Sara

I shouldn't have spent the money, but I totally preorderd this because I couldn't pass it up. Now let's see them make Husk, Chamber, Arsenic and Old Lace and Chase. I'd be totally fucking broke, but my world would be complete.

I promise more later although it might not be this weekend.

I got a lot more accomplished today than I had otherwise planned. My plan had been to go to the mall to scope out Waldenbooks and then to drop off a box at a
UPS drop off to send back to Zappos. In case you guys don't know Waldenbooks/Borders is closing so everything is crazy on sale. Monday I got $200 worth of graphic novels and some regular books for $100. Today I got $120 worth of books for $50.

That wasn't all I got done.

• Mall
  
• UPS drop off
  
• new tires
  
• alignment
  
• walked all over the place while car work was being done
  
• bought clearance yarn
  
• installed new RAM on desktop
  
• backed up Vincent
  
• reformatted Vincent
  

Installing the RAM was quite an adventure. I originally had 4 GBs in two slots at 2GBs a stick. There were two empty slots. I had bought 8GB on two sticks so 4GBs a stick. Originally I just installed the two sticks in the empty slots, which didn't work so well. I had to crawl around on the floor hooking and unhooking wires and popping RAM in and out for about an hour before I finally found the sweet alignment that got the computer to boot and recognize all 12GBs of RAM. Thankfully I have not had to go into the BIOS yet to try and figure out timing and crap because, well, I am not that saavy. If it works, it works. I'm down with that.

Tomorrow I need to do housework. Saturday I have plans with a friend to sit around, btich about work and drink some wine.

I have a story about work, but I'm not sure I want to get into it now. I would also need to flock it.

I found something on Etsy that I have to share.

GoT Swag

I got a set of four for myself comprised of Stark, Lannister, Greyjoy and Targaryen

I got a set of four as a Christmas present for a friend (who will never find this mwhahaha) comprised of Stark, Lannister, Tully and Reed. She doesn't have the last two listed as options, but she agreed to do them once I convoed her.

I love Etsy.

ETA: I'm going to need more GoT icons. Some happy ones even because I love Cap'n Jack, but he doesn't belong with this post.

If you have any knowledge of me and did not just stumble onto my journal randomly and are brand spanking new then you know I do a lot of baking. Cookies, cakes, brownies, breads, etc. I love baking. It's so much like chemistry. I like the orderliness of it even though I know that chemical reactions always have a chance of failing. I've had baking failures. I readily admit to them even though they might reduce me to tears or swearing like a sailor while I pace around my kitchen muttering darkly and dangerously.

Something you might not know about me is that my hands do not like me or, at least, they do not like me when I am kneading bread. They get all stiff and sore and aching. Both sides of my family have hand issues so I should expect it, but it still pisses me off. My current stand mixer (oh bless you, Sunbeam) is older than me. It's from the 60's and was my paternal grandmother's. My father and uncle thought I should have it after she passed. It's a workhorse, but it can't do bread dough. I fear every single Christmas that I will kill it by making it go through Cookiepaloza. I also have a bread machine, which is decent for kneading bread but can pretty much only do one loaf at a time. This gets totally annoying when my dad asks me to bring him two loaves of something because it means an entire day of waiting for the bread machine, second rise, shape, bake, wash the bread machine pan and repeat. I'm not a fan.

So I started researching stand mixers. KithenAids have mixed reviews and, really, the general consensus on the wide world of wonder web is that they're not really fit for bread, which does not suit my purposes. Sunbeam doesn't offer the capacity that I need. Viking, once again, seems to be less fit for bread than what I was hoping. Cuisanart has decent reviews but, again, it's mostly aimed toward other than bread baking. After a lot of research, I decided that the Bosch Universal Mixer was probably the best machine for me given what I want to do with it. It doesn't come in pretty colors, and it looks a little like something that should be on STNG but the reviews are good, especially for bread. I have dithered on and off about a new stand mixer for awhile now as it is a bit of an extravagant expense. However after once again fearing the good old Sunbeam would quiet during Cookiepaloza, I decided that once the tax refunds came back I would be stand mixer bound.

They did.

I ordered my Bosch earlier today. I hate making big purchases, but I really think I'm going to love this little beauty.

Bought today from the last update because I couldn't stop thinking about them.





From this update:

I should admit that I'm a little on the obsessive compulsive side of things when it comes to collecting. If I find something I like (comic books, action figures, stuffed toy lines, rocks, nail polish, etc.) I will just buy them. It's one of the little tendencies I have that makes watching Hoarders such a freak out for me. It's not that I put sentimental attachment on everything but there are certainly things in my house that do have a great deal of memories attached to them that keep me from getting rid of them/taking them out of their packaging. Probably the best thing going in my favor to not becoming a hoarder is that things that I don't have a lot of sentimental attachment with just stop being interesting after a while. I have two garbage bags full of boxed 90s and early 2000s action figure that I should go through and either sell of give away unless they happen to be some of my ultimate favorite characters. I also have about two bags full of stuffed animals that I need to do something with.

My latest obsession? MiniMates. I don't even know. I started buying some as cute little gifts for people and now I want want want, which is going to mean eBay purchases and random online purchases until I tire of them. The good news? I am limiting myself to either gifts for people or characters I have RPed (as most of my favorite characters are covered in that.)

*sigh* Oh me and my fickle material loves.

Also since I'm going to my mother's tonight and possibly won't be around tomorrow: Happy Holidays to all whatever you celebrate even if that's nothing at all.

I just spent way too much money on a new TV. My old one broke last weekend. I can turn it on, it'll stay on for two or three minutes and then turn off, turn on, turn off, turn on and finally turn off. Rather than try to repair, I'm just replacing the old 27" tube TV with a 46" LCD 1080p Sony Bravia S series. Yes, yes. It is a little extravagant, and it means I have to replace my entertainment center and possibly even completely rearrange the living room but. But it was nice. It's a nice TV and things are going to look beautiful on it. I deserve something nice every once in a while. Plus it's been credit carded and has no interest for 36 months. I can pay it off by then no sweat.

It gets delivered next Sunday, which means I'll be late heading up to my dad's for Father's Day, but he's cool with that.

Yay TV!

Now back to watching Xena on Gir.

The pendants I bought from Glamourkin came today. They're gorgeous. I'm so happy with them, though I have to decide which one I'm going to give away as a Christmas present. I promised myself that one would go. As a result of new necklaces, of course, I had to hop over to eBay and buy some bulk chains. So, yay, ten 18" box chains for $11.48 have been purchased. Some will be presents and, well, the rest will just be more chains for me to have.

Etsy has become my new place to just sit and wander around on during lulls at work, which results in my spending money I don't need to be. For instance, I just bought two prints from this store because I discovered I could not live without them. (I bought this and this). Next I'll have to get frames. *sigh*

Oh, I also found a store that has steampunk-esque jewelry on it. I am in love with this one and this one especially, though I have managed to keep myself from buying anything from this seller.

And now for something completely different.

Technology rant.

I need a new digital camera. My current one is the suck. It drains batteries faster than a cheap whore when sailors are on leave. It also has really low megapixels, which results in some pretty terrible picture quality unless you select "best" at which point you can shoot 33 pictures at best and that's with the 512MB memory card in it. It will not see larger memory cards. I have a 2GB that I bought all for it, and it can't see it. All in all, it annoys me and with digital cameras and photo printers finally starting to rival film cameras, I want an upgrade. I want an upgrade in time for my party, which means that I might be going to buy this spiffy Canon with 10 megapixel, 4x optical and 4x digital zoom. Here have a link. That's the one I'm debating. The second runner up was this baby, but it loses because it offers less megapixels, and only has 3x optical zoom. Not to mention that the second one only takes the Canon battery pack. That annoys me. I like to use AA's, thank you very much. I was really only tempted by the second because it is sleeker, which is something that I enjoy. It would fit in a pocket or purse better but the difference between the two really isn't all that substantial size-wise.

Deciding on a Canon camera was the easy part. I have three film cameras (although I cannot for the life of my manage to find the third one). Of the two I can locate, one is a Canon 35M point and shoot and the other is a Kodak APS point and shoot with a 2x optical zoom. The Kodak is newer but in no way nicer. The Canon camera takes beautiful pictures. The images are always crisp and clean, and it is old. It is old as in I got it for a birthday present when my parents were still together. I was probably in high school, but I can't recall. It's that old, and it works like a charm. The Kodak has questionable quality, especially when you zoom. The images get pixellated. I love Kodak prints. When I have film developed, I always go for Kodak if the place has it, but the camera itself cannot compare with my Canon. My third (missing) camera is another APS camera, which I loved. I cannot remember what type of camera it was. I know it was point and shoot and did not have optical zoom, but it had better picture quality than the current Kodak APS. I'm sad that I can't find it because I still have a few rolls of APS film I need to shoot.

Then we get the my photo printer, which was a present from my dad a few months after he got me the camera. (Well, more like half a year. The camera was for Christmas and then the printer was for the following birthday when he wanted me to print out the pictures I had taken with the camera when I was in England.) My HP Photosmart 245 worked like a charm. I never used it much due to the above stated fact of still preferring the quality of film, but it did its job. And then, suddenly, I went to turn it on and the damn thing won't light up. At all. I've done everything with it and the power cord that my troubleshooting skills can consider and nothing. It's DOA. I looked around to see if I could find a replacement power cord and those fucking things range from $35 to $60. I can buy a new photo printer that has a LCD touchscreen for cropping pictures, prints more sizes and is faster for $100. I think my decision is made there, too. Here's the printer I'm considering.

So, basically, I can drop a little over $300 and have a nice camera and photo printer set, which would be awesome because I would like to have both. I'd like to get myself back into photography. Well, amateur photography anyway, and it would be nice to have pictures of my current friends. I sort of stopped taking pictures shortly after college ended, which would probably surprise all my college friends because I was something of an annoying shutterbug.

That's enough of that rant. I'll probably be buying the camera and the printer later today because the party is next Saturday. That's not a lot of time.

I am off Saturday so will try to get posting done, but it's also the first day timberwolfblues and I have had off together in a while when one of us wasn't sick so we'll see how that goes.

I am working for four hours on Sunday because the OT pay they're offering is crazy money.

Great bands to check out if you get the chance:
Plain White T's (tsylyst introduced me to them)
The Rocket Summer (another $10 Target buy for the win)