Wednesday, May 30th, 2012 | |
| 2:21 pm | 50 in '12: #11 Title: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Author: James Kahn Length: 216 pages ( review ) |
| Tuesday, May 29th, 2012 | |
| 7:36 pm | 50 in '12: #10 Title: The Compleat American Housewife - 1776 Author: Julianne Belote Length: 183 pages ( review ) |
| Sunday, May 27th, 2012 | |
| 9:28 pm | Caught Up! Just powered through the last stack of ten pages of edits! Until Wednesday, when I get more back from my classmates, I am caught up! Thirty pages done, in one day! *victory mousedance* This means that now... I go into the future. Henceforth, I shall be editing completely untouched pages. First draft words, here I come! *sets aside the machete, powers up the chainsaw* Page count: 272/617. Word count: 124,297. Chapter 12: done! |
| 2:26 pm | Twenty! Powered through twenty pages of classmate edits today, making up for yesterday! Only one more set left, and a set currently with my classmates that I'll get back on Wednesday, and then I'm outracing myself. Stopping at page 263/617 and word count 124,312. Which is a drop of only 24 words, but I had fun rearranging sentences and paragraphs in one scene. It now flows much better. Also, yes, the dragon has a mullet. ^_^ Viva la '80s! Also baked bread and a peach pie, which are now getting taken to my parents. BBQ Obligatory Familial Dinner! |
| Saturday, May 26th, 2012 | |
| 10:14 pm | And Not A Single Edit Was Done, All Day This morning, I went to the Farmer's Market and a couple of estate sales with my new(ish) coworker, who is somewhere around my own age. She's very talkative and extroverted, which is kind of the opposite of me; I only get chatty around people I'm comfortable with. It was okay; I kind of feel like she wants a little too much to be friends with me, and I don't know why. I'm not a particularly engaging person. I've started on a deep-cleaning of the kitchen, which really needs it. (The whole house needs it, but one room at a time.) The long counter is now looking much better; I just have to do the rest of everything. Also, rescued a lizard from Paris. She is now 3 for 0 this year. Sushi needs to work hard to catch up! Saw The Lorax at the $2 theater. It was a little heavy-handed on the "hey, this is an environmental movie! in case you missed that!", but overall not bad. I did tear up toward the end. And somehow the Lorax's tack reminded me a little of Adam, toward the end of Good Omens: the only way people are going to learn not to kill whales, is if they have to deal with dead whales. Went to the gym (612 calories burned! most of which while watching Britney Spears music videos, which were preferable to Faux News on another screen) and used probably the last of the garden-grown snow peas in a quite yummy stir-fry for dinner. And now, bed.... |
| Friday, May 25th, 2012 | |
| 10:23 pm | Editing Count Ten more pages done; only three sections remaining in the stack. Chapter eleven is completed, and I'm stopping for the night on page 245/617. Word count is 124,336, so I've shaved off only twenty-one words in this session. Have established that Higami is a young idiot, and that Rosemarinda hates packing. |
| 8:34 pm | Vehicular Daydreams :) Saw a couple of jaw-droppingly lovely cars this week. As I pass by the Lamborghini dealership on the way to work each morning, I admire their stock. The G1 Transformers fan in me squees over the red and gold ones. I raise a quizzical eyebrow at the neon orange and neon green ones. The black ones remind me of Toothless. The deep sapphire blue Lamborghini, however, is my favorite; gorgeous car, gorgeous color. But this week there was a new contender! A pearly white Lambo of infinite beauty. Then, on the drive home, I paced what is possibly the sleekest Porsche I've ever seen, a pristine white Carerra S4. Oh the eye candy. Had I but infinite funds and a larger garage.... A Porsche actually is my "had I but money enough" sports car (though I would want to test-drive a Lambo just for the fun of it). Wonderful Husband goes slightly more exotic and slightly more affordable by having a Lotus at the comparative spot on his list. For a more conservative choice, he also would like a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow (aka a Bentley T). Then there are the classic cars of my daydreams.... And, of course, every Transformers fan has a short (or long!) list of what characters' vehicle modes they would like to, and maybe someday will, replicate! G1 Jazz is high on my list. It would also be fun to do any of the Datsun trio (though I suspect a Prowl replica, like a Barricade replica, would actually not be street legal) and Tracks. But my other main fantasy replica would actually be Bumblebee from Bayverse. The 1976 Bumblebee. Except, you know, with non-custom-faded paint.... :) |
| 7:42 am | Cat / Cuisine Idiot cat showed up at the side door as soon as I opened it this morning, seemingly none the worse for wear for his night outside. Unrelated item: dinner last night was Japanese curry and, for the first time, miso soup. You'd think someone who likes Japanese food as much as I do would have learned to make miso soup long before now, but no. Very simple (counting water, five ingredients!) and very fast. Shall likely be added to menu rotation a lot more from now on. |
| Thursday, May 24th, 2012 | |
| 10:28 pm | Words and Idiot Felines Powered through twenty pages of classmate edits tonight. Am stopping at page 236/617. Word count went in the correct direction tonight, dropping to 124,357. Eighty-six words down, and chapter ten done. Only four more batches before I'm caught up with the stuff I've been handing in to class. Conceivably I could achieve this by my next class meeting! Let's see how many butterflies I get distracted by between here and there. That said, I'm a little worried. I let Sushi out into the kitchen garden when I got home from work. He hasn't come back yet and hasn't responded to my calls, which he usually will. I'm hoping he's just wandering the neighborhood for a bit and hasn't got hit by a car or killed by the neighbor's guard dogs.... |
| 7:49 pm | Avengers Headcanon Stuffs! Neat stuff found by Wonderful Husband that is now SO TOTALLY headcanon for the both of us! First, about the genealogy of Son of Coul.... And, second, a bit about about worldviews. |
| 6:40 pm | Minutae Bizarre realization during the recent car-buying process: I am the only person in my family who drives a manual. Which kind of boggles me. I don't know why it boggles me; automatics seem vastly more popular in the US than manual transmissions. If there had been no other choice, I would have suffered an automatic, but a manual transmission was always on my short list of desired features, along with cloth seats and four doors. In other matters, I've finally gotten it hashed out about when both of my parents are available, and booked a reservation for Wonderful Husband and myself to take them out for a fancy dinner in celebration of the fact that they've now been married 40 years. Not bad considering the rapidity of their courtship! Stalking a lovely Singer 24 handcrank on eBay. Have bid; crossing fingers. Onto editing until Wonderful Husband gets home and we (probably) go gymward. |
| Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012 | |
| 11:14 pm | Magic Handwave! Got back on the horse with incorporating the edits my classmates have given me. Ended on page 218/617, with a word count of 124,443. Which is something like fifty-eight words in the wrong direction, but the classmates thought I needed to enrich the text, so I did. I am defying mass/physics laws (though not nearly as blatantly as most Transformers series) in the length of a mermaid's tail, but it's fantasy, so, *magic handwave*. |
| Sunday, May 20th, 2012 | |
| 9:57 pm | Eclipse Gardening! Spent the eclipse gardening and occasionally taking a gander at the pinhole camera I'd made. Using an actual pin, which for some reason makes me snicker. Writing class tomorrow night; I still haven't done my homework. Guess I know what I'll be doing during my lunch break tomorrow! Have gotten the waistband and zipper off the burgundy linen skirt, and am in the process of sewing the lining to the fashion fabric at the zipper opening before reattaching the zipper, invisibly. Then I'll gather the skirt ~7" narrower. For now, though, as I need to run around doing car things in the morning, bed! |
| 10:10 am | Underskirts, Overskirts, Eclipses Yesterday I did Faire for the third and final time this year. I kind of wish I was there today, just to see what-all happens when the eclipse hits this afternoon, but c'est la vie. Despite shopping-ish intentions, I only ended up getting four tins of tea from Spice Traders. There was a lovely, lovely tassel belt that I am kind of in love with, but it was $150. I'm not enough into bellydance yet to warrant that outlay. Unfortunately, though, my mother (Faire companion of the day) ended up having a bit of an allergic reaction to something and her eyes wouldn't stop bothering her. The dust? The smog? The sunscreen? Who knows. So we ended up leaving before Faire was done, and came home and had chicken sabzi, which I'd put in the crockpot that morning. Forgot the peppers, but Wonderful Husband probably liked it better for that. Mom departed for home, Wonderful Husband did the laundry, and I sat down and finally finished the green petticoat! Right now, I'm watering the garden beds and taking the waistband off a skirt. It's a lovely burgundy-with-black-embroidery skirt that has never fit me due to the fact that it's a size 20 and I'm not. I've been procrastinating on resizing it for long enough; time to man up and do it. |
| Friday, May 18th, 2012 | |
| 8:46 pm | Costume College Classes! Got my Costume College Limited Attendance Classes confirmation in the mail. I will be taking --Basic Lucet Weaving --Beginning Pearl Stringing --Heirloom Sewing Techniques --Basic Card Weaving As in, holy sh*t I got all four classes! In all my years of attending, this has never happened! |
| 12:25 pm | About suddenly falling for "a prince"... One of the criticisms of The Little Mermaid is that Ariel falls for Eric without ever even having talked to him. That he is, in effect, a stand-in for her love of humans. Yet, reviewing that birthday party scene, she learns a lot about him without an exchange of words. He is kind to animals, treats his subjects fairly, is not self-absorbed, loves music, and is of equal rank to herself. Ariel is a princess. She would be expected to marry well, possibly dynastically. Other than the fact that he's human (a plus in her eyes!), in what way is Eric an ineligible choice? Historically, a lot of royal marriages were based on a lot less compatability than what she was able to deduce from that one spying session. Marriage also used to be more of a political/financial union than the modern interpretation. First you built a stable foundation. Then, over time, as you came to know one another, love frequently grew. I doubt Disney actually intended that subtlety in the film, as they're telling stories about true love and happiness and it all has to fit into a 90-minute movie. But thinking of it that way may make Ariel's sudden infatuation a bit more conducive to long-term marital happiness. Thoughts? |
| 10:12 am | Sewing, Editing, Lathering, Rinsing, Repeating Edited a little more on Queen's Choice last night, after Wonderful Husband gave me his comments on the most recent ten pages. Have it ready for the copy shop after work. Spent the bulk of the evening planting, weeding, cooking, and sewing. I was up far too late with that last, but the final tier is finally sewn onto the green petti! I still have to go over the seam two more times, finishing it with ribbon, but that will go quicker since (1) the foot won't keep catching on the netting, and (2) I won't have to stop every couple inches to take the pins out. As a diversion, I've started writing out the Dramatis Personae list for Field of Stars. ...I'm up to twenty-one characters, and haven't even gotten to the other kingdoms! Some of them are less important than others, of course, but none of them can actually be dropped. Four are new, but then there are characters from Queen's Choice that won't be showing up so maybe it balances out? Ah well. On to listing out Savoy and all its civil war problems.... |
